More than a party, the 44th Encuentro del Canto Popular puts a musical exclamation point at the end of the year.
It provides “a small moment of respite, a moment for folks to breathe and celebrate,” said Imelda Carrasco, the recently appointed executive director of Acción Latina. “It’s an end-of-the-year recap, but also sets a tone for how we’re going into 2026.”
The annual Latin-music showcase plays Brava Theater Saturday Dec. 6, and if 2026 runs along the contours of the Encuentro’s triple bill, it’ll be a year suffused in intoxicating Afro-Latin grooves.
The show opens with a short set by San Francisco-based Andrea Cruz, aka Diabbla, a Mexican-American vocalist who blends bilingual rap with R&B, jazz, and boom bap.
Also up is Warango. an Oakland-based ensemble steeped in Afro-Peruvian idioms. It’s anchored by cajón master Pierr Padilla, who hails from a leading Afro-Peruvian musical family, along with percussionist Pedro Rosales and guitarist Javier Trujillo.
“We’ve worked with Warango in the past at our encuentritos led by Paul Flores,” Carrasco said. “Diabbla too. She’s so out of the box of what people expecft to when it comes to Mexican-American women. She pulls this amazing, different crowd, different subcultures, expanding what latinidad is.”
This year’s headliner is Alex Cuba, a prolific Cuban singer-songwriter who has won Grammy Awards, Latin Grammys, and the Canadian equivalent, known as Juno Awards. He’s performing solo (“My guitar is my ensemble,” he said) and in many ways he’s reintroducing himself to Bay Area audiences after years away from the region.
Based in the remote British Columbia town of Smithers, he gave a sensational performance at Yoshi’s last February, where he connected with Bill Martinez, who was instrumental in launching the Encuentro series and has continued to play a guiding role as a talent scout.
Recent Encuentros have taken place at the Chapel, and Carasco said that moving to Brava was intended to provide more opportunities to connect, with dancing in the lobby courtesy of records spun by Peruvian American DJ Lizzie Alcote with the Chulita Vinyl Club.
Cuba has released 11 albums under his own name, but he’s often associated with collaborations with artists like Nelly Furtado, Silvana Estrada, and Lila Downs (whose new album he was mixing when he paused for an interview).
Since live music came back online after the pandemic shutdown, he’s focused on solo performances, a practice he had mostly avoided.
“Stuff started to shift,” he said. “I realized I’ve been burying this monster inside. I have a full connection now with my audience. Bill Martinez just me at Yoshi’s and it was off the charts. I’m armed with a million songs, and I sound like 10 people on stage. Canada can be seen as a hard audience, very restrained, and I got trained to break through that.”
For Carrasco, taking on the leadership role at Acción Latina meant breaking through her notions of her career direction. She wasn’t looking for a new job, but when El Tecolote’s Erika Carlos came calling, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief made a compelling pitch.
Carrasco was less than two years into a dream gig as publisher of the progressive news site 48 Hills, but Carlos thought she’d be the ideal person to run Acción Latina, “and she was really insistent,” Carrasco recalled.
With a new administration in Washington ramping up an anti-immigrant agenda, Carlos appealed to Carrasco’s sense of solidarity. “She said, ‘We’re going to see this major attack. We need strong leadership. Just apply,’” Carrasco said.
The child of immigrants from Mexico, Carrasco was in the midst of helping care for her ailing father as she stepped forward as a candidate for the top spot at Acción Latina, which publishes El Tecolote, California’s longest running Spanish/English bilingual newspaper.
His death shifted her priorities and convinced her to take the executive director position.
“I felt like I have to do everything I can help people like my parents, to figure out how to heal the community. When I told Marke and Tim I was balling, and they were like, ‘Go. You have our blessing,’” she said, referring to 48 Hills founders Tim Redmond and Marke Bieschke.
The new job meant making the leap from not only covering the news to making the news, as Carrasco runs a variety of cultural initiatives beyond El Tecolote and the Encuentro del Canto Popular. She also leads Acción Latina’s Juan R. Fuentes Gallery and the quarterly Paseo Artístico art walk on 24th Street.
“Our mission is to build a healthy community through arts and media, providing sanctuary spaces,” Carasco said. “We want to be bolder in celebrating our people. Our gallery, our art walk, our legacy paper; we’re doing it for love of the community. And the Encuentro is our love letter to the community.”