FABIOLA MÉNDEZ

Fabiola Méndez is a cuatro player, singer-songwriter, and educator, native to Caguas, Puerto Rico. She began playing the cuatro — Puerto Rico's national instrument — at age six, with her early training at the Escuela Libre de Música Antonio Paoli in Caguas.

Her music merges Puerto Rican jíbaro and folk tradition with jazz influences and Afro-Caribbean rhythms — a crossing of identities, culture, and roots that defines her entire body of work.

Fabiola earned her Bachelor of Music from Berklee College of Music, where in 2018 she made history as the first student to graduate with the Puerto Rican cuatro as her principal instrument — a milestone confirmed directly by Berklee in its own institutional newsroom.

That connection to Boston remains active today: Fabiola is a faculty member at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her recorded catalog documents a clear evolution as a cuatro player, singer, and composer: Al Otro Lado del Charco (2019), Afrorriqueña (2021), and Flora Campesina (2024) — three independently released studio albums.

In 2022, she produced her first documentary, Negrura, about Afro-Latino stories tied to colorism and discrimination within our own communities.

Her institutional presence in Boston and New England includes performances at the Celebrity Series of Boston, at Passim (Cambridge, MA), at the Lowell Folk Festival, and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, alongside her own profile on the Boston Symphony Orchestra's site.

Nationally, she has performed at the NPR Tiny Desk, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

In 2024, Fabiola recorded her Tiny Desk Concert with NPR Music, as part of the series' celebration of Latinidad. In September 2026, she returns to Berklee as the featured artist of the institution's first Homecoming Block Party — not as a student, but as a professional musician.