ODILA presents authentic Latin American music, in concert at the CAF’s Sede

With a repertoire that takes us back to the roots of our identity, the Orchestra of Latin American Instruments (ODILA) will give a concert on Thursday April 25 at 7p.m. in the Antonio José de Sucre Auditorium of the Andean Development Corporation. As usual admission to this cultural venue is free.

ODILA is a musical group formed in 1982 in the Inter-American Institute of Ethno- Musicology and Folklore (INIDEF) in Venezuela. The group’s fundamental purpose is to increase awareness of the Latin American instruments and music collected by researchers since 1940. Their music is characterized by the use of traditional Latin American instruments, applying a concept that places musical expressions in an historical, socio- cultural, anthropological and musicological context.

During their performance, the group reproduces the original sounds of a very varied collection of native instruments, with the characteristic rhythms of their countries of origin, and little-known cultural expressions of the American continent.

The orchestra’s collection of instruments includes flutes, ocarinas, trumpets, oboes, clarinets and chirimias (primitive oboe), as well as tiples (12-stringed treble guitar), charangos (five-stringed guitar), cuatros (four-string guitar), mandolins, turtle shells, asses’ jawbones, marimbas and rattles, as well as a battery of different types of Afro-American drums.

The group’s repertoire expresses the musical confluence of the Aboriginal, African and Western worlds, taking syncretism as the essence of this cultural union, and showing all the instrumental potential of musical genres with a marked Latin American identity.

Formed by the musicians Wilmer Belisario, Jesús Bosque, Lizardo Domínguez, Israel Girón, Rafael González, Juan José Hernández, Ricardo Hernández, Alexander Paredes and Luis Velásquez, ODILA has given concerts in major international and national venues.