San Pedro Celebrates Day of the Dead
On October 26, San Pedro celebrated its 12th annual Día De Los Muertos Festival. The downtown arts district came alive with entertainment, vendors, food trucks, crafts and contests for the day. The festival honored Mexican traditions and included a Catrina Contest where participants dressed up in creative interpretations of the Día De Los Muertos icon.
Grupo Folklórico Nadino at the San Pedro Día de los Muertos Festival
Since 2012, Grand Vision has been coordinating live entertainment for the San Pedro Día De Los Muertos Festival thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant allowed us to hire high quality regional performers and make the event a coordinated community festival that draws both locals and visitors from other LA communities and beyond. The San Pedro Historic Waterfront Business Improvement District (PBID) took the reins to support all the other aspects of the festival, from planning the layout and structure of the event to hiring the audio tech team to coordinating the vendors, coordinating altar displays, and much more. more.
Each year at the “Dia” street fest, audiences can find rock, pop, cumbia and mariachi bands on a central main stage – including the annual headliners: two-time Grammy winners and official Disneyland Mariachi band Mariachi Divas!
Since Grand Vision has taken the lead with programming the Día entertainment, there has also been careful attention paid to curating a community stage. For over a decade, we’ve partnered with several exceptional folkloric dance groups who have lit up the stage in full colorful traditional regalia. We are grateful to have long relationships with Grupo Folklórico Las Perlitas de Wilmington, Grupo Folklórico Nadino and Neiya Arts. More recently, bands like Sharkbait from the Boys and Girls Club have rocked the stage, and other local dance schools Dance Tech and Flipside Gymnastics have added new styles to the stage.
Delilah Vasquez Real, director of Neiya Arts, commented that her Folklórico dance group, who has performed at the festival every year since 2012, “would never miss” San Pedro’s Día De Los Muertos, adding on Instagram that it is “always one of [ their] favorite events of the year!”
Before 2012, dedicated San Pedro merchants coordinated smaller “Día” festivals around the downtown area. Carla Ortega of Our Creations and Marta Valladolid from Bringelson Jewelers led the way to make sure the Harbor Area community enjoyed the traditional holiday.
It has been Grand Vision’s pleasure to work with the PBID and make connections with all the performing artists over the last decade. We can’t wait for next year’s festival!
