Universal language. Universal language. Now that Music Fest Miami appears to be here to stay — a solid annual event — it’s time to trot out the old truism again. Nothing brings people together like music. Just to put the old adage to the test, Shake conducted a brief survey…
If you come down to the river/Betcha gonna find some people who live/You don’t have to worry/Cause you have no money/People along the river are happy to give Park at Tobacco Road and walk down the little hill alongside Associated Photo to Café Nostalgia. Or spring for a Nostalgia valet…
Everything about Substance Recordings is impressive. The snazzy, ultramodern Website. The stark CD cover art. The swank Collins Avenue office. The penetrating gaze and intelligent patter of label head Greg Chin — a striking Chinese-Jamaican transplant who also happens to be the electronic indie’s principal artist, a.k.a. Stryke. The Kingston-born…
At the newly remodeled warehouse on the banks of the Miami River, a clamp-on construction lamp lights the way up dusty stairs to the nightclub of Pepe Horta’s dreams. When the silver-haired host extraordinaire moved his beloved little Cuban dive — the original Café Nostalgia — from Eighth Street to…
Barry White. Englebert Humperdink. Jose Luis Rodriguez. When you’re ready to slip into something a little more comfortable, there’s really nowhere else to turn. Venezuelan loverman Rodriguez, better known by the name El Puma for his penetrating stare and jungle-cat appeal, has been setting the right mood for more than…
Chilean chanteuse Nicole never knew quite what to expect when she arrived at Fun Machine, the studio of producer Andres Levin. The Venezuelan track-doctor behind major projects with Amigos Invisibles, Aterciopelados, and Nicole’s labelmate Jorge Moreno — to say nothing of turns with Nirvana and Tina Turner — could propose…
As soon as we get there, we’ll call Emilio/I have a friend who’s a friend of a friend/With a direct line to the heaven of so many stars/After that I’ll be running here and there/With Paulina Rubio and Alejandro Sanz/Relax, honey, Paulina’s just a friend. Jorge Villamizar swears it’s true…
The camera is trained on two young men holding a Haitian flag. They wear Haitian-flag bandannas, Haitian-flag T-shirts, and Haitian-flag shorts. The girl standing between them whips the Haitian flag up and down to the beat of “Dance Muthafucka!” — the urban club anthem by local rappers Southern Affiliate that…
It seems appropriate that the first single from Luis Fonsi’s English-language debut should be called “Secret.” Although the video suggests the song is about a beautiful model/singer/movie star who must hide her love for our little hottie — tucking him away in a warehouse where he must execute stylized hip-hop…
The last thing Luis Goecoechea planned to do was play in another Latin band. Never mind that he heard nothing but the likes of Orquesta Aragon, Machito, and Chico O’Farrill when he was growing up. “My father would put on his records and say, •I want to hear you sing…
The atmosphere is a little delirious at Volumen Cero’s rehearsal space in Miami Beach. After ten years of holding together one rock outfit or another, the quartet can hardly stand to wait one more week for Luces (Lights), its major-label debut, to hit the street. To prepare for all the…
If he has to reach waaaaaay down, Jesus will pick you up. Oh, yes he will! If he has to reach waaaaay down, Jesus will pick you up. Down in the ghetto! Waaaaaaaaay down. Down in the valley! Waaaaaaaaay down. Oh, yes he will! Oh, yes he will! Oh, yes…
Things are getting rowdy around the sound board at the old ICAIC (Cuban Film Institute) recording studio in Havana. While the percussionist listens to instruction from the engineer, five or six other musicians, singers, dancers, and friends crowd onto the worn couches in the control room, passing around a soda…
No one will ever see the video. The man getting a massage in the first frame is dead now, gunned down last January at a gas station on South Beach. The police don’t know who did it, but that’s not the reason this video will never be released. If the…
There’s a lull in the schedule, and Paulina Rubio doesn’t like it. “Open the curtains,” she says across the back of the couch to anyone who will listen. “Let’s do something. Let’s practice yoga. Turn on the television. Anything.” This should have been a good day; the first interview wasn’t…
Let’s be clear on what kind of town this is. This is a place with great recording studios, phenomenal producers, and engineering wizards, so if you’re a big star and you’ve got a hefty budget, you can lay down tracks here as good or better than anywhere else. Doesn’t matter…
No matter how many times it happens, the moment still stuns. A star shoots from the firmament over Latin America and lands somewhere in Miami: On this June night, Celeste Carballo touches down on an armchair in the corner of a dimly lit living room in the Design District, balancing…
In the usually dead hours before dawn, when house lights are dark and the streets of Wynwood silent, an unclassifiable din explodes from speakers hooked into a laptop on the patio behind Two Last Shoes. If the neighbors called the police to complain, what would they say? There is an…
A boy gets tired, it’s true. Boys grow up, get older, move on. But not Bambi. Her blond hair always shines. Her baby-doll eyes always glisten. Her soft voice soothes, sweet-talks, seduces. And her curves — as impressive as the Montana peaks and valleys where she was raised — well,…
Last year Smilez and Southstar wandered around Miami Beach on Memorial Day weekend just like the rest of the hip-hop hooligans scoping out the honeys and gawking at the stars. Their names weren’t on any of the lists at the clubs on Washington Avenue. Their rhymes weren’t pressed on vinyl…
It’s a sound that’s swiftly showing up everywhere, like a suddenly trendy drink embraced by the masses as the perfect tonic for the times. A bracing mix of tough and tender, sweet but street, that somehow makes everybody feel aa-ight in these strange, uncertain post-9/11 days. Switch on the radio,…
Forget about Spider-Man and his hots for his high school honey. And if you’re looking to Star Wars for love interest, well, look again. For truly otherworldly passion among superhumans turn to the Patakin, the stories of the dalliances and daredevil antics of the orishas, the deities of the once-powerful…
