Las Décimas del Amargue & Other Songs of Love, a touring music project, visited campus on Wednesday to teach students about Puerto Rican and Dominican music and to give a public performance.
The band, Raquel Z. Rivera & Ojos de Sofía is made up of six members: Raquel Z. Rivera, her sister Anabellie Rivera, Bryan Vargas, Yasser Tejeda, Jonathan Troncoso and Nelson Matthew González.
The project, also known as La Décima Project, is meant to inform students and the public about the origins and types of music that share Puerto Rican and Dominican Roots.
Before their performance, the band sat down with students in a workshop where they discussed the roots of their music and their musical journey so far.
Assistant Professor of Music Michael Birenbaum Quintero had all three of his classes—the Afro-Latin-American Music Ensemble, Sound Travels From Mozart to the MP3, and CuBop, Up-Rock, Boogaloo, and Banda: Latinos Making Music in the United States—attend the workshop and the concert. 
The event was sponsored by the Latin-American Students Organization (LASO) and many students and community members outside of these classes attended.
LASO board member Ernesto Garcia ’17 said that the group was not only talented and emotive, but also very knowledgeable about the history of the genres they were playing, as well as the technical aspects of the music.
Many of the band members grew up listening to the type of music they are now making.
All the band members are either from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, or are the children of people from these countries.
“What’s different about this group is that they didn’t just come to entertain the audience, but actually to educate them about the different kinds of music and how they were derived,” said Garcia. 
The band, created in 2007, is based in New York and was able to come to campus with the help of Quintero. At the workshop they explained how their music is heavily influenced by many different styles of music like Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin music.
Other students who went to the event were impressed by both the group’s knowledge and skill level. They were excited to see the concepts they spoke about in class brought to life.
Logan Jackonis ’17 said the workshop and concert directly related to things he and fellow students were learning in both his Afro-Latin-American Music Ensemble and Latinos Making Music in the United States class.
 “We covered musical sounds like bomba, so this sort of ties into what we learned,” said Jackonis.
Walker Kennedy ’15, who is in Latinos Making Music and Sound Travels: Mozart to MP3, said he enjoyed listening to “the mixture of different music and realizing that the [genres] foundationally have the same origins and roots.”
The band played 20 songs, all in Spanish, at the concert.