Miracle Theatre's La Luna Nueva event spotlights Latino artists

From Oregonlive.com

Jessie Marquez, singer
Her love of Cuba started with her grandmother, an Italian American who grew up in Brooklyn, learned Spanish and married a Spaniard. The grandparents moved to Havana and later to Puerto Rico.

Marquez spent the first four years of her life in San Juan. Then her family relocated to Eugene in 1974 because her mother was born in Portland.

Marquez loved music since she was a child and began singing in a Eugene salsa band. Growing up in Oregon, she didn't think much about Cuba or Puerto Rico. Her grandmother sparked her interest: She cooked Latin food, taught Marquez to speak Spanish, even ground her coffee the way people do in Cuba.

When her father took a trip to Havana, Marquez went along.

"As soon as I landed, I felt there was something very familiar about the place, the way people spoke, the way they moved," she says. "I felt home."

Marquez made several other trips to Cuba. She discovered the genre of music called filin -- from the English word "feeling" -- influenced by blues and jazz.

In 2003, she recorded a CD in Cuba. A year later, she went back to promote her music on Cuban radio and television. Then, in 2005, she moved to Havana for a year with her husband and children and toured with the International Golden Boleros Festival.

"I discovered a deep connection between two countries in the music," she says.

Eugene, where she lives, teaches and sings, is a place with few Latinos. Most hail from Mexico, Marquez says, so she sometimes feels culturally isolated. But English-speaking audiences are receptive to her songs.

"I've had many audience members say to me, I do not speak any Spanish, but I think I understood what you were saying."