Diaspora Duos is back! Join BIYA BIYA at Color Club for a lively music series where artists from different cultures are commissioned to collaborate together. Steeped in diverse traditions, each specially curated Duo will present a world premiere set that showcases the two performers’ cultural roots.
November Featured… Read moreShow less
Diaspora Duos is back! Join BIYA BIYA at Color Club for a lively music series where artists from different cultures are commissioned to collaborate together. Steeped in diverse traditions, each specially curated Duo will present a world premiere set that showcases the two performers’ cultural roots.
November Featured Duos
Hugo Flores García makes music with guitars, computers, and found sounds, blending Latinx textures and rhythms with ambient and experimental forms across improvised and composed work. Hugo plays guitar in Chicago psychotropical band Cabeza de Chivo.
Dr. Aliah Ajamoughli, PhD is a Syrian American ethnomusicologist, cellist, educator. Her musical style intertwines seemingly two opposing worlds: the folk tunes of her fatherland Syria with medleys of her Alabama upbringing. This blending of bluegrass and maqam sounds the necessity of revolution, joy, and hope across global systems of oppression.
Cruz is a pioneering Chicago-based trumpet player, clarinetist, and educator redefining the landscape of regional Mexican music. A proud Southwest Side native, she pursued collegiate music studies and has performed widely across the city in jazz, orchestral, mariachi, and concert band ensembles.
KASIA is a Chicago-based Polish-American singer-songwriter blending various genres like jazz, bossa nova, Mexican boleros, Japanese city pop, and Polish folk. Having lived in Poland, Ecuador, and Indonesia, she sings in four languages, writing intimate songs about love, family, and feminine resilience. She's received a DCASE 2026 Grant to produce her first jazz EP Kocham Cię! (2027).
BIYA BIYA produces Diaspora Duos with the following tenets:
1. Performance intertwining two traditions and two local artists in a beautiful evening of sound and storytelling.
2. Playground for musicians to co-create something new; then inviting the audience to jam and experience it for themselves.
3. Platform to support Chicago’s local musicians keeping their respective cultures and the cultural richness of Chicago as a whole alive. By offering a guaranteed stipend for each artist’s time, access to free studio rehearsal space, as well as a professional multimedia package, feature on BIYA BIYA’s YouTube series and extensive concert promotion, artists are well positioned after participation in Diaspora Duos to gain a new audiences and market themselves stronger in the future.
4. Preservation of the evening’s creativity, and the musical tradition each artist brings to the series. By publishing performance videos on YouTube as part of a Diaspora Duos series, the new sounds created will be preserved, celebrated and revisited, while cultivating an audience beyond Chicago.
