For centuries, intricate guitar-picking, skillful foot-stomping, and precise handclapping have made flamenco reverberate worldwide, but the genre’s musical cries are what carry its full emotional impact. Most historians figure the form was born many Andalusian moons ago as a result of a cultural convergence of that region’s gypsies, Moors, and…
José González is happy to headline a world beat concert for Miami’s Rhythm Foundation and Poplife, but the Swedish-Argentine folk rocker is not so content to discuss the intricacies of his “Hiscandic” heritage. It is what it is, he implies, and only a minimal reflection of how he chooses to…
It doesn’t matter if they’re rockers, punks, or salseros — blast a vallenato number at a party and the Colombians in the room automatically converge on the dance floor. They soar gracefully, their arms outstretched like eagles as they wind their way among other dancers. Does this nationality have closer…
A group of Central American and Mexican men waits eagerly outside the Medrano Express courier offices in Homestead for a five-dollar snapshot. They’re posing next to local talent Lily Alvarez, a sweet, voluptuous Guatemalan gal in a silver sequined top who could pass for Selena. Most of these migrants left…
Part Amélie, part days of yore, Spiegelworld’s traveling stage really attains its proposed feeling: a Euro art nouveau circus. But anyone who has stepped inside this temporal beach attraction on a recent Sunday evening has found it also induces fantasies of the Cuban variety. The moon projects a dim haze…
Cuban troubadour and musicologist Gema Corredera, of the melodic duo Gema y Pavel, looks at home while sipping her espresso at El Pub on Calle Ocho. It’s been eight months since she relocated from Madrid to Miami, and she feels increasingly hopeful about her future as a solo artist. But…
A Cuban music festival in Miami — now that’s original, eh? But really, anyone who has spent an extended period of time around Cubans (and that would be just about all of us here in South Florida) knows there’s no limit to their musical innovation. This month local nonprofits FUNDarte…
Okay, Mama, so the Hoodstock festival’s MySpace page repeatedly uses the sh word while touting its social outreach to local high schools. That ain’t even a petty crime, especially considering its founder DJ Raw is makin’ good after his release from a 10-year prison sentence for coke trafficking. Come on,…
Dem natty dreads who first rocked it steady in Spanish Town, Jamaica, probably never imagined their music could translate out of patois and back into the language of their country’s original colonizers. Pero sabes que, bredren? Putumayo’s new Latin Reggae compilation proves the genre has wound its way all over…
Contrary to what its name implies, Miami’s 2005 Grammy-nominated Cuban son ensemble Conjunto Progreso is anything but forward-thinking. Not that the band members mind: They proudly claim to be the only local Latin act not trying to create experimental fusion. “We’re strictly a roots-oriented band. We haven’t gotten past the…
Avoid last-minute holiday shopping stress by prancing and dancing through two local CD release parties. Dive into the tasty libations and tropical gyrations found on The Elastic Bond’s latest psychedelic space odyssey Excursion. Experimental genius Andrés Ponce conducts the electro-programming, with backup by Buffalo on guitar, Claudio Cruz on sax…
Years ago, while them American cowboys sat around the campfires concocting wild Western tales of cheatin’ and deceivin’, them Cuban folk were rattlin’ out some of their own country music. Sure, theirs had a stronger African influence and was sung in a different kinda tongue, but life out there in…
In today’s world of Cuban music, there’s nothing really exotic about a band as well rehearsed in chamber music as it is in rock. But roll back the clock to the end of the Cold War, and you’ll find Artevivo was at the heart of artistic resourcefulness on the island…
Even when Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour is off globetrotting, he doesn’t forget his peeps. Take for example a 2002 performance at a Madrid amphitheater, where he noticed that a group of poor Senegalese immigrants was trying to catch a glimpse of the show atop a dumpster outside. He sent them…
San Francisco-based indie rock band The May Fire is just like its Bay Area stomping grounds — lively, imaginative, and capable of creating a harmonic convergence of seemingly contrary styles and ideas. The band features former Miami resident Catty Tasso as lead singer and guitarist; musically it incorporates surf rock…
Quiz for October, Hispanic Heritage Month: What’s the one Spanish-speaking country that always gets forgotten, or at least saved until the last minute, during Hispanic history celebrations? Although she wasn’t actually born there, Afro-Spanish singing sensation Concha Buika has the answer, and you’ll find traces of it in her emotive…
In Miami, women’s voices resound all over the music industry, but they usually don’t get much attention unless they’re accompanied by a nice set of silicone implants. Even in the politically correct and culturally diverse local fusion scene, women often find themselves sola amid male-dominated bands. But last spring, 16…
Anyone who thought Putumayo World Music hit its prime during the early-Nineties Birkenstock revival and organic Color Me Cotton clothing line for aging hippies has another groove coming. The label has never ceased to pump out a steady world beat, and these days it’s gettin’ downright funky. Artists from Iceland…
When Argentine artist Marcelo Lupis says his music is experimental, he means that in all senses of the term. Pop his first solo CD, Shhhh, into the player and out sprays a hyperactive but skillfully concocted array of jazz, classic, rock, and blues, all overlaid with Lupis’s operatic scatting. Even…
“Someone once told me that in order for a woman to be successful, she needs three things: health, talent, and luck,” says legendary Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa during a phone interview from her home in Buenos Aires. “If you’re missing one of the three, it could be a disaster.”…
When Peter Gabriel coined the term ‘world music,’ he never meant for it to be put in a ghetto. It was supposed to be the world’s music for the world, without distinctions,” explains Richard Blair, the front man for the Colombia-based electronica band Sidestepper. Blair should know. He worked as…
Jimena Fama, the elegant frontwoman for the electronic fusion band Tango Conspiracy, can call her ensemble of male musicians to task with a quick dart of her piercing brown eyes. But once in a while, the quiet intensity becomes too much. There was, for instance, the gig last summer at…
