Rita Cantu
In addition to her music, Rita Cantu has made a career in the National Park Service and Forest Service, creating materials and programs that link people to their land and local cultures. As an environmental interpreter, educator, performer, author, songwriter and storyteller, she provides conference weaving, presentations, training, programs and community development.
She is a compelling songwriter, powerful singer, and captivating storyteller. Her programs run like rivers from song to story to instrumentals, using original and traditional music and tales. The result: total audience involvement that connects heart and head, land and culture, participant and performer. Instruments include accapella vocals, American Indian flute and drum, guitar, lap and hammer dulcimer, and occasional autoharp. Her style is a mix of Joan Baez, Kate Wolf, and Libby Roderick.
Rita is a community organizer, film narrator, interpretive designer, author, and conference weaver. She writes music, stories, and poetry, and has performed and lived in the U.S., Australia, and Spain. She produced four commercial recordings of original music and is working on a fifth. She is the author of “The Great Smoky Mountains: The Story Behind the Scenery,” and “Discovery at the Continent’s Edge: A Teacher’s Guide to the Marin Headlands.”
As event organizer and conference weaver she helped coordinate over 300 events throughout New Mexico and Arizona that ranged from traveling children’s theatre to three-day university symposia, all celebrating a Centennial of conservation in the U.S.
As interpretive ranger and program designer Rita has worked and lived in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Grand Canyon National Park, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She assisted in design and narration of two movies: “Yellowstone, the Unfinished Song”, and New Mexico’s “Mal Pais National Monument” interpretive film.
As well as performing for adult audiences using live instruments as well as multi-media presentations, Rita also holds younger groups in thrall. As performer and as environmental educator, she has given programs throughout the San Francisco Bay area schools, and directed a number of summer youth programs, as well as designing and presenting city-based activities for inner-city schools in Oakland, San Francisco, and others.
Rita lives her conviction that the compassionate respect and appreciation of our cultural diversity, the sensitive management of our lands, and the interpretation of our natural and cultural history depends upon the integration of art and science, heart and head, intellect and intuition. And THAT makes music!