Irakere (faux-Yoruba for 'forest') is a Cuban band founded by pianist Chucho Valdés (son of Bebo Valdés) in 1973. They won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording in 1980 with their album Irakere. Irakere was a seminal musical laboratory, where historic innovations in both Afro-Cuban jazz and Cuban popular dance music were created. The group used a wide array of percussion instruments like batá, abakuá and arará drums, chequerés, erikundis, maracas, claves, cencerros, bongó, tumbadoras (congas), and güiro.

With her sophomore album, 2020's magical and earthy Cha Cha Palace, singer/songwriter Angelica Garcia embraces her family's Mexican and Salvadoran roots, crafting an explosive collage out of her varied influences. A Los Angeles native, Garcia grew up listening to an eclectic combination of mariachi music, Latin pop, jazz, country, and indie rock.

Pan flutist Leo Rojas (full name: Juan Leonardo Santillia Rojas) was born in Ecuador in 1984 and is best known for winning the 2011 season of the German casting show Das Supertalent. Rojas moved to Spain in 2000 and then to Germany, living in Berlin with his Polish wife; he often performed as a street musician until a passer-by informed him about the casting show. He became a contestant in the show's fifth season, succeeding to the semi-finals with his rendition of "El Condór Pasa" (best known in a 1970 version by Simon & Garfunkel) and then winning the show with a cover of "Einsamer Hirte," a hit song written by James Last and performed by Gheorghe Zamfir in 1977.

Jaime ROSAS is a Chilean keyboards player, who followed the same path as his British idols Keith EMERSON and Rick WAKEMAN. That is to say, a good dose of heavily twirling Progressive rock, full of Seventies-like sounds may be expected. After being the leader of a power-trio, he is back with three fellow musicians. The new guitarist Jaime SEPULVEDA suits perfectly the symphonic music of this ensemble, adding some exciting Progressive heavy-metal digressions. This outfit released the excellent "Creciendo" in 2005 through the Musea and Mylodon labels. In order to prove that Jaime ROSAS CUARTETO is not just another mere studio avatar, the band went to Rio ArtRock Festival 2005 with the aim to show how brilliant its live performance can be.

A young band from Strasbourg, France, drawing on 30 years of alternative French rock/prog tradition. Obviously inspired by Gong and Frank Zappa - Studio Tan period - , they embrace elements as diverse as trip-hop and jazz-funk, as well as African, Latino and other cultural World musics. Quintessentially French, and also akin to the Canterbury and RIO "Rock In Opposition" fields, Camembert cheekily call their music "Cheese Rock". The band is articulated around very original instruments such as Harp, Xylophone and Vibraphone. The band's aim is to abolish frontiers between musical styles by including some world music arrangements. The best definition of their music heard in the press as the meeting between Henry Cow and Herbie Hancock for the writing of a blaxploitation movie soundtrack.