Every nine years Susana Baca adds another Grammy to her trophy case. Since she last won in 2011, you could say the Peruvian singer-songwriter, teacher, activist and cultural minister was due, but even if you were to guess she’d win in 2020, the fact that it was an album she produced at home, comprising songs Baca wrote by simply singing melodies into her phone’s voice memos is pretty surprising.
There’s never a bad time to celebrate Susana Baca, who has devoted her career and life to the preservation and revival of Afro-Peruvian culture and music, so we’d thought we’d take this opportunity to bump our 2011 program The Music of Black Peru: Cultural Identity in the Black Pacific, which features interview with Baca and of course her music.
And since Baca dedicated her win to the young people and working class that “build this country called Peru every day,” be sure to check out the discography and other material from that episode! Congrats, Susana!
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