DIANA GAMEROS IN CONCERT
Our wonderful friend and singer songwriter from Ciudad Juárez returns to Palenke to present her new album!
Diana Gameros is a Mexican singer/songwriter who performs songs of love, longing, and hope. Originally from Ciudad Juárez, México, and now living in San Francisco, Gameros creates inspiring music that reflects the 21st century experiences of a young indie artist at the borderlands between cultures, languages, and genres. Whether teasing every ounce of expression from her acoustic guitar or bringing people to their feet with her dynamic full band, Gameros transfixes listeners with her soaring vocals, impressive musicianship and captivating stage presence."Deeply versatile in expression, Diana hypnotizes with solo voice, guitar and piano, brings audiences to their feet with her brass and bass trio, and soars like a bird with symphony orchestras. Singing mostly in Spanish, she creates authentic, inspiring music at the borderlands between cultures, languages, and genres."
Diana is a singer, guitarist, pianist, composer, songwriter, music instructor, lead teaching artist with the Lullaby Project and core band member of the Immigrant Orchestra. Based in San Francisco, California, she was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, México and immigrated to the United States as a teenager to study music in Michigan. Over the last decade in the Bay Area she has released two albums of original songs written in Spanish and English, and Mexican classic songs. In 2014 Diana received the Emerging Leader Award by the Chicana/Latina Foundation. In 2015 she was named one of YBCA’s 100: creative minds, makers, and pioneers that are asking the questions and making the provocations that will shape the future of American culture. NPR Music gave Diana an honorable mention to Arrullo in best Latin albums of the year in 2017. Diana was named one of SF Magazine’s 100 Artists: Artists Putting The East Bay On The Map, in 2018.
Diana is currently a lead and teaching artist in San Francisco, for the Lullaby Project, a project of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute which pairs new and expecting parents and caregivers with professional artists to write and sing personal lullabies for their babies, supporting parental health, aiding childhood development, and strengthening the bond between parent and child.
Diana belongs to the Movement Immigrant Orchestra - a vibrant ensemble featuring musicians from 10 different countries ready to take audiences on a one-of-a-kind musical journey across cultures and continents. This ensemble is part of the broader Movement project, a multi-platform storytelling initiative that centers the voices, stories and songs of immigrant, migrant and refugee musicians, claiming public space for these artists to sing and speak their stories with complexity and nuance. Since 2020, Movement’s radio stories have been featured in nationally syndicated public radio broadcast on PRX’s The World, regularly airing to 2.5 million listeners.
Diana has been highlighted often by NPR's Tiny Desk Concert contest series, and a documentary film about her was released by KQED in 2020. Her music often tells stories of family, migration, identity, and home, and has led her to perform with prominent performers such as Joan Baez, Natalia Lafourcade, McArthur Genius Award winner Taylor Mac and the San Francisco Symphony, among many other artist from all over the world. Diana has composed original scores for documentaries, including Las Muralistas, commissioned by SFMOMA. Diana 's voice and music have appeared on numerous films, documentaries and, most recently, on the television series Mayans MC soundtrack and Netflix's Madre Sólo Hay Dos series. Her songs and story have been featured on Billboard, Mother Jones, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and PRI's The World, to name a few. She has performed at venues such as the SFJAZZ Center, Davies Symphony Hall, The Guggenheim Museum in NY, Boettcher Concert Hall, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Consulate of Mexico, and Kennedy Center for the Arts and Lincoln Center's Atrium. In May 2018, Diana joined the acclaimed Mexican superstar and Latin Grammy winner, Natalia Lafourcade, on her US West Coast tour.
Diana received the 2023 Music Award Grant from the Gerbode Foundation to record a new album at Women’s Audio Mission studio in San Francisco to be released in November 2025.
PRESS REVIEWS
“Diana Gameros’ steady fingerpicking and elegantly simple melody create a calm within the storm, a safe place for big questions and long-ailing wounds that transcend any news cycle. Her voice has a remarkable expressive range. She’s at once strong and breathy — in an instant, wounded and boldly searching.“ — NPR
“If difficult times call for extraordinary voices, Berkeley singer-songwriter and guitarist Gameros is the woman for the hour. The Mexican-born trovista draws on her long experience without papers to explore the plight of border crossers of all stripes, bringing luminous humanity to a topic defined by searing heat rather than light. Her latest release, Arrullo (2017), is a beautifully textured acoustic session of Mexican classic songs and an artistic triumph for these ethnophobic times.” — San Francisco Magazine
“A dazzling female on the rise”. — Mother Jones Magazine
"Diana Gameros has the rare quality as a vocalist of bringing forth a sound which we hear but cannot express. Like Lila Downs, Lhasa, Mercedes Sosa, she digs deep." — Joanna Manqueros KPFA