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Powerful, live performance experiences your students will never forget!

Mike Boston is a rapper-entrepreneur-activist who has gained local and national attention as the founder of Mobile Stü, a mobile studio he takes into tough urban areas to give inner-city kids a voice—and to collaborate musically with police officers.

The bayou meets the bay when Magnolia takes the stage.

An open band of brass, reeds and drums, there are over 30 musicians and dancers in the ERB family. Their musical influences range from New Orleans jazz to Middle Eastern klezmer, Spanish revolutionary songs to funk, rhythm & blues.

This young jazz master from Trinidad defies easy categorization – a student of pan-Caribbean music, as fluent in the horn riffs of New Orleans brass as he is the Spanish rhythms of the islands. Etienne Charles will discuss the many influences in his life and education that have helped shape his career.
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What do you get when you combine sultry Cuban music with propulsive funk beats? PALO!, a Miami-based band that is reinventing the classic Cuban sound for the next generation.

Providence’s favorite puppets from another planet will touch down at PVDFest for an extraterrestrial public spectacle and space-funk dance party!

Rhode Island’s favorite hometown rapper joins forces with our own master of rhythm for a very special PVDFest performance. Chachi Carvalho and Sidy Maiga are the International Rebels. Combining Chachi’s poignant lyricism and positive hip-hop vibes with Sidy’s polyrhythms and propulsive energy, this special collaboration is sure to get the party started.

Montreal’s Betty Bonafassi is a true musical traveler, using her deep, booming voice to explore everything from jazz to electronic to American roots music. Her latest album, “Lomax”, revisits the turn-of-the-century slave songs recorded by famed ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Mixing modern electronics with early Delta roots and her signature contralto vocals, “Lomax” is Betty’s tour de force.

Bettye LaVette is a true legend of blues and soul with a career spanning more than 50 years – but it’s only within the last decade that she has truly earned recognition as one of America’s finest vocal talents. Huffington Post dubbed her “the High Priestess of R&B.”