Wara

london-Havana sextet fuses festive Latin music with political messages.

Take the tumultuous rhythm of Jamaican dembow, fuse that with some Cuban mambo and Colombian cumbia. Now throw some powerful vocals and raw rhymes into the mix. Sound a bit chaotic? Allow Wara to change your mind. This six-piece band, with members ranging from Cuba and the Congo to Chile and Venezuela, takes the above ingredients and brings it all back home. With bandleader Eliane Correa bending traditionally hypermasculine genres (dembow and hiphop) to her will. The London music scene has been dancing to Wara’s boisterous compositions since 2010. All the while Wara has enriched it’s festive sound with the powerful vocals and raw rhymes of Juanita Euka, Fedzilla, and Correa herself. Their lyrics are rich with social and political messages. “Times are hard,” Correa says. “We have a platform and we have to use it.” Correa is an Artist in Focus at this year’s Music Meeting. Aside from her role as singer and keyboard player (she’s a classically trained pianist) in Wara, she’ll perform in different formations during the festival.

Formation

Eliane Correa – keyboards, vocals
Juanita Euka – vocals
Fedzilla – MC, vocals
Alexis Kraniou - guitar
Alley Lloyd – bass
Ernesto Marichales – drums
Vernon Chatlein – percussion