Lara Bello at the second annual 'European Month of Culture'

The Spanish singer and composer from Granada will be playing flamenco, jazz and mediterranean melodies at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.

Lara Bello’s voice is a haunting and soothing reminder that the past is always present in the human spirit.

—Ed Morales, The New York Times.

Named Spanish World Music Artist of the Year 2010 (World Music Charts Europe) for her debut, Niña pez (2009). In 2012, her second recording, Primero amarillo después malva, earned raves in the United States and Latin America from People Magazine and NPR’s The World. 2013 saw her third recording, Garnatiyya, and praised on CNN for an album based on traditional Spanish songs compiled by poet Federico García Lorca, called Por el agua de Granada: Cancionero lorquiano.

Bello is a storyteller, a cultural voyager and a dancer-vocalist. On stage, she is an open and charismatic presence, with a meticulous intelligence. All her songs are original and represent world music, or fusion, of the best, most unforced sort, which, rather than poaching on other cultures, recuperates and acknowledges roots and sources already present and influential in one’s own. And so in the voice of this raven-haired native of Granada one hears the sandstorms of the Sahara and sees in her hands the intricate fingers of Indian temple dance. There is flamenco in her footwork, belly dance in her torso, and in her throat a call to prayer. Bello has a voice that carries despite its delicacy, out of which a melody can surge in a moment of high emotion, and resettle in quietude, like birdsong in the forest, or the tinkle of water over stones.

Listen to Nana de Chocolate y Leche, live at DROM, New York.