Latin@ Music Fest

Music twanged and voices clamored in Agora last Friday as students danced, played games and dined at the Latin @ Music Fest. This event followed in the wake of last year’s La Alianza Latina (LAL) Regional Dance, which was sparsely attended and canceled for this year. The music festival, however, was hugely successful and well-received by almost all who were in attendance.

The planning for this event began directly after the LAL dance last year and was headed by Dean of Multicultural Affairs and adviser to LAL Rosanna Salcedo and Assistant Director of Student Activities Kelly McGahie. On the subject of the origins of the event, McGahie said that she and Salcedo discussed alternative options for an LAL following the failure of the dance last year.

“La Alianza Latina has for my entire career at Exeter done an event, often in the fall,” McGahie said. “Their dances have fluctuated in popularity and last year it fluctuated to zero. At the end of the night, literally no one was at the dance. We ended it early, and so I decided that we weren’t going to do that again. So, I had a conversation with Dean Salcedo, and we talked about a couple of possibilities for events in the future.”

Salcedo and McGahie, acknowledging the necessity of a Latin American cultural event in the fall, worked to find a solution to the problem.

“We knew that it was important for ethnic groups to host an event in the fall to bring parts of their culture to the wider student body,” McGahie said.

“I asked the LAL group to get a bit creative, figure out what they wanted to do, bring it to me and that I would support it,” Salcedo said.

The group embraced the challenge, and set new goals for this year’s event. “This year we wanted to get more of the student body involved and make it educational as well as fun,” Salcedo said. “We had Latin American food, games, decorations, music and dancing, all set up in the Agora and provided explanations for them as a way of spreading awareness of Latin American cultures.”

LAL eventually settled on a music festival or concert event, headlined by the Latin-American band Grupo Fantasia. McGahie praised the group, “Dean Salcedo is the one who found Grupo Fantasia, and they’re quite good. They’re definitely Latin-American flavored, in terms of the music they play, and after we chose them there were conversations about whether we should make it a dance or a concert. Eventually, we came up with this sort of music festival setting, with food and games.”

The event was a huge hit amongst students, with many praising its turnout and music. Upper Nicole Shi said that the “atmosphere was lively.”

“There were lots of people from different cultural backgrounds, and we all felt included. We were all there to have a great time with friends and try something new,” Shi said.

The main hit of the night was the music. “Most of the Latino students knew all of the songs played by heart,” Shi said. “They were all excited to show everyone else a very fun side of their culture.” Shi enjoyed the opportunity to hear music and instruments with which she was not familiar. “I only knew a couple of the songs, and the instruments played were very different from what I am used to,” she said. “I enjoyed the music so much that I think I might have to start listening to Latino music more often.”

Lower Chiara Perotti Correa also enjoyed the festival and praised the strong turnout of Latino Exonians at the event. “I thought it was really fun that there were a lot of Latino people, and they really got to appreciate the Latino music and put effort into actually learning the dance steps and everything,” Correa said. “It was really fun.”

Correa said that she was pleased by how excited the attendees were to experience Latino culture. “I was really surprised about how people were willing to learn and how happy they were even though they did not know the songs,” Correa said. “They were willing to learn the dance steps and they were so happy with it. It was awesome.”

Upper Abigail Africa agreed with Shi and Correa and said that the dance was “a crazy ton of fun.” Africa hopes that the school will sponsor more events like the Latin @ Music Fest in the future. “I think different cultural dances should be more often; it would be so cool.”

Due to the event’s popularity, Salcedo is enthusiastic about its return next year. “This event was a total success and we plan to do it again next year and maybe expand on it,” she said.