Chicago’s 13th Annual World Music Festival is in full-swing this week, transforming the city “into a global center for the best of today’s international music.” The city-wide, multi-venue, eight-day festival includes performances by acclaimed musicians from more than 40 countries, featuring traditional and contemporary music from diverse cultures. The Festival, which concludes Friday, features the renowned Creole Choir of Cuba tonight (Thursday, September 22, 2011) at 9:45pm in Preston Bradley Hall at the Chicago Cultural Center. The performance is free.

Creole Choir of Cuba: Vibrant dancing, spectacular harmonies and undiscovered music of the Caribbean performed by a vocal and percussion ensemble little known outside of Cuba, The Creole Choir of Cuba have preserved musical treasures from Haiti, Dominica and Cuba within their rich descendant Cuban communities. Referred to as “Desandann” domestically, the group is composed from the descendants of several waves of Haitian migrants who escaped slavery at the end of the 18th century, or more recently came as laborers to work Cuba’s sugar plantations. Their repertoire consists of a wide range of choral arrangements with percussion accompaniment including Choucoune (a Haitian merengue), Gran Toumobile (a Creole Mazurka) and Doudou Moin (a Martinique merengue).

For original post, see http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=resources&id=8362846

For more information and video of the Creole Choir, see worldmusicfestivalchicago.org