Benefit Concert 2023 and Music Program

Escuela Ritmos y Raíces-Rhythm and Roots Music School Initiave

Latinas & Lideres has started to make a dream to birth a music program for our 40 girls in the Dominican Republic a reality. Help us expand and sustain our music and dance program! Our Escuela Ritmos y Raíces (Rhythm and Roots School) would become available and accessible to all of our girls. 

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Music and dancing have been a central component of the Latinas & Lideres programming. The girls’ love for music and dance shines through and through since the day we first met them. This love of music shows up in sing-alongs during bus rides from day one, nights in our sleepaway camp, and impromptu dancing between softball innings, and outings. We love that our girls love traditional roots music, Palos and salves.

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Why a Music Program for Our Girls?

Music will help our girls become more well-rounded and better students. Research shows that music programs help to improve memory, math, and problem-solving skills. The music program will also create opportunities for our girls to collaborate as they will be playing instruments, singing, and dancing as a group. Currently, the girls do not have access to music instruction in their schools or communities, but they love music so much. We have launched our music program with about 12 of our girls and we want to make the program available to all of the girls.

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​Many of our girls are from Villa Mella, the epicenter of African culture and tradition in the Dominican Republic. Villa Mella is also the birthplace of two major forms of traditional roots music in the Dominican Republic: palos and salve music. The Latinas & Lideres Rhythm and Roots School has started to provide our girls from the community of Villa Mella an opportunity to be immersed in their traditional music in addition to giving them a chance to play instruments like the drums and the guira, which are typically played by men. Music continues to be a male-dominated arena across Latin America and the Caribbean. But Latinas & Lideres decided to shift that narrative by creating a girls’ music program in the country. The program will also help preserve the traditional music of this part of the country. Because of their heavy West African influences, Palos and salves have been under consistent assault throughout different nationalist projects to ‘whiten’ the country’s consciousness. At one point in Dominican history, playing and dancing to palo music was outlawed. So not only is the music program healing and a source of joy for our girls, the program will also help to preserve “at-risk” musical traditions in the Dominican Republic.