Guataca is a platform created to spread the talent of emerging Venezuelan musicians, promote their projects, and support their initiatives in Venezuela and the world. Guataca contributes to record productions and, above all, generates a concert schedule with wide media promotion, seeking feedback from a discerning audience that makes each encounter a unique experience.
Photo courtesy of Guataca Productions.
In the photo, Latin Grammy Awarded and Grammy nominee cuatro player, mandolinist, and musical producer, Jorge Glem.
Strategic Advisory Work
Between 2015 and 2016, I performed as a strategic advisor for Guataca. During this time, I oversaw all aspects of the platform to ensure it ran optimally. My duties within the project included working with senior management to shape the brand and marketing strategy that would drive the results needed to make the platform sustainable, ensuring that all internal roles were performed at the highest level, and suggesting operational, communication, and strategic business tactics.
The 12 months of service included the production of strategic guidelines, action plans, keynotes, and reports for:
Brand Strategy
Marketing Strategy
Outreach and Communication Strategy
Sales Strategy and Tools
Six months of implementation supervision
The products of Guataca's advisory service are core information that can't be showcased. However, it can be said that the platform includes four main dimensions: Concerts, Festivals, Music Production, and International Talent Promotion.
Photos courtesy of Guataca Productions.
Guataca's History
In 2005, Guataca made his first contribution to an independent record label with the release of "La canción de Venezuela," where tenor Aquiles Machado, guitarist Aquiles Báez and company toured essential pieces of the national songbook. It was followed, in 2006, by the debut album of the ensemble that would be the emblem of the platform, C4 Trio, and so, when Guataca was formally constituted, works by artists Pacho Flores, César Orozco, Jorge Torres, Aquiles Báez, Betsayda Machado, Linda Briceño, Fabby Olano, Miguel Siso and Héctor Molina, among others started with us. So far, we have more than 20 albums released.
In 2010, Guataca's platform mutated and strengthened its commitment to promote the best emerging national talent by opening the Noches de Guataca cycle, a weekly showcase in theaters, maintaining a vertiginous and constant pace in Caracas.
In 2013, Guataca created an annual gala for national music to give it national attention. Thus was born the Caracas Festival in Contratiempo, a great celebration in the capital conceived in the image and likeness of a growing musical movement representing the regions that make up our geography.
In 2014 the international expansion began. Guataca Night's seeds germinated in cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Miami, Panama, and later, Houston and Orlando. In Venezuela, the nights of Guataca are activated in the cities of Valencia and Lecheria. It grows, in turn, the team of people passionate about Venezuelan music that makes such growth possible.
Guataca's productions stand out in the Latin Grammys ceremonies, celebrated annually in Las Vegas, United States. In 2013, C4 Trío obtained its first award nomination: the work recorded with maestro Gualberto Ibarreto competes in the category of Best Folk Album. The following year, Linda Briceño obtained two nominations, one in the Best New Artist line, for her album Tiempo. On that same date, C4 obtained its first Latin Grammy for "De Repente," an album made together with Rafael “Pollo” Brito that stands out due to the quality of its sound and stands with the golden gramophone for Best Sound Engineering. C4 and "Pollo" Brito perform live at the ceremony and earn a historic ovation. In 2018, the Identity album, by the cuatro-man Miguel Siso, made history by obtaining the award in the Best Instrumental Album category, in which no other Venezuelan project had been nominated, and in which proposals from distinguished musicians such as Yamandú Costa also competed, along with Hamilton of Holland, Hermeto Pascoal, and Airto Moreira.
With the production of more than 20 albums, the organization of about 140 concerts a year, and the celebration of four successful editions of the Caracas Festival in Contratiempo, Guataca constitutes an essential catalyst for the best Venezuelan music of the 21st century, generating cross-genres fusion of folk roots with jazz, blues, pop, Caribbean and Brazilian music and even electronics.
In 2018, Guataca history was gathered in a book titled 10 Years of pure Guataca, presented by the illustrious Guatemalan announcer and journalist César Miguel Rondón in cities such as Caracas, Panama, and Miami.
Currently, Guataca is operational in the cities of New York, Miami, Orlando, Boca Raton, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, Minnesota, Atlanta, Chicago, and soon in Seattle within the United States, in addition to Venezuela, Spain, Panama, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Argentina, and Colombia.
Follow and join Guataca Nights:
Website: https://www.guatacanights.com/ #Guataqueros Good news!
Follow and experience the sounds of Venezuelan music on Instagram @GuatacaOficial and @Youtube (#GuatacaNights #Guataquero #GuatacaFoundation)