UF Center for Latin American Studies
Dr. Welson Tremura plays charango in 2020 holiday concert featuring Latin American composition
February 22, 2021
UF's annual "Sounds of the Season" holiday concert still took place in December 2020, although it had a new format as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Masked musicians gathered, socially distanced, to record the concert in advance of its broadcast on WUFT-TV at the end of the month.
This year, the concert featured a suite from "Navidad Nuestra," originally composed in 1964 by Argentine Ariel Ramirez. Ramirez earned international acclaim in the early 1960s with his composition "Misa Criolla," which brought together Spanish text with Latin American folkloric music, including styles from Argentina, Brazil, and the Andean region. His following compositions, including "Navidad Nuestra," continued this incorporation of folkloric genres, and today he is widely considered a legend of Latin American musical composition.
Watch highlights of the "Navidad Nuestra" performance in the video below. Center professor Dr. Welson Tremura can be seen playing the charango, an Andean stringed instrument, in the opening shot.
If you'd like to watch the full holiday concert, you can view it here. (The uncut performance of "Navidad Nuestra" begins at 30:15 and lasts approximately 20 minutes.)
Read Ariel Ramirez's obituary in the Washington Post
