Irka Mateo’s artistic career has been one of breaking boundaries and embracing people’s deepest humanity especially through their music.
Her artistic sensibility incubated in Spain, France, Brazil, Canada, the United States and her native Dominican Republic. In the late 1970s and early 1980s she lived in Europe (Spain and France) where she immersed herself in the emerging world music scene. In the late 1980s she moved to Canada, where she worked with the best artists in that country performing to enthusiastic audiences regularly at the Montreal Jazz Festival and numerous other events and venues. It was also in Montreal that she recorded the Spanish-language version of Sucre Amer, a song in defense of Haitian sugar cane workers–the recording that lead to her opening for the Fugees when they played in Haiti in 1996.
The desire to reconnect with the culture of her native Kiskeya (Hispaniola) led Irka to return to the Dominican Republic in 1998. Over the course of the next 10 years she immersed herself in the island’s folk music; which is founded on popular religious celebrations and the Taino culture that remains there. This exploration infused her music with a unique and magical dimension; with compositions that speak of love, folklore, and influenced by native-Afro Caribbean rhythms. This work also lead her to co-found Guabancex, Wind and Water Society dedicated to the popularization and preservation of native culture. A key moment in any Irka performance is when she dons a native headdress during the singing of Anacaona – the song is a passion play of the Taino queen hanged by the Spanish Conquistadors.
Along with her field work, Irka performed in concerts and festivals in the Caribbean and Latin America; including a performance in front of 100,000 people in Mexico City.
It is live where Irka channels her particular charisma. Whether in front of soccer stadium in St. Kitts filled with an initially luke-warm audience, or the intimacy of a few score people in New York’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe (where she received a Taino Award), Irka has a way of embracing the crowd. Within moments of her taking the stage people are engaged in call and response chorus to music of passion and uplift.
In 2008, Grammy Award winning producer, Daniel Blumenfield, of GoodandEvil, Inc. (Sex Mob's Sexotica; The Klezmatics' Wonder Wheel) discovered Irka’s music and brought her to New York. She has since released the album Anacaona (in 2009) which has placed in the top 10 international charts in throughout Canada. It is also being played by an increasing number of stations in Europe (e.g, Germany, Slovenia, Poland). She is playing widely in the New York area (Barbes, L’Orange Bleu, nublu, Shrine) and will be performing at the celebrated showcase, Joe’s Pub in August.
Key Performances
Canada – 1991-1996
Montreal Jazz Festival
Ottawa International Jazz Festival
Festival Cultures Canada, Ottawa
Hull Jazz & Blues Festival
Multi-Montreal World Music Festival
Dominican Republic – 1995
Day of Europe, European Union, Casa de Bastidas
Opened for Sergio Mendes & Brazil 88
Haiti– 1996
Opened for The Fugees, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Brazil –1994
Teatro San Pedro
Centro das Artes Mario de Andrade
Teatro 7 de April, Brazil
Mexico – 2005-2006
Festival de la Primavera
Teatro Benito Juárez, Mexico City
Festival of the Caribbean, Veracruz
Cuba/St. Kitts – 2005-2006
Festival of Fire, Santiago de Cuba
Carifesta VII, St Kitts
These are Images of my CD release concert. Photographs by Erika Morillo
Irka is a singer, songwriter, lyricist and Dominican folk music researcher . 
Tainos Unidos is a group of like minded individual who get together to discuss the advancement and history of the Taino people in the Americas