“Listen,” says Mari Lauret, holding her hand up to halt the conversation at a tiny table in the downtown lounge I/O. It’s not often she has the chance to hear her song “Te Soñé, Lluvia de Abril” (“I Dreamed of You, April Rain”) in public, even though the tune, recorded…
Of all the tributes offered to the inimitable Celia Cruz over the past week, perhaps the most moving was that of Descemer Bueno, frontman of the band Siete Rayos (Seven Lightning Bolts). Readers might recognize Bueno’s name as a composer, arranger, and vocalist on Yerba Buena’s celebrated debut CD President…
Beneath the vaulted white ceilings and elaborate Corinthian columns on the second floor of the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, Celia Cruz rests. She wears a honey-blond wig swept high atop her head, more subdued than the Technicolor pink, yellow, and blue ‘dos the Queen of Salsa took to wearing…
Miami’s business community has high hopes for achieving hemispheric grandeur and reaping an economic windfall worth billions of dollars if all goes well at a meeting to be held here this November. Known as a ministerial, the meeting will bring together trade ministers from 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere…
Friends don’t let friends read and drive. That might explain why so many of Miami-Dade’s municipalities come up empty when clicked on the city-by-city breakdown of best-selling books, music, and movies generated by Amazon.com. Kind of hard to turn the page when your eyes are glued to the bumper in…
The trouble with democracy is that all these people get involved. That’s why the MADA, the Museum of American Democratic Art, is such a mess. MADA didn’t cost much to build: just enough to silk-screen the names of museum movers and shakers on the canvas backs of 60 or so…
When Buju Banton plunges his hand into the bowl of coconut milk, his forearm is black and slim as the letter ‘I’ on a blank page. Even standing in a humble kitchen in Miramar, he is a prophet. His gestures speak of larger things than steamed fish and pigeon peas…
In lunfardo, the down-and-dirty language of the cobblestone streets of Buenos Aires in the last century, words get turned inside out. The illicit hideaway where you take your lover for a tryst is not a hotel, but a telo. And the music of melancholy and forbidden passion is not tango,…
Countdown 8:00 p.m. EST, Monday, March 17 In the lobby of the Radisson Deauville, on the eve of the Winter Music Conference, the music stops when President Buzzkill addresses the world. The face of George Bush replaces the Dirty Vegas video on the big-screen TVs in the center of the…
The first hint the ladies at the Lido Spa pick up on is the men coming to measure. Strangers, in a place where everybody knows everybody, taking tape measures to everything: the lobby; the swimming pool; the walkway along Biscayne Bay; the individual guest rooms reserved for each lady who…
One hour before screenings begin on the final day of the 2003 Miami International Film Festival, Nicole Guillemet — tailored, coiffed, and uncharacteristically agitated — sits huddled over a tiny cocktail table at the back of the dim balcony lounge at the National Hotel. Leaning forward and locking her eyes…
How many times has it happened? You set the radio to scan the FM dial and — BAM — you catch a snatch of some really wild music. Something so raw and so out there that for one split second you take back everything you ever thought about Latin radio…
You know you’d like to say something special to your sweetie, but you just can’t find the right words or the right tone to tickle her ears. This year why not let one of the masters whisper sweet nothings for you, as Valentine’s Day weekend brings not one but two…
Three years is not a long time. It takes decades — half-centuries even — to measure the careers of such musical treasures as singers Celia Cruz and Ibrahim Ferrer, pianist Bebo Valdes, and percussionists Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria. Three years is not a long time. Yet the passing of…
As one of the most prominent members of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Clarence Clemons blows his sax with all the low-down power of waves crashing upon the Jersey shore, even though he moved to West Palm Beach several years ago. No matter, says the sax man, “I bring Asbury…
It’s never a good idea to visit a vampire by day. Even if the meeting takes place indoors, shielded from the sun whose rays would vaporize the night crawler. Even if the mirrors are covered, in this case with flyers and posters from nights gone by announcing The Church, the…
The premise for Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz latest video, “Play No Games,” is a straight-up contradiction. On the followup single to “I Don’t Give a,” the reigning Kings of Crunk (from their album by the same name) smooth out their usual rowdy club chants and croon all sentimental-like…
What does Jon Secada’s latest album have to do with the types of cuisine in China? When the vocal powerhouse traveled to the People’s Republic last year as co-writer of a song for the Beijing Olympics, he ate everything in sight — unlike his traveling companions and fellow songwriters. “Emilio…
Sometime Spam Allstar, redheaded guitarist Adam Zimmon, recently took issue with the media coverage of Miami’s favorite processed beat liberator, DJ Le Spam and his merry avant-jam band. “People always write about the cultural stuff,” Zimmon complains of articles on the Allstars and their ecstatic site of multicultural communion, the…
Suddenly, during the spring of 2001, Hotel Costes was everywhere. Everywhere that mattered. Almost simultaneously, the groovy yet relaxed rhythms spun during and after dinner in the lobby of the lush four-star Parisian hotel by French DJ Stephane Pompougnac could be heard over the chatter at well-appointed brunches on Key…
Of all Miami’s dubious distinctions, one in particular is X-rated: No other city in the United States boasts a tighter relationship between the hip-hop scene and strip clubs. The reasons why are not so difficult to figure out. But if you’re having trouble, Opa-locka-born singer/rapper Luc Duc is happy to…
“Let me see that!” demands Alexandra Mercedes Cabrera de la Cruz, snatching a CD out of the hands of her singing partner Ramón E. Rijo. The sweet-voiced pair better known as Monchy & Alexandra has ruled the tropical airwaves in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Central America, New York, Miami,…
