Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly
“They have created their own world here, an accesibly avant-garde world of mystical otherness and feet-in-the-dirt groove.” – Truth and Lies
MESTIZX is Bolivian-born singer and multi-medium performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly’s debut album as co-composers, arrangers and musicians. Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based Ferragutti and Rosaly dove into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create a deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest. They chose the title MESTIZX – a non-gendered version of the sometimes slurred Spanish colonial word for a “mixed person” – as a means of both challenging and embracing the liminality of their identities and artistic practices.
