iLe | Divino Niño | Sara Curruchich

Doors 6:00pm/Show 7:00pm

Join us on Fri, August 18 for a 2023 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! concert featuring iLe, Divino Niño, and Sara Curruchich.

Oscillating between beautiful vocalizations and the powerful cadences of hip-hop, iLe knows what it means to break boundaries. With her start in Puerto Rican hip-hop band Calle 13, iLe’s style shapeshifts with each new release, keeping fans on their toes while maintaining her signature, punctuating Latin sound. Always reinventing themselves, Chicago-based Colombian band Divino Niño also performs, bringing their immersive indie dance beats for us to enjoy. Blending themes of memory and resistance, Guatemalan singer Sara Curruchich rounds out the night.

*Please Note: A limited amount of chairs will be available at this show, but you are also permitted to bring your own. 

About the artists

iLe is the stage name of singer and songwriter Ileana Mercedes Cabra Joglar. Before undertaking a solo career she was best known as a singer with Calle 13. iLe’s sound changes from release to release, but it’s rooted in classic Latin styles. Nacarile is her third and most recent studio album and an expansive 11-track project. It draws on iLe’s affinity for classic Latin American genres and Puerto Rican folk percussion, and even dabbles in the hip-hop she performed in her youth alongside her half-brothers in the iconic group Calle 13. But Nacarile also incorporates new genres, collaging astral synths, irreverent art pop, and prismatic melodies into iLe’s most imaginative, prescient project yet. While her sophomore effort Almadura drew on the rich history of Caribbean rhythms, immersing listeners in the percussive roots of bomba, salsa, and beyond, iLe says the focus was melodic experimentation this time around.

Divino Niño are no strangers to bold reinvention. When Camilo Medina and Javier Forero—friends whose bond dates back to their childhoods in Bogotá, Colombia—moved to Chicago and recruited guitarist Guillermo Rodriguez to form a band, they were psych-pop outsiders playing live shows with a drum machine. With the addition of drummer Pierce Codina, their 2019 breakthrough and debut LP for Winspear, Foam, solidified their place as local indie rock mainstays. Soon after, multi-instrumentalist Justin Vittori joined to round out their lineup. Once again, with their masterful, unpredictable, and eminently danceable new album, the band has done something radical: They totally upended the way they write songs, eschewing practice room jams for unrelentingly collaborative beats, implied grooves for immersive dance floor heaters, and mellow vibes for frenetic doses of reggaeton, electropop, and trap on their most adventurous and ambitious work to date – Last Spa on Earth (2022).

Sara Curruchich was born in 1993 in San Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango, in a Mayan Kaqchikel community, in the central highlands of Guatemala. Her people have a long tradition of art and knowledge, as well as a history of resistance and struggle. Her music is thus born from her people’s collective and individual feelings, history, memory, culture, languages, and struggles, as well as her own, personal stance as an artist. Sara Curruchich is the first indigenous Guatemalan singer and songwriter to sing in Kaqchikel (her mother tongue), as well as Spanish, for an international audience. Her voice and message of love, awareness, respect, and defense of life in all its forms, have led many people to regard her as a beacon of light and hope. Since she began her career as a singer and songwriter in San Juan Comalapa, Sara Curruchich has taken her message to some of Guatemala’s remotest communities, performing in rural communities, as well as well-known theaters and venues. She is also a cultural manager and teaches music workshops in grassroots communities throughout Guatemala. Her music blends various genres such as rock, folk, and traditional Mayan Kaqchikel music. Sara’s strong commitment to historical memory has earned her recognition, not only in the world of art and music, but also in various arenas for debate at a community level. To this day, she has performed in major venues in South America, Central America, North America, and Europe.