Susana Baca
Seis Poemas EP

"Don't forget me, sing me." Those were the words Chabuca Granda wrote on her deathbed more than twenty years ago in a letter to Susana Baca. For Baca, Chabuca's plea is as powerful today as when she first read it. Seis Poemas, her latest six-song EP is partly a tribute to Chabuca Granda, one of the great figures of Latin American song. Baca, who got her start spinning the poems of others into wistful melodies, also borrows the verses of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish avant-garde poet who was assassinated during his country's Civil War, and in a nod to her ancestry she delves into Peru's overlooked, yet rich African legacy.

It's not the first time Baca interprets Granda's songs and poems. In 1984, a year after Granda's death, she reworked some of her music, and in 1995 the single "Maria Landó," a Granda composition with words by César Calvo, became the North American breakthrough that catapulted Baca from relative anonymity onto the world stage.