Jessica was born and raised in Miami, Florida, to Cuban parents Miriam and Jose Pacheco. Growing up, Jessica partook in numerous extracurricular activities, such as ballet, piano, art, music, drama, and classical Spanish dance/flamenco. Dancing highlights include performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England during the Monkees’ 2011 World Tour, performing with the Florida Grand Opera in Carmen, Turandot, and La Traviata, as well as the Los Angeles Opera in Carmen and El Gato Montés. Jessica’s dance company, Flamenco Tropical, combines classical Spanish, traditional flamenco, and modern rumba into one high energy show. Some of her theater credits include playing Celeste Finley in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, Adela in Federico García Lorcas’ La casa de Bernarda Alba, and María in Daimary Sánchez Morenos’ Are You Bringing Something From Mexico? Jessica has been cast in several Telemundo telenovelas. Since moving to L.A., she has appeared on the TV shows General Hospital, To Tell The Truth, and Superstore, to name a few. She is also very proud to have been part of Pixar’s animated feature, Coco. Currently, she has just finished producing, directing, and starring in a comedic web series she wrote called Cuban Tales.
Interviewed by Raquel Paraíso, 10/15/2020.

Born in San Francisco, CA, John Santos was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. The fertile musical environment of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his career in a unique way. His studies of Afro-Latin music have included several trips to New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, and Colombia. He is known for his innovative use of traditional forms and instruments in combination with contemporary music and has earned much respect and recognition as a prolific performer, composer, teacher, writer, radio programmer, and record/event producer whose career has spanned four decades. John has performed and/or recorded with acknowledged multi-generational masters such as Cachao, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Bebo Valdés, Eddie Palmieri, and Jerry Gonzalez, to name a few. John is widely respected as one of the top writers, teachers, and historians in the field and was a member of the Latin Jazz Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently part of the faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory (Berkeley, CA), San Francisco State University, Jazz Camp West (since 1986), and the College of San Mateo (CA). His fourteenth recording, Art of the Descarga, was just released (June 2020) on the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label.
Interviewed by Raquel Paraíso, 09/25/2020.

Karen A. Smith is a vocalist, sound healer, dancer, and eternal student of music and dance from around the world. She adores and sings music from a wide variety of genres in a wide variety of settings, including, but not limited to, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Yoruba chants and songs, Sanskrit mantras, Hawaiian oli and mele, Haitian Creole songs, R&B, and inspirational music. She studies and performs with numerous cultural organizations in the Bay Area including Arenas Dance Company, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Weiku, Brasarte, Cuba Caribe, Alafia Dance Ensemble, Las Que Son Son, and many others. She conducts sacred sound and movement workshops in local spiritual communities. When she is not singing or dancing, she is teaching, making jewelry, or baking delicious pies. A New York native of Jamaican, American-Indian, and African ancestry, Karen feels honored and grateful for the opportunity to share her vocal gifts as a part of the Loco Bloco Ensemble.
Interviewed by Raquel Paraíso, 10/26/2020.

Composer Valerie Troutt sings soulful, conscious originals inspired by her relationships with family, community, and hope for a brighter tomorrow. Bay Area-born and bred, jazz and gospel trained, and internationally respected, Valerie Troutt is a musical collagist, borrowing from ancestral centuries of sound, channeling spirits, and delivering the stories of our love, loss, and lives. There’s a light in this unapologetically unconventional artist/teacher/activist for whom art and activism are intertwined. Within this spiritual and social justice-driven performer is a lifelong hunger for craft, connection, and cultural narratives and an indefatigable thirst to serve as an agape griot to a waiting and hurting people. The Sound of Peace, her long-awaited, full-length debut comes after a critically acclaimed EP and several wizening years culminating in Valerie Troutt’s acceptance of her own original artistic difference in a world of commercial carbon copies.
Interviewed by Raquel Paraíso, 08/31/2020.