Gisela Rodriguez Fernandez is an artist and educator from the Central Andes living and working between the ancient Inca empire and the unceded and occupied lands of the Chinook, Clackamas, Multnomah, and other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of the so-called United States. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Portland State University and teaches various social sciences classes, including Latin American music, politics, and history. Dr. Rodriguez also taught for the BRAVO Youth Orchestras in Portland, Oregon, a program that improves the lives of underserved children through music. She has performed with many symphony orchestras across the United States and South America, including the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra in Pensacola, Florida, the Pan-American Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Bolivia. Dr. Rodriguez uses music as a bridge to connect people and remove all the physical, mental, and spiritual borders around us. Unsurprisingly, her favorite music is fusion, which mixes forbidden alliances, such as electronic music, with traditional Andean melodies. Music is not just a cultural expression but a political praxis and resistance method deeply interconnected to the social context from which it emerges. Dr. Rodriguez’s music aims to capture its complexity.
