When Olga Tañon was a teenager, her beloved dance instructor made her spend hours in front of the mirror, dancing with her reflection until she could see herself generate enough energy to entrance a stadium. Sitting with Tañon in any given hotel room along Collins Avenue (and we’ve sat together…
Last Saturday, New Times celebrated its sweet fifteenth anniversary by coming out with some great big cakes, a few thousand friends, a few great bands and DJs, fabulous food from fifteen restaurants, and fifteen drag queens all dressed up as quinceañeras. If that last word lost you (Spanish for a…
If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times: Go see Juanes! And if you haven’t been paying attention, then know that Juan Esteban Aristizabal is the earnest kid who came out of nowhere (okay, out of Los Angeles) to sweep the second Latin Grammys with his 2000…
Don’t forget about the band, Alex Lora begs in his squeaky voice, not even if you cut your hair, get a job, wear a three-piece suit, get married, or get liposuction. Don’t forget about the band, Mexico, the first band and for so many years the only rocanrol band, El…
Riddle: What do the local bands Raw B Jae, Sixo, the Kind, Fulano, and the Spam Allstars all have in common with Colombian pop siren Shakira? Answer: drummer Brendan Buckley and guitarist Adam Zimmon. The two strapping University of Miami grads may well be the hardest-working musicians in Miami –…
It’s true, accidents happen in other places. I could have been making that same left turn into my own driveway back in Ohio, say. Some impatient fool could have ignored my blinker and tried to pass me on the left up there too. He still would have plowed into my…
Down NW 60th Street near 10th Avenue, a group of old-timers play dominoes under a tree, complaining about the weather. Across the street young men in braids lounge on lawn chairs, rousing themselves each time a car slows at the corner. A couple of blocks north, school kids in khaki…
The premise seemed sound enough. Not once but twice last week the Design District’s Brit-Pop-and-then-some night Poplife went extracurricular, presenting Rainer Maria and Rilo Kiley last Tuesday at Churchill’s and then a K Records showcase at the Polish American Club’s Blue Velvet Lounge (it’s not really called that), featuring K…
Tanks lined Biscayne Boulevard at noon last Sunday just as the Rock en Miami festival was getting under way at Bayfront Park. New Times reported the week before on some bad blood between local Latin rock promoters, but did the situation really require heavy artillery? Well, no; last Sunday was,…
No one has done more to build Miami’s rep as the swirling epicenter of cotton candy Latin pop than impresario, erstwhile producer, and savvy pitchman Emilio Estefan, Jr. And no one has done more to counter that rep than independent distributor, Latin alternative booster, and sincere pitchman Gustavo Fernandez. After…
Not so long ago, the fate of Cuban salsa superstar Manolín depended on the whims of a dictator and the policies of the INS. Would he stay? Would he go? Now, permanently settled in Miami, the only question that matters is, will he sell? Certainly if anyone has the cure…
Simón Bolívar’s dream of a unified Latin American republic died hacking and wheezing in Colombia in 1830. Che Guevara’s vision of a Latin American revolution took a bullet in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. Tonight’s attempt by MTV to rally the region around a music video awards show –…
In the heady idealism of the 1970s, Chilean novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman wrote How To Read Donald Duck, a treatise against cultural imperialism. The cuddly little creatures in Disney movies and other kiddie tales, so the argument goes, send the message that Europe and the United States are civilized…
Before the gangsta, there was the guapo — the tough guy who cruised the mean streets of Spanish Harlem and El Bronx with a wide-brimmed hat cocked over one eye and a razorblade hidden in his pocket. In the Seventies the urban Latin sound was salsa, and there was nothing…
It happens to the best of us. Jerry Rivera, the onetime salsa wunderkind famous for singing about his baby face (and for exclaiming in a petulant tone “Baby!”), is not quite so babyish anymore. “A little kid called me sir,” he exclaims in shock. Still safely under 30, Rivera is…
“I’m like the only Latin woman in hip-hop,” declares radio personality/rapper Angie Martinez. Hmmm, what about fellow Puerto Rican rapper Ivy Queen? “Maybe this will make it easier for her,” Martinez concedes. “Her time hasn’t come yet.” Martinez believes in the importance of role models, so maybe that’s why she…
Maria Marocka is no schoolmarm. Over at Biscayne Gardens Elementary in North Miami, she’s the cool teacher. Tall and glamorous with funky clothes and an asymmetrical haircut, she has CDs filled with songs that she wrote and sang. “Are you famous?” her students ask as they hand over scraps of…
In the bad old days of segregation, wasn’t nobody black and famous come to sing in the white-only nightclubs of Miami Beach who didn’t make a late-night stop for a show in Colored Town: Ella, Basie, Nina Simone. Then the interstate sliced through and drained the blood out of a…
Is there something in your eye? Oh, it’s just Carlos Vives, singing “Let me in through your gaze” — you know, the windows to your soul and all that — a lyric from the song and album Déjame Entrar (Let Me In) that earned the Colombian soap-star-turned-vallenato-singer two Latin Grammys…
Charts Miami Neighborhood Map Lawsuits Galore The Miami Index Miami’s Brain Matter Ted Lucas grew up in Carol City, a black neighborhood close to the Broward County line. His family was poor but his athletic talent helped him win a scholarship to Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School in Hollywood, though his…
Last week, in the days leading up to my father’s funeral, I played Susana Baca’s album Espiritu Vivo (Living Spirit). The beat of the cajon, the wooden box that speaks Afro-Peruvian rhythms, might have seemed incongruous to my brothers and sisters as they sifted through photos of our childhood in…
I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about what goes on at Crescent Moon. I’ve heard about people who’ve been unhappy and moved on, but you rarely hear about the people like me who are happy to work there. I’ve been with Emilio for ten years. I started out as…
