In 1995 Juan-Carlos Formell came to Miami for six weeks from New York City to perform Cuban classics with his band at Calle Ocho’s Café Nostalgia. Although the gig was successful enough, another Miami experience had a more profound influence on Formell and his music. One afternoon he accompanied conga…
Los Zafiros Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch) The London-based World Circuit label has had phenomenal success with Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban All Stars, and septuagenarian singer Ibrahim Ferrer’s recent solo album. With more than two million records sold, the label is clearly on to something good: the preservation of twentieth-century…
Throughout the Nineties, the wide-ranging music collectively known as rock en español, Latin rock, or more recently, alterlatino, has been the next big thing that wasn’t. Bands playing rock, hip-hop, and the world beat dance fusions that fall helter-skelter into this category have remained the odd men out in the…
Until recently images of contemporary Cuba were in short supply on this side of the straits. Cuba was mostly a place imagined, created in the mind’s eye by memories, secondhand descriptions, or mere supposition. This mystique, along with eased travel restrictions and the sheer visual wealth of the island and…
“I’ve always wanted to do a shoe show,” says Barbara Young, Miami-Dade Public Library System’s art services director, who admits to having something of a shoe fetish. A longtime fan of Andy Warhol’s spirited advertising sketches of shoes, Young was curious to see what local artists would make of the…
thursday july 8 New Orleans’s swingingest ensemble, Los Hombres Calientes, brings its jazzy Afro-Cuban stylings to the summer concert series at Coral Gables Congregational Church (3010 De Soto Blvd., Coral Gables) tonight at 8:00. The band, whose name translates as “the hot men,” counts among its members percussionist Bill Summers,…
thursday june 24 Yearning for the days when drunk South Beach pioneers gyrated on restaurant tables to the speed-flamenco strains of “Bamboleo?” Take heart: The Gipsy Kings will reprise their endless repertoire of Eurotrash party anthems tonight at the Jackie Gleason Theater (1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach). Since they exploded…
In 1992 Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act, a complicated piece of legislation that attempted to tighten the U.S. commercial embargo against Cuba while liberalizing “people-to-people” contacts. The measure was introduced by New Jersey Democrat Rep. Robert Torricelli (now a senator), whose aide Richard Nuccio was largely responsible for its…
On June 30, 1961, Fidel Castro uttered these words: “Within the revolution everything, against the revolution nothing.” Seldom quoted in its full context, the phrase was part of a speech Castro made to Cuban intellectuals at a meeting of the young government’s Cultural Council, convened to discuss the limits of…
As his duties frequently require, Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto Jimenez was recently called on to preside over a meeting of artists in Havana. The 260 constituents gathered that afternoon in May wore fashionable short dresses or baggy jeans, sneakers, and baseball caps. With hair styled in fades and…
On one typically addictive track of trombonist Jimmy Bosch’s upcoming album, piano and brass embrace like an inspired couple on the dance floor, shimmying together then breaking apart for some saucy solo moves. Congas keep the rhythm, and a male chorus chants, “Keep the tradition,” words that have been a…
thursday june 17 The Florida Dance Festival continues this week, incorporating films and discussions with a bevy of dance performances. This evening at 7:00 Dancemaker, Matthew Diamond’s Academy Award-nominated documentary about the Paul Taylor Dance Company, screens at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach; 305-534-7171). Also tonight at…
thursday june 10 It’s tough keeping a band together, especially when your ensemble consists of grizzled veteran musicians who know the road all too well and get antsy playing in one place too long. The sextet performing during the Van Dyke Cafe’s (846 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) regular Thursday night…
On a recent afternoon, pianist Chucho Valdes gives a master class to students at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte. Valdes sits casually before a worn grand piano in a large classroom on the conservatory campus, overlooking the palm-shaded tangle of grass that in the Fifties was the Havana Country Club…
Before Buena Vista Social Club gained fame as the title of the best-selling Cuban-music album of all time, it was an actual social club, a prerevolutionary gathering place for black residents of Havana’s working-class Buena Vista neighborhood. An early scene in Wim Wenders’s documentary Buena Vista Social Club, which opens…
thursday may 27 Remember Gino Vannelli? The hunky Canadian singer with the powerful voice was best known for “I Just Wanna Stop” and “Living Inside Myself,” his Top 10 hits from the late Seventies and early Eighties. The aptly named tunes mirror Vannelli’s career, which, as far as we know,…
Purvis Young’s studio could not fail to make an impression on anyone the artist allowed to enter it. Until recently the vast, musty space was filled with thousands of his expressive paintings. As visitors blinked to adjust their eyes to the dimness, their feet searching for a place to step…
thursday may 13 Established in 1985, the Louis Wolfson II Media History Center had a mission: to collect, preserve, and catalogue film and video that reflect Florida’s history and culture. Fans of their regular weekly programs at downtown’s main library know they’ve been doing just that very successfully. In fact…
William Cordova is a softhearted smart-ass who makes visual wisecracks in exquisite postcard-size paintings that can be funny, touching, and often maddeningly obscure. Scrawled graffiti, surreal bons mots, graphic design icons, expressionistic drips and blobs, scraped and weathered paint, pencil sketches, advertising slogans, and street talk collide on the small…
Cuban bands have been touring the United States with such frequency these days that their appearances in American concert halls, at festivals, and in clubs almost seem commonplace, even in the politically charged environs of Miami. After all it was only a year ago that singer Issac Delgado and his…
thursday april 22 With 23 musicians and seven singers, the University of Miami’s Latin big band is large enough to merit the moniker the University of Miami Salsa Orchestra. UM’s spacious Gusman Concert Hall (1314 Miller Rd., Coral Gables) thus seems an appropriate venue for their performance tonight, featuring Latin…
thursday april 15 You’ve always wanted to dance professionally but you’ve never been given the chance to get onstage and strut your stuff. Maybe the reason has to do with your utter lack of grace. Yes, two left feet can be a major hindrance for those desirous of a career…
