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Duke Arts Presents

Black Atlantic: Daymé Arocena

Thursday, March 28, 2019 | 8:00 pm

Motorco Music Hall


The ‘Black Atlantic’ Package, which provides access to all ‘Black Atlantic’ shows at Motorco and best available reserved seats in Baldwin Auditorium, including performances by Derek Gripper, Fatoumata Diawara, Noura Mint Seymali, Daymé Arocena, The Campbell Brothers, Dafnis Prieto Big Band, and Danilo Brito, is now on sale. Packages are available for purchase online, via phone at 919-684-4444, and in person at the Duke University Box Office, Monday through Friday, 11 AM to 6 PM.

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The incandescent young singer, composer, and choral director Daymé Arocena is the future of Cuban music. Raised in Havana in a small home crowded with twenty-one people and enlivened by an endless stream of music, Arocena enrolled in one of the country’s chief conservatories as a child. A prodigy, she learned the customs of Western choral music while exploring the intricacy and variety of Cuba’s own synthesis of sounds — indigenous, African, and European. On 2017’s triumphant Cubafonía, her songs combine Cuban sounds — including the sounds of Santería — with gospel’s exultancy and jazz’s flexible spine. Arocena has worked with BBC DJ and impresario Gilles Peterson, leading his acclaimed Havana Club Rumba Sessions. Drawing deeply from her country’s rich musical traditions and buoyed up by an irrepressible enthusiasm, Arocena is a mighty new missionary for modern Cuban culture, rooted in the pride of its past.



Daymé Arocena 'NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert'

Daymé Arocena 'La Rumba Me Llamo Yo'

Daymé Arocena 'Madres'


“Arocena unites cosmopolitan musicianship with deep roots.”

The New York Times