La Doña
La Doña, born Cecilia Cassandra Peña-Govea in San Francisco, California, is a solo artist, music educator and activist. The Chicanx artist began her career at age 7 playing trumpet, and later strings and percussion in her family’s conjunto. She is a student, teacher and preservationist of Latinx traditional arts like corrido, son jarocho, rumba and mariachi. In her compositions, she combines these ancient traditions with contemporary diasporic musics like reggaeton, cumbia and hip hop.
La Doña coined the term “Femmeton” to describe her auto-referential songs about love, sex, gentrification, and the radical joys of being a queer brown woman in the Bay Area. An activist and educator, she holds her community close - her father, childhood friends, and partner layer live instrumentation, intimate harmonies and driving percussion over a thick reggaeton beat. Influenced by local muralismo and hyphy sensibilities just as much as global diasporas and climate catastrophes, La Doña’s catalog is eclectic, fresh, and urgent.
When La Doña is not on domestic or international tours, she is teaching youth about Afro-diasporic musics in San Francisco and Oakland, and composing songs to support the liberation of third-world peoples. As a young, queer Latina, La Doña is concerned with representing stories not often told in the mainstream music industry and providing amplification and audience to other young artists of color.
La Doña was chosen as one of YouTube’s Foundry Artists (2019) and she has performed recently at Lollapalooza and Format Fest. Her song, “Quién Me La Paga” was the first of the New York Times Magazine’s “19 Songs that Matter Now,” for 2020, and her EP, Algo Nuevo, was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the 6 best albums of 2020. La Doña was awarded the 2021 San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artists Grant, and is the recipient of the California Arts Council Creative Corps Fellowship for ‘23/’24.
La Doña released her new EP, ‘Can’t Eat Clout” with an announcement by Rolling Stone on September 15 2023.
Since her debut in 2020, San Francisco’s La Doña has been shooting for the stars and almost immediately nailed it with widespread local praise. But this year, we’ve really been seeing her big moves pay off – recognition in Rolling Stone, a slot at Outside Lands, and the coveted Obama playlist placement.