César Castro

César Castro (he/him/his) is a professional musician in the Son Jarocho genre, a laudero (stringed instrument maker) and instructor. In his career, Castro has especially focused on community building, organizing, and engagement through projects in participatory art forms, and traditional music specifically from Veracruz, Mexico.

Utilizing his vast expertise with music and other traditional art forms, Castro engages disenfranchised communities in building self-sustaining projects that tap into and build upon constituent cultural knowledge, experience, and memory.

For the past 15 years, Castro has served as an active liaison between communities in the United States and Veracruz, Mexico via Radio Jarochelo. A community-based podcast, started in 2010, Radio Jarochelo promotes and organizes cultural projects and events in local communities, cultural centers, schools, universities, and California state prisons.