STATE COLLEGE — A new music venue is set to soon fill State College with sound.
Manny’s Live Performance Space, located at 101 Hiester St., will officially open its doors on Wednesday, Jan. 15, after a post on Instagram shared the venue would hold a soft opening on New Year’s Eve.
Put on by Gorinto Productions and Secret Planet, the opening night will feature Bogotá, Colombia based artist Yeison Landero.
“After close to 20 years of working in countless venues,” the post announcing the venue opening shared. “Booking, running sound, curating series, festivals [like Rhoneymeade Fest] and beyond, [Gorinto Productions] is excited to announce the opening of its own live performance venue.”
Gorinto Productions is owned and operated by Corey Elbin, a local artist, DJ and events organizer.
“This is a deeply meaningful new chapter in my ongoing dedication to supporting inclusive arts and live music experiences,” Elbin shared, noting that Gorinto intends to continue to work with local partners and performers in the area while simultaneously hosting events at the new music venue.
Yeison Landero is often referred to as ‘the heir to cumbia.” His grandfather, Andrés Landero, was a core figure in the invention of what is considered cumbia today.
Cumbia is a traditional music and dance style from Colombia that blends African, Indigenous and European influences and is characterized by its syncopated rhythms, percussion instruments like drums and maracas and use of flutes or accordions.
“Yeison is the grandson of Andrés Landero, the man who arguably invented what we know today as cumbia when he translated the Indigenous melodies of San Jacinto’s gaitas (flutes) to the accordion, hitched them to propulsive African-derived rhythms played on a trio of percussion instruments, added electric bass to fill out the bottom and wrote and sang lyrics that championed the lives of rural Native and Black campesinos,” an Instagram post announcing the performance shared. “This mix of musical and cultural elements spread like wildfire across Latin America starting in the 1960s and continuing until today. Andrés Landero is known throughout Latin America as “el rey de la cumbia” (the king of cumbia); his grandson began studying with him when Yeison was seven years old.
For more information, visit the Upcoming Events page at gorintoproductions.com.
