ÓperaMaya's! "Maya Festival 2023" waits no more
Mayan artists are on their way to Bloomington via ÓperaMaya's "Viva! Maya Culture Festival 2023." So, for those who can scramble to get ready, wonders await you this very week.
All festival events are free to the public Jan. 18-22 in several venues: the Monroe County Public library, College Mall, and Indiana University. (Streaming may also be available.) You'll meet and hear Mexican National Prize Winner in Poetry, Wildernain Villegas Carrillo, the Maya poet and librettist responsible for the first opera written in Maya sponsored by the OperaMaya foundation. Globally renowned Maya composer / rapper Pat Boy will be there and ready to romp. Much admired for his music in the Marvel Movie, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," Pat Boy shares space there with Rihanna, whose brand spankin' new single "Lift Me Up" shines too.
Pat Boy uses music to preserve the Mayan language. According to the Sam Noble Museum, “Maya” refers to the Maya people as a bigger group and also to the family of Mayan languages. The Maya speak Tsotsil, Mam, K’iche’ or any of the other languages in the Mayan language family. (Think of how English relates to Italian, German, Spanish.)
A local nonprofit, ÓperaMaya honors the Maya culture. For the past 13 years, OperaMaya has provided opera for the region of the Maya through its International Music Festival in the Yucatan Peninsula, of Mexico. As of 2018 it originated a sister festival in Bloomington, the Viva! Maya Culture Festival, which introduces exceptional Maya artists of any genre.
OperaMaya organizes the festival, which gets support from the Bloomington Arts Commission, Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Midwest, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington, Go Express Travel, Home2 Suites by Hilton, Indiana University, and the White Rabbit.
As the U.S. government readjusts immigration requirements, according to soprano Mary Grogan, her performers' waiting lists lengthen. Grogan, who is ÓperaMaya's general director and an Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington advisory board member, said the waiting period for an appointment to get a tourist visa in Mexico is two years.
For ÓperaMaya that means lots of frustration, plus all the other challenges. For one thing, it can be hard for the festival performers actually to get their hands on their visas.
"Artists like ours with international recognition who are special guests of the government for a cultural purpose, etc. have been able to move 'quickly' at times in the four to six month range." She said, however, artists have been denied visas, and they have told her they were coming to Bloomington, only to later realize they weren't able to. Others learned their visas were ready but had to wait three months to get them.
"The sheer backlog our immigration offices in Mexico are working through is astounding," Grogan said.
That's part of why it's taken awhile to get "Viva! Maya Culture Festival 2023" going.
ÓperaMaya could not wait to host this festival any longer. Since October, it's already had to be postponed four times. For fear of losing their grant, the company decided to go ahead with this array of poetry and music, realizing the lateness of this notice would likely have its effects.
At the time of this blogpost, the ÓperaMaya website was not complete with festival information, but this flier lists the events. Also, you can contact Grogan at www.sopranomarygrogan.com.
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