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Rita Indiana at the Roskilde Festival 2021
With the tagline “Modernised merengue music makes all the cool kids dance,” the Roskilde Festival page announces the Dominican singer and writer as part of its 2021 line-up. The festival (which is 100% non-profit, with all profits donated to charity) takes place in Roskilde, Denmark from June 26 through July 3, 2021.
Who would have guessed that what Dominican merengue needed to become popular with cool kids and tigueres alike was a push on the genre-blender button from the skilled hands of Rita Indiana?
This merengue heroine is now on the verge of international pop stardom. Indiana has taken merengue beats that nod to gritty mambo and salsa, and mixed them with disco, new wave and Afro-derived music forms like Dominican
Miriam García interviews Dominican singer-songwriter Rita Indiana for
The Creative Independent. The artist speaks about “multi-tasking, being grounded in your community, and creative work as a healing process.” Here are excerpts:
Born and raised in the Dominican Republic and now living in Puerto Rico, Rita Indiana is a driving force in contemporary Caribbean literature and music. She is the author of three collections of stories and five novels. Three of her novels have been translated into English. Papi made World Literature Today’s 2016 list of 75 Notable Translations. Tentacle, published by And Other Stories, won the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers, the first book written in Spanish to do so.