Sinfonia Latina
Sinfonia Latina: Classical Urban
Inclusive, Pertinent, Persistent Music
Sinfonia Latina is a rock concert named after the opus Sinfonia Latina that transformed into a festival. The first concert occurred on May 7, 1976, at 8 p.m. in Barranquilla, Colombia, at the Amira de la Rosa Municipal Theater.
The event attracted an audience of 3,000 inside the structure. An estimated 4,000 people remained outside, unable to enter the theater under construction. Billed as a musical Supershow in Barranquilla, Sinfonia Latina was composed, directed, and conducted by Dieppa. Stemming from the rock music revolution of the time, the supershow was part of the avant-garde counterculture movement.
What is Sinfonia Latina?
The short answer is a celebration of music, sound, culture, and art in one place for all people.
Sinfonia Latina is where boundaries between class structures, political parties, and art genres are blurred. People come together and recognize what connects us all: a love for life, an appreciation for diversity, and the talents inherent in every person.
The Background
No one would have thought this sentiment outright back in 1976, when Dieppa, 16, merged his classical piano training with street musicians playing rock, jazz, salsa, reggae, and other styles. Dieppa, himself, had no preconceived notions about what he was doing.
He was a kid from an affluent family who’d spent his early years hanging out with his grandfather, Carlos Dieppa, a successful industrialist whose shops assembled appliance parts for several large companies, including General Electric, Westinghouse, and the Ford Motor Company.
Mr. Carlos, an extremely disciplined planner and worker, took his grandson to work in the factories, where Dieppa was exposed to a completely different world.
A Fusion of Musical Influences
“I had no set ideas about what was appropriate music or not,” Dieppa says.
“I took a liking to the piano, and my grandfather recognized that I would benefit from a good instructor. So, I started learning the classics like Beethoven, Ravel, and Mozart. But then, I’d go to work with my grandfather, and his workers were listening to the Beatles, Motown, and jazz. Little did I know, I was synthesizing all these styles and starting to incorporate them into something new. Sinfonia Latina turned into the natural extension of that.”