VIBE Viva was created a near two years ago with the intentions to carve space for Latinidad in the music industry and the arts. What we most set out to do was put on for the culture, while exploring the multiplicity of our heritage in the process. Our greatest efforts are tethered in celebrating blackness and indigenousness, and what it means to be an “immigrant” artist at work. In a climate where music and its traditional sounds and rhythms are more and more stretched and folded, becoming an origami of its own, we want to exalt the very ones doing the necessary forging.
We are excited to promote soundscapes of the Afro-Caribbean community and beyond, proudly partnering up with Mayimba Music, a family-run publishing company, record label and management group dedicated to the advocacy and advancement of independent Latin talent among other genres. Radio personality and pillar of the music industry, Chuey Martinez, will graciously host our event at MalVerde, located in the 2nd Street District of Austin, Texas, Friday (Mar. 17).
Our performers lineup – serving as both VIBE Viva’s and Mayimba’s first SXSW presentation – is a vibrant hodgepodge of global superstars and up-and-comers, whose music spans and/or is inherently rooted in genres of hip-hop and R&B, reggaeton, tropical, salsa, banda, alternative and much more. ‘Til Texas, get better acquainted with the artists below. See you there!
* * *