BEST SONGWRITER 2003 | Jim Camacho | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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BEST SONGWRITER

Jim Camacho

Camacho has been on the Miami scene for more than a decade, first as one of the voices behind the Goods, and more recently fronting his own band. He wears his allegiance to melody (Beatles comparisons are inevitable) on his sleeve, and while the Goods' songwriting prowess fluctuated, Camacho's solo work keeps getting better. His 2001 release Trouble Doll featured Big Star-style power pop. An upcoming full-length raises the ante with an early-Replacements feel just gritty enough to offset some of the pop shimmer.

BEST CARIBBEAN BAND

21st Century Steel Orchestra

Michael Kernahan's 21st Century Steel Orchestra is Miami's strongest link to the steel pan music of Trinidad and Tobago. Kernahan, a Trinidad native who builds the pans (more commonly known as steel drums) he plays, has put together an ensemble that numbers as many as 40, though he plays with more manageable groups at local venues. "They're the leading steel pan band in South Florida," says Stephen Stuempfle, curator of the South Florida Historical Museum and a steel pan scholar. The music has roots in the Caribbean, but before that, Africa -- though much of it consists of adaptations of jazz and calypso standards. "Michael Kernahan is really a student of the music, and when you hear him, you're hearing the real thing," Stuempfle says.

BEST LOCAL ELECTRONICA RELEASE OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS

Otto Von Schirach, Chopped Zombie Fungus

Most electronic music doesn't say much, literally. If there are lyrics involved, the vocals treatment has more to do with melody and tone than the meaning of the actual words. But Miami's Cuban/German "beat molester" likes to add some say to his sway. In Chopped Zombie Fungus, released on local label Schematic, Von Schirach (his real and way cool name) has a few requests: "whip me down, make me hurt, make me bleed, touch my tit, slap my ass, take it down, drink my milk, hurt me down, squeeze my ass, slap my tit, swallow it, eat my cheese." It used to be that whenever dance music was silly, it never knew it. Thank God for guys like Von Schirach and albums like this, where you can be intelligent without the pseudo-sophistication of Euro trance and deep house (nobody's funny on Ecstasy or cocaine). It isn't just lyrical antics that make this album so lovable; Von Schirach takes the time to deconstruct sound and rhythm into a Dadaistic collage of chaotic noise. Many tracks call for a patient, attentive ear. The sounds are manipulated obtusely and through water-drop syncopation. To say most of these songs are offbeat is as much an understatement as the term for this genre: Intelligent Dance Music. But break-beating ravers and club kids should have no fear of the forward experimentalism soaking much of this release; Von Schirach includes a bassed-up dance track, the happily titled "Boombonic Plague," perfect for rump shaking and pelvic thrusting, if you're into that kind of thing.

BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL

Botanica del Jibaro

The latest spinoff from the Beta Bodega Coalition's growing empire, Botanica del Jibaro has released a series of astonishingly high-quality twelve-inch singles in the past twelve months from local stalwarts like Algorithm and Cyne. As always with this ever-provocative crew, most of Botanica's recordings concentrate on sundry political issues, from bombing runs held in Vieques, Puerto Rico, to the legacy of slavery in American society. All of this, of course, would be facile agit-prop if not for unquestionably great songs like Cyne's "African Elephants," a hard-hitting romp that's one of the best underground hip-hop singles released anywhere in the last several months.

BEST SYMPHONIC ORCHESTRA

New World Symphony

What's the matter with kids today? Nothing. At least not with the ones loitering outside the Lincoln Theater during a New World Symphony intermission. The NWS's artistic director, Michael Tilson Thomas, calls classical music "a rare and wonderful thing." The same can be said of the NWS, the baby of all symphonic orchestras. The NWS, which recently celebrated its fifteenth-anniversary concert, is also known as America's Orchestral Academy. Its 85 members are recent graduates of the nation's finest conservatories and university music schools, and they can stay only three years before they must find jobs with orchestras across the land. MTT describes NWS as "an investment in a whole new generation of musicians." But that doesn't mean the NWS sounds like a bunch of juveniles. On the contrary, a young tuxedo-clad horn player walks into a gelato shop after a recent program of Mozart's Six German Dances, Hindemith's Concert Music for Strings and Bass, and Mahler's Symphony No. 4. Seated at a table was a classical connoisseur who had witnessed the performance and couldn't constrain himself when he noticed the lad's duds and horn case. "That's the best orchestra I've heard in a long, long time," he exclaimed. "You should be proud of yourself." The young musician smiled and replied right on cue: "Thanks for coming." Cultivating such audience appreciation is one key to NWS's success. Another key is MTT's insistence his young musicians learn state-of-the-art techniques for mastering auditions, the classical musician's number-one source of fear and loathing. During their tenure they receive a modest stipend, but more important is the payment in kind that comes from working with a conductor of MTT's stature.

BEST VENUE FOR LIVE MUSIC

Manuel Artime Theater

Standing around a smoke-filled dive for hours on end as a band blasts away is great when you're twentysomething. But as anyone who's caught shows at the Jackie Gleason or the Gusman can attest, there comes a time in a hipster's life when he just wants to, well, sit down. So how can an, ahem, aging fellow catch some cutting-edge live music without enduring aching joints? Just follow the lead of a handful of local promoters who have been booking exciting up-and-coming acts into this overlooked (and city-owned) Little Havana gem, an honest-to-gosh theater. The Manuel Artime has great sightlines (the sloping floor means no bad seats) and free parking -- which adds up to a stress-free evening out. In fact the musicians who get the chance to hit the Artime's stage often seem just as excited as the crowd to be in such an august (yet unpretentious) hall. Not every gig here has been on the order of last fall's transcendent Bright Eyes show. But even a train wreck like the Miami debut of Cat Power -- where song after song literally came apart -- was received as a novel experiment gone awry, instead of two hours of your life you'll never get back. And how often can you say that about bad art?

BEST VOCALIST (FEMALE)

Rose Max

Speaking of love, it's hard not to amour Rose Max when she sings, for example, "Speaking of Love" ("Falando de Amor") or any of those Brazilian jazz standards that make us so happy we could cry. One night she woos you with her bossa nova and samba amid the couches and candlelight of the Van Dyke Café's dreamy upstairs room. On another her renditions of Seventies pop songs in the cheesy bar at Porçao get you and your sisters cluster-dancing, arm-waving, and singing along. Husband Ramatis Morães provides Max's lush bed of guitar chords. Whatever the venue, everybody is in seventh heaven; that is, major-seventh and minor-seventh, those magical chords that can at once relax, energize, sadden, and enrapture, as master Brazilian songwriters Antonio Carlos Jobim, Newton Mendonça, and others discovered. Max, a native of Rio de Janeiro, was practically singing before she was born. Her great-grandfather was conductor/composer Cupertino de Menezes and her grandfather guitar player/composer Manuel de Menezes. She moved to Miami in 1993 and a decade later she gives her sultriest seminars at the Van Dyke, where she and Morães play with a full drum-bass-piano rhythm section. She appeared out of nowhere, as goes the Toni Bellotto and Nando Reis classic "Pra Dizer Adeus" ("To Say Goodbye"), which she delivers on her recently released first CD. "You never saw me alone, you never heard me cry," it continues. "You make it hard to imagine whether it's too early or too late to say goodbye." It is always both once Max has begun to sing.

Readers Choice: Melody Cole

BEST SOLO MUSICIAN

Sam Beam

Sam Beam is fast becoming all the rage. Earlier this spring his album as Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle, charted at number 81 in the Village Voice's prestigious "Pazz and Jop" poll for the best of 2002, and his subsequent national tour engendered even more praise from fans and critics. Some wondered how a man who writes quiet, reflective country and folk tunes filled with vividly elliptical imagery could come from the land of Girls Gone Wild, but Miamians know he's part of a folk tradition that's unusually strong in these parts. Though Beam doesn't sing in Spanish, he fits right in.

SECOND-BEST CONCERT OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS

Erykah Badu at Level

February 9, 2003

Who else could bring the house down simply by doffing her oversized Afro wig? Erykah Badu's albums have carefully laid out her persona as a diva for the post-millennium, and thankfully, her live performance at Level proved she has not only the playful über-attitude of Motown's finest, but also the musical chops to drive that spirit home. The sprawling set found her soulful voice drawing on both rhythm and blues traditions (including a wonderful guest turn from Seventies legend Betty Wright) and of-the-moment hip-hop. Yet none of it seemed either retro or overreaching. Part of the credit has to go to Badu's band, which eschewed a guitar to instead double up on both keyboards and percussion, an approach that kept the grooves supple no matter how fevered Badu herself got. By the end, with the audience demanding a third encore, the only real question was why live shows of this caliber don't grace Miami more often. Here's hoping Level, with its excellent sound system and sightlines, can continue to rise to the occasion.

BEST CONCERT SERIES

Concert Association of Florida

Amazing to think that what began 36 years ago as the Great Artists Series at Miami Beach's Temple Beth Sholom has evolved into one of South Florida's premier purveyors of classical music and dance. Founded and led by impresaria and onetime opera singer Judy Drucker, the Concert Association of Florida packs a two-county punch, filling the seats of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts and the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts with eager culture vultures by presenting the highest caliber of artists. Among the luminaries who have graced us with their presence just this past season: sopranos Kathleen Battle and Renée Fleming; violinist Itzhak Perlman; pianists Joseph Kalichstein, Evgeny Kissin, and Andre Watts; cellist Mstislav Rostropovich; and conductors Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic and Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. And that's a just few names in the musical arena. Visiting dance companies have included Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. An outreach program wherein master musicians provide classes to local youngsters means that continuity of audience and players is somewhat assured. How to thank Drucker for zipping her aria-singing lips more than a generation ago and devoting herself to the cause of high culture in this town? A simple "Brava!" should suffice.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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