Los Lorcas: Poetry in Concert
In the spirit of Federico Garcia Lorca—gifted musician, legendary poet/playwright and ebullient performer—poets Partridge Boswell and Peter Money, along with guitarist Nat Williams, fuse poetry and music in a passionate and surprising mash-up. Los Lorcas blur boundaries between spoken word and song, weaving poetry with Andalusian ballads, blues, rock, folk, reggae, hip hop, Americana and jazz in pursuit of the cante jondo (deep song) Lorca so ardently championed.
Exploring common roots and synergies of poetry and music, Los Lorcas celebrate the poetry of song lyrics and music of lyrical poetry. Inspired by artists diverse as Lorca, Yeats, Marley, Dylan, Dickinson, Matisyahu, Morrison, Cohen, Bowie, REM, Merwin, Millay and others, the group’s timely and soulful compositions weave themes of love, loss, homelessness, empathy, activism and gratitude—all through a filter of the American dream. Veteran Vermont musician and producer Kristina Stykos of Pepperbox Studio and Thunder Ridge Records has taken a shine to the new trio: “A lot of great musicians have come around here, but not with the poetry chops that this group has—in spades. A project sprouted from the literary side, Los Lorcas are making ground-breaking inroads where musicians usually fear to tread: sometimes speaking, sometimes singing, but always putting focus on the intelligent delivery of words. Their cross pollination blending poetry, personality, musicality, vitality of many colors and creative intensity is so satisfying!”
After years of honing their distinctive genre-bending blend of music and poetry on stages across the state, country and internationally, Los Lorcas are currently releasing their debut album LAST NIGHT IN AMERICA on Vermont’s Thunder Ridge Records label.
… and then listened to Los Lorcas…WOW!!! the second time through I had tears on EVERY SINGLE Song…wow and double wow…and the third time through….Innisfree became cherished for its sweetness—a whole sound….The rest is SO powerful and Quirky and intensely wonderful…
— Chuck Cole, Cape Cod Community Radio
Troubadouring widely in the US and abroad (Ireland, Canada and Slovenia), Los Lorcas have performed everywhere from farmhouse kitchens to pubs, coffeehouses, schools, theaters and 1,000+ book festival crowds [e.g. Poetry Center San Jose, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, New Orleans Poetry Festival, Burlington Book Festival, Tucson Book Festival, Bookstock Literary Festival (w/ Robert Pinsky’s PoemJazz), Chandler Music Hall, Fingal Poetry Festival (Ireland), Vermont College of Fine Arts, KGB Reading Series, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poetry Café and Caffe Lena], attesting to the broad appeal of their lyrical tapestries and innovative vision of how poetry and music are two sides of the same spinning coin and together can attain a mesmerizing symbiosis.
Los Lorcas in unity is a marvel that would silence any creative individual to awe, inspiring the quietest observer to reach for each word as if they were Federico Lorca himself, meditating on song and poetry mid-stage, arms outstretched.
— Bianca Viñas
Last Night in America is now available on
Recipient of the 2022 Fish Flash Fiction and Saguaro Poetry Prizes, Partridge Boswell is a troubadour and author of the Grolier Award-winning collection Some Far Country. His poems and stories have recently found homes in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Prairie Schooner, Solstice and The Moth. Co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival, he leads community-based workshops at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal and serves as an advisory trustee of the Grolier Poetry Foundation.
Peter Money’s books of poetry include hybrid works such as the prose-poem sequence with Saadi Youssef, To day – minutes only; the poetry/music collaboration Blue Square; Che: A Novella In Three Parts; and a book of translations, with Sinan Antoon, of the Arab Modernist Saadi Youssef. His most recent collection is American Drone: New and Select Poems. Money’s debut novel Oh When the Saints—a coming of age story set in Ireland—has garnered critical acclaim on both sides of the pond.
