Rodrigo Alberto Matta Díaz was born in Cali in 1975. Like most of us, he is a repertoire of conditions and experiences. He is a musician, percussionist, drummer, and holds titles in business administration and cultural management.
With 20 years of experience as an interpreter, Rodrigo has been part of different musical projects including sound creation for performance and visual arts. Additionally, he has experience as a teacher for several universities and music institutes.
In 2005, he won a grant from Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia for studies in Music Composition in the music conservatory of Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. Afterwards, in 2007, he won the Carolina Oramas, a scholarship for artists granted by Instituto Colombiano de Crédito Educativo y Estudios Técnicos en el Exterior (ICETEX). With this prize, he studied Jazz Drumming in Escuela de Música Contemporánea de Buenos Aires (EMC) and Improvisation with Signs at Centro de Estudios del Ritmo y Percusión con Señas de Buenos Aires (CERPS). He also finished his Business Administration studies at Universidad Javeriana in Cali in 1999. Additionally he specialized in Cultural Policies and Management in Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales (IDAES) at Universidad de San Martin in Argentina in 2011.
Rodrigo is a pioneer in the national music environment, bringing the Rhythm and Percussion with Signs technique to Colombia through the foundation of La Percumotora and by giving workshops about the method. Currently, La Percumotora has already a strong footprint in the national music scene.
His work is strongly motivated by the impulse to spread the unique experience that is involved in this kind of collective creation. In sync with the words of the creator of this method, Santiago Vázquez, in this initiative “the rhythm is perceived as a study of what is cyclic, as an existence’s constructive force in all life levels: Personal, social and spiritual”.
La Percumotora… Never sounds the same!