Leonard’s “Pan Verdadero” Installation in JP through Feb. 28

Prospectus artist (FeFa) Neil Leonard’s Pan Verdadero (True Bread) installation will be on view at Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St., Jamaica Plain, from January 16 through February 28, 2016. The opening celebration will be on January 15, 2016 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Pan Verdadero (True Bread) is an eight-channel sound installation with two video projections that focuses on los pregoneros, the street vendors of Cuba, by reconstructing the sonic environment of urban Cuba that emerged following recent liberalization of policies toward small businesses. The installation’s loudspeakers present voices of pregoneros and incorporates minimal sound design to evoke the antiphony of the ancient phenomenon of street vendors calling out to attract business.

“Each pregonero performs a highly personal chant with a sense of spontaneity that is absent from the formulaic music and commentary that dominates the island’s airwaves,” according to Leonard. “Vendors chant self-made product slogans and carry wares in homemade carts. Products range from masonry skills, flowers, baked goods, produce, mattress springs and gold purchasing. Highly stylized brand songs are heard in voices that are reminiscent of the famous singers Celia Cruz or Mayito Rivera.”

When Pan Verdadero (True Bread) was shown in 2013 at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in NYC,  The New York Times critic Holland Carter wrote: “Mr. Leonard creates a haunting, rhythmic, chantlike score, secular spiritual music for a New World. After leaving the gallery I kept hearing it, with delight, in my head, on the street, all afternoon.”