Musician and recent Reebok Human Rights recipient Anderson Sa, who has used music to help lead Brazilian youth away from drug cartels, will spend a week at Vanderbilt University beginning Feb. 22 in a joint effort by Great Performances at Vanderbilt and the Center for Latin American Studies.
Born in a notorious shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Grupo Cultural AfroReggae began as a community organization, and then launched a band as a way to get youth involved in playing music instead of being destroyed on the streets.
Sa and Grupo Cultural AfroReggae will perform as part of Vanderbilt’s Great Performances series on Feb. 25 in Langford Auditorium on the Vanderbilt campus. For tickets, see Ticketmaster at http://www.ticketmaster.com/search?tm_link=tm_homeA_header_search&q=grupo+afroreggae&search.x=0&search.y=0 or visit www.vanderbilt.edu/greatperformances. Single tickets range from $29-$37 with all area students admitted for $10 with valid ID.
The Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae residency will include community demonstrations at The W.O. Smith/Nashville Community Music School and the Global Education Center, as well as a workshop for area K-12 teachers as part of the outreach program of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt.
“Anderson Sa’s journey from angry young man to a veritable Gandhi with a samba beat is inspirational. Moving. Magnetic,” wrote a Fort Worth Star reviewer about Favela Rising, a documentary about AfroReggae that will be screened as part of Vanderbilt’s International Lens film series 7 p.m. Feb. 24, at Sarratt Cinema on campus. Sa will attend the screening, which is free and open to the public.
In addition, Sa will appear at Vanderbilt’s First Amendment Center at 5 p.m. Feb. 23, for conversation and a book signing, and participate in several events with the Vanderbilt community. The event at the First Amendment Center, 1207 18th Ave. S., is free and open to the public.
Great Performances at Vanderbilt is sponsored by the student-based Vanderbilt Programming Board and greater Nashville community. Its mission is to spark and sustain a passion for the arts within the Vanderbilt community and the Southeast as a lead provider of international artistic excellence through diverse arts disciplines, interaction with artists and a core educational environment.
Designated as a National Resource Center on Latin America in 2006, the Center for Latin American Studies fosters a lively research community on campus by sponsoring colloquia, conferences, films, and a speaker series featuring distinguished scholars and government and business leaders. For more information about CLAS, please visit the website at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/clas/.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu