Viento Callejero (“street breeze”) represents the youthful vigor of a renaissance of Latino dance music in communities from East L.A. to Oakland.

The Trío de Estudiantina Municipal de Ayacucho is part of a larger community ensemble that performs for fiestas, funerals, and other town events. They practice the huayno, a traditional genre with Andean roots

You may not know his name, but you have probably heard his music. Since the 1960s, percussionist Alex Acuña has performed and recorded with Paul McCartney, U2, Whitney Houston, Ella Fitzgerald

After the Opening Ceremony of the 2015 Folklife Festival, 100 Cajoneros—an ensemble of Peruvians living in the United States—welcomed the Perú: Pachamama program to the National Mall.

The event featured a few of the visiting performance groups representing the Perú: Pachamama program, plus speakers from the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, American and Peruvian embassies, and more.

Eva Ayllón began singing and dancing as a young girl in Lima, carrying on traditions of Afro-Peruvian music: the combination of Andean, Spanish, and African influences, characterized by spirited rhythms.

Chican@ music is not a genre, but rather an embodied experience. For almost one hundred years, musicians coming out of barrios in the southwestern United States have been articulating the complex identities and politics of a people.

Meet the people and places featured in the Perú: Pachamama program in this introductory video for the 2015 Folklife Festival.

Now a Smithsonian Folkways Recordings artist based in Fresno, Agustín Lira continues to chronicle the experiences and little-known histories of Chicano, Indigenous, and immigrant communities in California.

The Peru program for the 2015 Folklife Festival has taken a more definite shape since we returned from our second curatorial fieldwork trip in December.