The Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, when New Yorkers took everybody by surprise and turned South Beach into a Cristal-poppin’ thong-droppin’ playground, four rappers from Washington Heights found themselves stranded on the sidewalk in front of Level alongside hundreds of other frustrated revelers. Funny thing is, hip-hop outfit Fulanito was…
The histories of Haiti and Cuba run forever parallel. When the going gets tough, Haitian dictators tend to terrorize the populace while the Cuban dictator prefers to throw open the borders. Either way the result is the same: The populace gets going. In 1980 and again in 1994, tandem crises…
There may not be any voting, but Miami musicians know an awful lot about getting kicked off islands. Here in our own little Caribbean outback, this Saturday night the City of Miami Beach will present proclamations to salsa queen Celia Cruz and compas kings Top Vice in honor of Cuban…
“Who’s here?” asked George Zamora, the president of record label WEA Latina, as he wrenched backward on his folding chair and squinted at the battery of television cameras perched on two platforms at the back of a conference room in the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel. “Channel 23, 51,” shrugged press…
Now that the Latin Grammys are coming to Miami, local politicians have been coy about the likelihood that Cuban artists might perform at the awards ceremony. City of Miami Mayor Joe Carollo coddled his constituency by claiming on Spanish-language radio that secret assurances had been made so no Cuban nationals…
When 34 heads of state met in Quebec City this past weekend to plot the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 25,000 protesters raised a racket. Activists marched, threw rocks, and rushed police barricades. There was no rock-throwing here when the FTAA talks began in Miami at the 1994…
Sooner or later a symbol as sacred as little Elian Gonzalez is bound to be mangled by some punk kid. Enter sixteen-year-old George Rodriguez of Newport Gestapo. Never mind that Rodriguez is the grandson of Guillermo Rodriguez Feiffe, Cuban composer of standards such as “La Negra Tomasa.” Never mind that…
The recent press conference announcing Miami as the site of this year’s Latin Grammys was a star-studded celebration of the community’s newfound respect for the First Amendment. Michael Greene, CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), led Latin-music-industry luminaries in calling on Miami “to be a…
Be careful driving through North Miami between dusk and dawn later this month; you might get caught in a stranger’s dream. At least that’s what Gustavo Matamoros, director of the Thirteenth Subtropics New Music Festival, hopes will happen. Sound-crafter Matamoros joined visual artist Shahreyar Ataie in the installation Dreams Gathered,…
Orixa, the rock-reggae-ska band from San Francisco (not to be confused with the hip-hop-son outfit Orisha from Paris), is coming to Miami, and nothing can stop them. That much is clear after the group’s appearance at last month’s SXSW music conference in Austin, Texas. With Orixa’s photo on the back…
The flights from Houston to Austin are delayed by bad weather, and the concourse is packed with weary musicians. Against one wall, four leather-clad Japanese with identical shag haircuts stand amid a pile of guitars. “We are C-o-c-o-o-n P-i-t,” spells out Xiro, the lead singer. Communicating mainly in sign language,…
Flush with the guilty pleasure of purchasing The Very Best of the Human League, publicist Josh Norek was standing on a sidewalk in New York City wondering what Ark21, the quirky record label run by Sting’s former manager, Miles Copeland, was up to. Back in 1998 the same year the…
He who holds the camera controls history, leaving viewers to peek around the corners, wondering what’s been left out and why. Fernando Trueba’s loving testament to Latin jazz, Calle 54, touches ground in Havana, New York, San Juan, Cádiz, and even Stockholm, mapping the travels of the masters of the…
“I brought my car phone!” Mr. Entertainment boasts loudly as we file down the “Three-Four Persons” aisle of the Rascal House cattle chute. He waves a bright red Princess tabletop model in the air, chord dangling, attracting the attention of the two persons and one persons lined up on our…
When emaciated guitarist Stuka nearly kicked over the sound system at Señor Frog’s the Monday before last and rescue vehicles arrived to break up a brawl, Miami Beach 2001 started to look a lot like Buenos Aires 1981. At the debut show of Argentine punks Los Violadores in the midst…
The most important thing to remember while watching La Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins) is that this is not a documentary. Because Colombia usually is represented in international cinema as the den of drug lords, it is easy to take offense at this portrayal as yet…
Like a bad habit, long-time local promoter Tom Bowker is back on the scene with a show featuring his favorite virus, Antiseen. In true South Florida do-it-yourself fashion, Bowker is flying his own personal “punk-rock gods” down from the Carolinas as a 30th birthday present to himself. It is bad…
Even before Harry Wayne Casey made his start-and-stop strut through Hialeah Park on February 3 — kissing cheeks and posing with every friendly face — enormous ice sculptures of his stage initials, “KC,” and his age, “50,” caused a bottleneck on the central walkway. Matrons in sequined sweaters paused reverently…
It’s a memory I try to suppress. December 3, 1999. The eve of Saint Barbara’s feast day at the now-defunct Mojito Room on Collins Avenue. Nearly everyone in the elegant Havana-esque parlor was dressed in red, in honor of the Christian saint’s African alter ego, Shangó. A frail Gina Martin,…
With Abraham Lincoln glowering in the background and fireworks bursting in the sky, Ricky Martin swung his famous hips at the opening ceremony of the presidential inauguration to his bombastic hit “The Cup of Life.” His dance pupil, barely president-elect George W. Bush, put his hands on his own stationary…
“We’re putting together the online with the offline,” booms Yemil Martinez with the enthusiasm of a game show host. The chat events coordinator for Starmedia.com proudly sweeps his arm across the panorama of Espacio Latino, the new Latin night inaugurated last Thursday at Club Space. Before beginning their first Miami…
Uncle Sam is a smirking skeleton flying toward a cruel heaven. A handbill advertising Negroes for sale is bound in a book opposite the Declaration of Independence. Africans in chains scream in pain, their backs bloody with welts from the slave driver’s whip. This is the vision of American Massacre,…
