A Community Concert Series
Desde Mi Barrio (From my Neighborhood) is a concert series presented by Puerto Rican Arts Alliance’s the Latin Music Project. This series features local and national musicians while celebrating the rich music of Puerto Rico and other Latinx cultures.
2025 Performance Line-Ups
Join PRAA for an Afro-Caribbean Percussion Experience with
Frido Vargas directly from Puerto Rico
7:00 PM - April 19th
2958 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60618
FRIDO VARGAS is an emerging artist and bassist in the Caribbean Folk indie music scene, known for his captivating sound and performances. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Puerto Rico, the artist’s roots are deeply embedded in the rich musical traditions of merengue, bomba, cha cha chá, reggae, and other afro genres. Frido draws inspiration from a diverse array of influences, including the rhythmic rumba mastery of Daymé Arocena, the soulful expressions of Alex Ferreira, Vicente García and the heartfelt lyrics of Juan Luis Guerra. His melodies reflect the warmth, vibrant essence of other recording artists like Ben Howard, Rodrigo Amarante, Gotye and Kings Of Convenience.
Desde Mi Barrio
Juan & Gladys Mendez Music Hall
Past Performances
Richard Peña
Puerto Rican guitarist Richard Peña intricately blends the traditional sounds of Afro-Caribbean music with the modern raw energy of jazz improvisation through his guitars' warm and cutting sound.
As an artist, Peña has won awards such as Youth Jazz Ambassador (2015, Amigos del Jazz Humacao Association) and "Best Guitarist" (2015, Escuela Libre de Música San Juan). He has recorded 4 award-winning albums (Fox Music USA Latin Music Awards 2015, 18th Independent Music Awards, Best 20 Albums of 2019 by the National Foundation for Popular Culture, 2020 Grant by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and National Endowment for the Arts). Richard has performed with players ranging from Latin Grammy Winners such as Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Dafnis Prieto, Henry Cole, and Charlie Sepulveda, to singers Carlos Vives, and Víctor Manuelle across the globe.
As an educator, Richard creates jazz guitar educational content across social platforms to an audience of over 260k followers and a community of over 2,000 members on his Patreon page, where he has shared over 500 video lessons, ebooks, masterclasses, livestreams, and more
Jonathan Suazo
RICANO is an original Afro-Caribbean experience that presents themes of exploration, integration, community, education and self-acceptance, available to audiences through live shows, immersive classes and recorded assets. The word RICANO was conceived by J. Suazo and is a play/fusion of the words "Puertorriqueño” and “Dominicano,'' symbolizing self-discovery and connections to Puertorican and Dominican roots.
The long-term vision is a multi-sensory performance that immerses audiences in a new way to cultural content by combining musical, movement, historic, theoretic, and educational elements. RICANO will showcase the rhythms of Latin Jazz to bring that past, present, and future of this cultural heritage to a wide array of audiences.
