A new live music event will take place in Omaha this Spring.
The Ritmo Music Festival will be held May 9 at Heartland of America Park. The Latin music event will also feature food, spirits, art, photo opportunities, dancers, a VIP experience and be interactive, according to organizer Marcos Mora. Mora is the leader of Omaha’s popular Cinco De Mayo Festival, which is considered one of the top celebrations of the holiday in the country. Mora recently spoke about Latin music in Omaha, Cinco De Mayo and the upcoming festival.
Mora is an award-winning musician in Omaha and marketing specialist who introduced Nebraska’s first Spanish Yellow Pages and bilingual newspaper, El Perico. He said that Omaha is ready for a large Latin music festival.
“The Omaha community is really growing as a collective,” he said. “It’s becoming more diverse and Omaha is more on the map now. We’re in the middle of the Midwest, but to find this caliber festival that concentrates on Latin music, you can’t find that until you get to like Chicago, Denver or Dallas. There’s really nothing in the middle. We’ve been looking at the trends across the U.S., watching these cool festivals happen around the country. It’s like, oh my gosh, we wish we had something here like that. We’ve been analyzing this for the last few years and just thought it was time to really take a chance and say, here Omaha this is something that could be really unique.”
He pointed to Omaha’s Cinco De Mayo as an example of opportunities to expand Latin events in our area.
“When you look at our other festivals like Cinco De Mayo, I mean, Cinco De Mayo in Omaha now is ranked as one of the top three Cinco De Mayo’s in the country,” Mora said. “We’ve just surpassed Denver according to resources, which is pretty significant because Denver was considered one of the bigger ones. According to Visit Omaha, people come in from Des Moines, Sioux City and Kansas City. But we’re starting to get people to come in, and it’s a small number, but we’re still getting people that come in from Chicago. We get vendors coming from Denver, so we’re on the map.”
Choosing Heartland of America Park for the festival was out of necessity, location and appreciation of the space.
“We’ve always had everything in South Omaha and we really wanted to go downtown,” he said. “As you’ve noticed, it’s really just unclaimable, everybody kind of meets in the middle downtown.”
He pointed out that Latin music festivals in Chicago, New York and Denver all take place in parks, but Omaha has limitations.
“Right now, Omaha doesn’t allow it in the parks,” he explained. “They won’t allow you to have a paid concert in the park. There’s only a few places that you can actually charge in Omaha. Stinson Park, Heartland of America Park and I think there’s one other place. Otherwise you have to be on private property. It’s hard to have a free concert, when you’re looking at a high-end budget to pay for that. So there were a couple reasons why, one is because we can charge in the park. And two, because it’s a beautiful park, and it’s somewhere in the middle and we want to be inviting to everyone.”
Mora also emphasized the impact of the Latin scene and community on the area.
“I think the Latin scene is probably one of the most unrecognized scenes in Omaha,” Mora said. “I’m a musician, been a musician for a long time, but I think it’s kind of like this underground movement that nobody knows about. I contend that Latin music is probably the most highly generated genre of any genre of music here in Omaha. The reason why I know is because I did a grant, and I had to write up the numbers. Twenty groups that are busy gigging three to eight times a week, generate $7.5 million, and that’s just 20. We probably have about 40, at least 40 groups. I mean, it’s bigger than all of the other genres in Omaha, so it’s like a sleeping giant that really generates money into the community. And you’ve got to remember that the population of Nebraska is projected to be 25% Latino. So you’re going to see this genre of music continue to grow.”
The Ritmo Music Festival will feature a diverse group of musicians. Mora said in Omaha, one type of Latin music has dominated the scene.
“Most of its always Mexican Regional, because that’s our majority, but we’re starting to become more diverse. We’re getting more Cubans in and Puerto Ricans and stuff like that. So when you look at the lineup, we really wanted to diversify, so it wasn’t just Mexican Regional, but our home base is still that. So our headliner is Banda Los Recoditos which has a huge, orchestrated sound. They’re very popular. It’s like almost an 18-piece group with these horns and percussion. And it’s just a fun, energetic sound. You can’t help but move to it. The best thing to do is kind of think of those polka bands and some of those, even marching bands, a lot of those same instruments, but it has just a lot of energy.”
Mora added the next group in the lineup will help ensure that all age groups are represented.
“The other one is 3BallMTY, which is kind of a mixture of a DJ sound with just some really popular music that they add in there, and they put on a really good show. It’s really fun. And they really get the crowd interactive. I think they crossed over, in the kind of mainstream their genre that’s just really got even a pop type of feel. Then the other one is something a little bit different, Chimbala. He’s actually from the Dominican Republic. It’s very similar to reggaeton, which young people like. So we really wanted to get something for the twenty-something year olds, they love that style of music.
“We also pulled another artist, Don Chezina, who is old school reggaeton. It has that raw sound to it, you know, back in the day. So he’s been around for a while. And then we’ve also got Maday who is out of Kansas City. It’s our only female, and we wanted to get some female representation. And then we have a lot of our local artists. We have Rosendo Robles that just played for the Crawford fight… Adan Rodriguez, he has an original style, which is kind of a Latin pop type style. Then our DJ’s DJ Jpeg and DJ Revo. It’s going to be a really good mix. We have a lot of concerts in Omaha, but when you come to our shows and some of the things that we do, just take it up and notch just think about that. If you kind of go to some of these other festivals, they are cool. It sounds good, but this is going to be like a party.”