La Maleta

21. October 2025 • Alexander Cachacha, Willy Kotoun, Jorge Luis Carcasses Ramirez, Lazaro Monteagudo, Reinier Powell, Mervin Fernandez Piedra, Leandro Irarragorri, Ledian Mola, Silvia Renuka Staubli, Eden Sekulović, Isabel Mederos, Sylvie Fröhlicher

‘A suitcase travels from Havana to Zurich – the legacy of a Cuban musicologist to her daughter. It carries personal, cultural, and musical fragments: traces of beauty and pain, resonances of a story that continues to echo.

Eleven artists bring the collected scores to life. The performance makes audible what often remains unseen – the power dynamics of storytelling, the politics of memory. Classical Yoruba music intertwines with European influences, frictions emerging when worlds collide. At its core lies Édouard Glissant’s concept of creolization: not a simple blending, but the unpredictable and unprecedented coming-into-relation of cultures.

In this way, music becomes a dialogue about roots, identity, migration, and memory. The suitcase, as a portable archive, raises questions: What remains when people travel? What is lost? What is newly created? In the end, it remains open – archive, legacy, and bearer of the future at once. And it invites us to let the music speak, as José White once wrote: “Music must say what words cannot translate – it speaks from an inner place no map can find.”

Who: Alexander Cachacha – percussion, Willy Kotoun – percussion, Jorge Luis Carcasses Ramirez – percussion, Lazaro Monteagudo – dance, Reinier Powell – dance, Mervin Fernandez Piedra – piano, Leandro Irarragorri – piano, Ledian Mola – violin and composition, Silvia Renuka Staubli – vocals, Eden Sekulović – cello, Isabel Mederos – violin, Sylvie Fröhlicher – curatorial text
Where: Raum236, Förrlibuckstrasse 236, 8005 Zurich
When: Tuesday, 21 October 2025, 8 p.m.
Participation: Donation