Creator / Nicomedes Santa Cruz

A cocachos apendí

Mi labor de colegial

En el colegio fiscal

Del barrio donde nací

— Nicomedes Santa Cruz, La Escuelita (1958)

Nicomedes Santa Cruz (June 4, 1925 – February 5, 1992) was a Peruvian poet. Famous for his décimas (compositions of 10-line stanzas), he elevated the name of Perú and its culture through his verses.

Born the ninth of ten children, his artistic career started in 1956, after a journey through Latin America. He took the responsability to revive afroperuvian folklore. Alongside his sister Victoria, they started travelling through the country looking to recover and complie popular songs and chants from different places. Their first show was in 1957 in Lima's Teatro Municipal with the show Ritmos negros del Perú (Peru's Black Rythims). It was a success, and reprising the show in Argentina and in chilean radios.

As well as his various shows, he worked as a journalist in the various cities he visited. These included Brasil, Cuba, Japan, Mexico, Panama and Senegal, where he was a guest in the Negritude et Amérique Latine panel. During all of these he sought to promote and share the afroperuvian culture. He also was the director of the first peruvian Festival de Arte Negro (Black people Art Festival).

In 1981, he moved to and worked in Spain, where he resided until his death in 1992 due to kidney cancer. Still, he's remebred and beloved in Peru as one of its most famous decimists. Today, most people could say the first lines of his most famous poem, A cocachos aprendí from heart.

His recorded work consists of:

• Gente Morena (1957)
• ¡Canto y poesía negroide! (1958)
• Nicomedes Santa Cruz y su Conjunto Kumanana (1959; Canadá, 1994)
• ¡Ingá! (1960)
• Décimas y Poemas Afro-Peruanos (1960)
• Cumanana: Poemas y Canciones (1964)
• Octubre Mes Morado (1964)
• Cumanana: Antología Afroperuana (1965; 1970)
• Canto Negro (1968)
• Los Reyes del Festejo (1971)
• América Negra (1972)
• Nicomedes en la Argentina (1973)
• Socabón: Introducción al Folklore Musical y Danzario de la Costa Peruana (1974)
• Ritmos negros del Perú (1979)
• Décimas y Poemas (1980; 2014)
• España en su Folklore (1987)

As well as his written work:

• Décimas (Lima, 1959)
• Cumanana (Lima,1964)5​
• Canto a mi Perú (Lima, 1966)
• Décimas y poemas: Antología (Lima, 1971)
• Ritmos negros del Perú (Buenos Aires,1973)
• Rimactampu: Rimas al Rímac (Lima, 1972)
• La décima en el Perú (Lima, 1982)
• Canto Negro (2004)
• Obras completas I. Poesía (1949-1989) (2004)
• Obras completas II. Investigación (1958-1991) (2004)