Ten years ago a group of graduates from Havana’s state conservatory formed a band and announced the arrival of the future of Cuban music. The members of Nueva Generacion (New Generation), since known as NG La Banda, would go on to employ their academic training in the service of virtuoso…
On the kind of glorious Saturday afternoon that makes absolute sense out of living in South Florida, the riverside tables at Big Fish Mayaimi are filled with lazy diners relishing sunshine and fried fish. Despite the fine weather, the restaurant’s tin-roof indoor dining room is buzzing with activity. Miami’s cultural…
thursday october 22 Don’t be surprised if you see a man walking around town in a ten-gallon hat. It’s probably Augusta (Georgia) State University professor of history Michael Searles, who enjoys dressing like a cowboy and talking about them too. Tonight at 8:00 “Cowboy Mike” delivers his lecture “African-American Cowboys…
As controversial in Cuba as he is popular, Manuel Gonzalez Hernandez is a sign of his times. Gonzalez, known as Manolin, sings in a soft voice, performing catchy dance tunes that employ a rather formulaic mix of peppery percussion, punchy horns, and repetitive, chanted choruses. At his packed concerts in…
thursday october 15 Look out! Pope-rah, oops, that’s Oprah, as in Winfrey, strikes again. The preachy talk show host/producer/actress who wants to recast the world in her new image — fit, slim, spiritual, and well read — is starring in the movie version of Beloved, Toni Morrison’s powerful, haunting novel…
The road march is the big event at a West Indian carnival, no matter where it takes place — Port-of-Spain, London, or New York. Last year in Miami, dozens of flatbed trucks fitted with huge speakers and trailed by groups of costumed, dancing revelers, young and old, circled the streets…
Mana is indisputably the commercial giant of Latin rock. The first rock en espanol group to score a gold album in the United States, the band’s status is truly — and internationally — gargantuan. Accordingly, it was apropos that, after an arty, soft-core porn video played on two huge screens…
“Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation,” now at the Miami Art Museum, features paintings, photographs, sculpture, and film by some of the most notable artists of this century. Not coincidentally, they are all women. The 22 artists in the show represent three generations, from names associated with Surrealism to contemporary…
thursday september 17 Pssst, did you hear? The Miami Art Museum (101 W. Flagler St.) has cut back its evening hours to one Thursday per month. Not good — especially for us art lovers who spend countless hours chained to our desks and who enjoy the little breather that a…
Chucho Valdes had figured that on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 25, he would be doing a sound check at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Instead he was at home in Havana sitting by the phone, a vigil that he and the thirteen members of Grupo Irakere had been keeping…
thursday august 27 The kings of flamenco cool, the Spanish group Ketama, led the Eighties nuevo flamenco movement with their complex mix of Gypsy rhythms, rock, and underground attitude. That Ketama has left those cutting-edge days behind is evident on their latest release, Konfusion, which is composed of mellow blues…
In the future, a jazz historian leafing through old files of playbills and press clips could easily determine that 1998 was the year of Cuban piano player Jesus “Chucho” Valdes. It seems that Jesus has indeed been everywhere of late: playing a solo concert at New York’s Lincoln Center; performing…
Crossover. Record executives dream of it. Most Latin performers covet it. The very thought of it makes Marc Anthony a little sick. “Every time I hear the word ‘crossover’ something goes off in my stomach,” says Anthony, who last year became the first salsa artist to sell out Madison Square…
thursday august 20 Whew! The comedic play Making Porn gives us not just one naked man but three — and one of them is hunky gay porn star Ryan Idol! If that’s not enough to bring in the big audiences, there’s the script, which provides plenty of laughs; and the…
Omar Hernandez doesn’t know what he’s singing. Standing in a soundproof room at North Miami’s Criteria Recording Studios, he clutches a handwritten crib sheet, laboring over the English lyrics to “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” written in 1942 by Irving Berlin. Recognized in Cuba as a bassist with the groundbreaking…
thursday july 30 When famous writer Wilkie Walker is stricken with depression, devoted wife Jenny takes him to Key West for a change of pace. What follows is pure chaos as the couple mixes in with local loonies. So begins Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alison Lurie’s latest offering; her other works…
thursday july 23 “It’s always merengue, merengue, merengue,” laments Miami-based Dominican artist Charo Oquet, who is bent on letting local audiences know there is more to her native culture than that hyperactive Latin-radio sound. The third annual Dominican Youth Arts Festival features a performance by musicians from the Dominican Republic…
A fleet of ships with billowing sails moves across a large plywood sign posted at the Express Hand Car Wash on NW Second Avenue. The boats, flying Haitian flags, weave determinedly toward their island home, amid gulls and frothy clouds. Bright red hand-painted letters spell out the bottom line: Paye…
The Cuban sextet Vocal Sampling’s concert last Thursday night at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach was an outpouring of joyful noise; the euphoria in the hall matched that of a gospel summit. Using only their voices and hands, the group performed originals and classics from the island. A crowd…
Skeptical audiences are nothing new to the members of the Cuban sextet Vocal Sampling. When the group starts to perform, concertgoers inevitably fidget in their seats, turning to each other and whispering, one eye on the stage. The group is unfazed by such rustling. After almost a decade of performing…
A Congolese singer performing Cuban dance music in Spanish may strike some people as odd, but to Ricardo Lemvo it makes perfect sense. As it should: The interchange of African and Caribbean music constitutes one of the most harmonious roundtrip journeys in musical history. “Cuban music traveled back to Africa…
Long before the Pope’s visit filled the world’s television screens with pictures of Havana, local audiences were imagining contemporary Cuba in the darkness of the MDCC Wolfson Campus auditorium. Since 1993 the Wolfson Cuban Cinema Series, organized by Alejandro Rios, has presented films and videos portraying Cuban life from every…
