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.
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