Viva Quetzal

Afro-Andean/Latin/Jazz Fusion band Viva Quetzal, will perform the final concert of The Wednesday Folk Traditions series at The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum at 2:00pm on Sunday October 8th.  The concert will be held outside in the Sunken Garden at 130 River Drive, Route 47, Hadley MA 01035. Admission is $12, $2 for children 16 and under, or free for participants in the Card to Culture program. Cash only please. Picnickers are welcome before the show.

Viva Quetzal draws on a diverse soundscape and folkloric themes to connect the rainforests of Central and South America, the carnivals of Brazil, the high plateaus of the Andes, and the urban barrios of Latin America and the United States. Their concerts are a high-energy musical experience featuring a fascinating array of instruments and their members hail from Latin America and New England.  Viva Quetzal’s music shows that the merging and sharing of musical traditions can help reconcile political, cultural, and linguistic divides throughout the Americas. The band has toured extensively in the USA, playing at festivals, and fine arts centers. Viva Quetzal has released three albums, including Ancestros (1995), Mujeres de la Puna (1998) and Hijos del Sol (Signature Sounds, 2000). They are also featured on Putamayo’s Music of the Andes (2014).

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum occupies the unceeded lands of the Nonotuck people. The Museum contains a collection of the belongings of several generations of one extended Hadley family, dating back to the house’s establishment in 1752 by Moses and Elizabeth Porter. The farmstead, known as “Forty Acres and its Skirts,” was a year-round home for generations before becoming a rural retreat for the family in the 19th century. The house and its activities include the labor and livelihood of many artisans, servants, and enslaved people. Their lived experiences are being brought to the forefront at the museum in the form of a new tour and reinterpretation initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The new tour foregrounds the lives of six enslaved men and women at the house: Zebulon Prutt, Cesar, Peg, Phillis, Rose, and Phillis. Additionally, the tour highlights the role of “pastkeeping” by exploring the home’s transition into a museum in the twentieth century. Recently, the museum was designated the “Forty Acres and its Skirts National Historic District” by the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Open June 3rd through October 15, Friday through Monday.