Sara Curruchich

Sara Curruchich Cúmez (born 1993) is a Guatemalan singer-songwriter. Curruchich, who is of Mayan Kaqchikel origin, is also an activist in defense of women's and indigenous people's rights. She plays both guitar and marimba, and became well known in her country with her 2015 song "Ch'uti'xtän" ("Girl").
Biography.
Curruchich was born in 1993 in San Juan Comalapa, a town in Guatemala's Chimaltenango department. She began singing and playing guitar with her family at a young age, then studied music education at the Jesús María Alvarado School for Music Teachers.
In 2012, she joined a local all-women marimba group called Teclas en Armonía, as well as another local group. Her first public performance was that same year, through an invitation from a German orchestra.
She also began writing her own songs, which touch on such subjects as respect for nature and the memories of the Maya peoples. Her songs mix Spanish with the Kaqchikel language, which Curruchich describes as a way of reclaiming her mother tongue. She became particularly well known in Guatemala for the ballad "Ch'uti'xtän" ("Girl"), which gained hundreds of thousands of views on social media streaming platforms in 2015. That year, she was named a "Breakout Artist" by the Dante Alighieri Foundation.
In 2016, she released her second single, "Resistir" ("Resist"), which was written in late 2014 and was dedicated to those who fight against oppression and violence. Later that year she went on her first tour in the United States, which included performances at Bizarre Bushwick in Brooklyn and the United Nations headquarters in New York, marking the session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
The following year she released the song "Ralk’wal Ulew" ("Children of the Earth"), with a video by the documentarian Pamela Yates, whom Curruchich had met in New York. The song was included in Yates' film "500 Years", and it shared the film's aim of telling the story of the uprising against Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina.
Curruchich has also shared the stage with the singer-songwriter Fernando López and the Guatemalan Mayan rock group Sobrevivencia, which sings in the Mam language, as well as the Dresden Symphony Orchestra.
In interviews, Curruchich has denounced the occupation of land by multinational corporations, as well as the attacks on and killings of indigenous leaders who work to resist it. She is also a collaborator with UN Women Guatemala and has spoken out on violence against women.
Her debut album, "Somos" ("We Are"), was released in 2019.
In 2020, she launched a project to compile music by indigenous women, with the eventual aim of turning the project into a music festival.