Jazz lovers of Dartmouth, clear up your calendars and get ready for a burst of funk, jazz, rock and hip hop this Saturday. Troker, a group that has performed at over 90 international festivals including the Glastonbury Festival and South by Southwest, will showcase its jazz and mariachi fusion style music in Spaulding this weekend.
In 2003, Troker came together in Guadalajara, a city in the Mexican state of Jalisco. They spent three years participating in casual jam sessions before recording an album, Troker’s general manager Ana Rodriguez said.
“They started gathering big crowds in restaurants. People started asking for an album,” Rodriguez said. “So when they released their first album in 2007, they already had a big audience.”
The group’s live performances are known to have incredible energy, passion and excitement.
“The freedom of the genre and the movement on stage makes jazz exciting,” Troker bassist Samo González said. “We get the high energy from our time performing in Mexico and combine it with jazz. It’s a freestyle.”
In addition to its high energy, Troker is known for combining jazz with untraditional elements; they often play around with rock and hip hop elements. Rodriguez said that the band first decided that it wanted to perform instrumental music, later narrowing its focus to jazz even though none of the members were jazz players.
The members, most of whom came from the rock and blues scene, enrolled in classes and bought instructional books, Rodriguez said.
Troker’s genre-mixing element plays a big role in its music and popularity.
Anthony Robles ’20, an arts ambassador for the Hopkins Center, said that he is excited to see Troker because of the group’s ability to blend different types of music together.
Troker hopes that its performance will have a lasting impact on the Dartmouth students who attend the show. González said that he wants students to leave the performance feeling inspired.
“I hope Dartmouth students take away a motivation to dedicate their life to the arts,” González said. “Embracing our roots is a huge part of our music, even though it has no lyrics.”
Members of Troker are visiting classes while on campus as part of the Hop’s program to match incoming artists with different class syllabi.
On Thursday, they visited “Audio-Vision: Film, Music, Sound,” and today they are visiting “Introduction to Latin America and the Caribbean.” There is also a dinner planned with students and faculty today.
Troker will perform at 8 p.m. in Spaulding Auditorium on Saturday. Tickets, available on the Hop website, are $10 for Dartmouth students and $17 to $25 for community members.
Robles is a member of The Dartmouth staff.
