Rounding out Hispanic Heritage Month, Ecos Latinos, Jean Lafitte National Jazz Historical Park & Preserve, and The New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park presents the Latino Heritage Festival to take place Saturday Oct.22, 2016 and Saturday Oct. 29, at 2.30 pm at the Louisiana State Museum at the Old. U.S. Mint, 400 Esplanade Ave.

New Orleans, a city of many musical and culinary flavors, has always savored its various historical Latin and Hispanic influences. Latin rhythms have intertwined with New Orleans’ music for centuries and this relationship is one of the central themes of the Hispanic Heritage Festival, according to organizers, and is mirrored in a musical line-up that includes Javier Juarez and the Viva Malambo-Mexican Dance Troupe, Alexis Guevara, Cuban guitarist, composer, and singer Edwin Gonzalez,  Patrice Fisher and the Arpa Latin Jazz Group, and the New Orleans Celtic Harp Ensemble on October 22, and Honduran musician Paky Saavedra, Guatemalan guitarist Julio Herrara, Garifuna dancer Gissela Ballesteros will share the stage with Baton Rouge’s Mariachi Jalisco, and Folkloric Mexican dance troupe Mexico y Sus Raices on October 29, 2016.

The Ecos Latinos Series is an offshoot of Musicians for Music and was founded by husband and wife team Carlos Vallardares and Patrice Fisher in 1977.

Since 1993, Ecos Latino has presented the work of Latino and Hispanic artists, musicians, and dancers living or working in Louisiana, and facilitated and encouraged cultural exchanges between the Latin musicians of New Orleans and those of other countries.

“Here in New Orleans we have many cultures,” said Carlos Vallardares. “In order to understand those cultures, it is crucial that those cultures get together. Showing the diversity of a city is to show the strength and the beauty of that city.”

Patrice Fisher is the Director of the New Orleans Celtic Harp Ensemble. A Latin Jazz as well as Celtic harpist, Fisher has performed and has recorded 14 albums of original harp music, and, during October 2016, Fisher and Vallardares “flipped the coin,” said Fisher, by bringing New Orleans music to Latin America, performing in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil as part of the Lo Mejor De Neuva Orleans festival.

“As part of the Ecos Latinos Series, we usually bring in visiting artists to New Orleans at least once a year,” said Fisher. “But part of what we also do is to promote New Orleans music in Latin countries. As part of the New Orleans festival, we brought four New Orleans musicians to Guayaquil to teach New Orleans music to jazz musicians there. And while those guys were very stiff when they first started second lining, they soon got it.”

The Hispanic Heritage Festival will take place on Saturday Oct.22, 2016 and Saturday Oct. 29,2016  at 2.30 p.m. in the Louisiana State Museum at the Old. U.S. Mint, 400 Esplanade Ave, New Orleans, LA, 70116.

More information about Ecos Latinos and Musicians for Music is available at http://www.ecoslatinos.org/index.htm

More information about the New Orleans Celtic Harp Ensemble is available at https://www.facebook.com/NewOrleansCelticHarpEnsemble/