Fabiola Méndez

Arts at the Armory is delighted to welcome back cuatro player, singer, composer, and educator Fabiola Méndez as a headliner to our Spotlight Series. Her artistic vision and original music focus on the exploration of her culture, her ancestry, and her identities.

Native to Caguas, PR, Méndez began playing the cuatro, a 5-double string traditional guitar of Puerto Rico, when she was 6 years old. In 2018 she graduated from Berklee College of Music as the first student to play the Puerto Rican cuatro as principal instrument.

She has worked and collaborated with numerous organizations and artists including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and Totó La Momposina.

To open the concert, there will be a special viewing of Méndez’ first documentary, “Negrura” (released in 2022). The film is an audiovisual storytelling experience that showcases the stories of Afro-Latinx folks from Boston’s Latin Quarter Cultural District. Music, at the core of the project, creates spaces for reflective and healing conversations about colorism, anti-blackness, discrimination, and racism within the Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latinx communities.

Fabiola Méndez’ performance is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.