Wheaton Conversation: By the Fruits of Your Hands with Suni Paz and Lisa Stewart Garrison

Wheaton Conversations: 
By the Fruit of Your Hands with Suni Paz & Lisa Stewart Garrison

Watch the June 9, 2022 recording above

Drawing from the roots and flowering of cultures of the Americas, original and traditional songs and rhythms are presented by Latin American singer/songwriter Suni Paz and cultural activist Lisa Stewart Garrison. The musicians will accompany themselves on guitar, concertina, and indigenous instruments, such as the charango, caja, and bombo. 

Join us for an intimate, bi-lingual, and musical conversation, building bridges between cultures while celebrating our natural world and the farmworkers who harvest earth’s bounty. By the Fruits of your Hands promises to be an expression of profound gratitude (agradecimiento) as two singers plant seeds of caring in our hearts.

By the Fruits of your Hands is based on the book Gathering the Sun, a poetic ABC of the fields written by Alma Flor Ada, set to music by Suni Paz, and beautifully illustrated by Simon Silva, himself the son of farmworkers.

This event is part of “Wheaton Conversations,” a new virtual series highlighting select artists with ties to WheatonArts! To see the full schedule of conversations, Click Here. Thank you to our sponsor, PNC Arts Alive!

American country music artist Lisa Stewart Garrison poses for a headshot as she sits in a chair in the middle of a small room. Lisa holds a musical instrument in her lap.

Lisa Stewart Garrison is a cultural activist and multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of history. Her affinity for Latin American culture began when she first heard musicians perform in the peñas of Mexico City. It was later cultivated through studies of the charango with Bolivian Aymará charanguista José Pareja and in Peru with Julio Benavente Diaz, a master of the Cusqueño campesino style of playing. 

But it was from Suni Paz, following her performance at an Albuquerque library, that Lisa first learned to tune the charango, an instrument strung not from high pitch to low, but rather, in a spiral, unfolding from the inside out. And in this way, the unfolding friendship between Suni and Lisa continues to this day.

Argentinian folk musician Suni Paz poses for a headshot in a small room in front of a red couch. She holds a decorative musical instrument and a red and black dress.

Suni Paz, an Argentinian-born singer/songwriter, has long resonated as a cultural force, engaging audiences of all backgrounds and ages worldwide. The name Suni translates to mean ever-lasting in the Quechua language of the Andes. In contrast, Paz means peace in virtually every country in Latin America. 

One of the first artists to bring the Nueva Canción or new song tradition to the United States, Suni is a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist. She has set the poetry of Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Campoy to music on countless recordings for Del Sol Books.

Suni is a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow and a recipient of the International Folk Music Alliance’s Spirit of Folk Award. She was also presented with the International Latino Book Award for Best Auto-biography for her memoir Destellos.