By Seth Daniel
The Tito Puente Latin Music series is preparing to kick off its 10th year of summer concerts this coming July 7 in the South End’s O’Day Park – with a total of three dates this summer at O’Day.
Latin Logic Band will kick off the series on Thursday, July 7, at 7 p.m. Latin Logic combines sounds of Costa Rica and Venezuela to produce their own brand of Latin jazz and Afro-Caribbean rhythms.
The concert series is sponsored by IBA Boston, Berklee College of Music and the City’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Vanessa Calderon-Rosado, CEO of IBA, said the concerts are a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the parks and experience the musical culture of Latin America.
“It’s a great event,” she said. “Residents of Villa Victoria come together with neighbors from all over the South End and from outside the city. You have families using the playground while the music is playing. Kids can play while the adults dance and learn to Salsa. In the background, you have teens playing basketball. It really is a collage of all these things happening at once. This is a pretty cool thing that happens every summer in the City.”
Calderon-Rosado said the “true collaboration” between Berklee and the City is celebrating its 10th year of concerts, which is a milestone.
“We are celebrating our 10th year,” she said. “We were trying to keep activities in the parks all the neighbors and neighborhood for the entire South End. We came up with the idea of having an outdoor concert series with Berklee and the City…The concerts gained popularity moving forward and then in the second year we had great attendance and great energy. We decided to have more of them in other parts of the City.”
The City decided to include the concerts as part of the ParkArts programming, going to East Boston, Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain where Latin Music was also ingrained as part of the culture. Now, IBA is the primary community sponsor in the South End, and then it partners with the Hyde Square Task Force (JP), Sociedad Latina (Mission Hill) and Zumix (East Boston) in other communities.
“We started off doing three events in the South End and three in other parts of the city,” she said. “Ten years later, they are very popular concerts and have a great following.”
The other South End dates include:
- Thursday, July 14 – Mango Blue in O’Day Park, 7 p.m.
•Thursday, Aug. 4 – Orquesta Homenaje in O’Day Park, 7 p.m.