On a recent March evening the members of She Said, a diverse ensemble of Miami’s best female musicians, gathered to rehearse for their first-ever performance at the upcoming Fifth Annual Women and Culture Festival. She Said’s director, Michelle “Quatro” Forman, readied her tape recorder excitedly as the musicians cheered each…
In 1998 I traveled to Cuba to study guitar as part of my graduate studies in cultural anthropology. I was hoping to get a better grasp of the socially conscious Nueva Trova folk music movement, but within a few weeks I was itching to discover something more intense than the…
Elsten “Fulano” Torres flashed an impetuous grin last month as he gazed at the crowd grooving to his galactic Latin pop at Little Havana’s Kimbaracumbara nightclub. He and his band were delivering a funkified version of “Dando vueltas” (“Going in Circles”), with Torres supplying the playful refrain: “I may be…
Michael Rucker got to play the Santa of Salsa this holiday season. As director of marketing for Miami-based Latin music label Emusica, Rucker spent much of his time delivering promo copies of the company’s remastered classics from Fania Records, the storied label that launched the careers of (among others) Rubén…
Ana Vega, mother of the lead singer and guitarist for Miami-based rock and reggae band Kayak Man, sits at a pub in her son Leonardo “Tato” Seoane Vega’s native Rosario, Argentina, wringing her hands in distress as she sips her drink and recalls Tato’s tumultuous political childhood. “My poor son,”…
There’s a time to every purpose under Heaven, and 7:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 16 is the moment for Miamians to take part in a simultaneous prayer for peace with earthlings in 250 communities throughout 50 countries. Earthdance’s mission is to make music and dance the channel through…
According to Tango36’s Website, www.tango36.com, the Miami-based musicians make up a rock band that just happens to sing in Spanish. They kind of cut you up and spit you out with that eerie retro goth sound on songs like “Camino al Sol ” and “Vaquero,” but the next thing you…
Anna Nalick’s melodic, slightly miffed, but contemplative alt-pop sound is likely to jive with anyone who can confess to having belted out Avril Lavigne’s whimsical “Complicated” while listening to the radio on the way to work. Okay, let’s face it, that would be a lot of us. Also running in…
This is the final installment in a four-part series about world-beat women. Read the first three by scrolling to the bottom of this page and clicking on one of the three previous articles by Julienne Gage. This past July, Michelle Forman perched herself atop a tall chair at the Cornerstone…
This is the third installment in a four-part series about world-beat women. Read the first two in our online archives. Seconds before one of her Wednesday-night performances with the Spam Allstars at Purdy Lounge, flute player Mercedes Abal rushes over to the bar and gulps down a shot of tequila…
This is the second installment in a four-part series about world-beat women. Next week: singer/guitar player Michelle Forman. Nadia Harris, frontwoman for the electronica-infused reggae band Agape, is bona fide Jah kin. It’s evident in her spiritual words, the way she swings her body to the mesmerizing beat of the…
Editor’s note: One of the hottest musical movements Miami has to offer is its unprecedented fusion of “world beat” sounds. The only thing the all-encompassing experiment appears to be lacking is a representation of female voices. Blame it on machismo, marianismo, or any other culturally appropriatismo. Yet there are a…
Ask most respectable Latin American hipsters under the age of 35 what they think of the trova and they’ll: (A) tease that you’re a Sandalista — a postrevolutionary Birkenstock-clad volunteer bound for a nongovernmental organization in a small Andean village; or (B) offer you a snide reenactment of a sensitive…
During much of the year, the melancholy tango of Miami’s 60,000-strong Argentine community is often overpowered by the bubbling salsa of the much larger Cuban population. Still, when Argentines want to be heard, they know just how to shake it up — by rocking the city to its core at…
This past March, National Public Radio presented a four-part series defining what reporter Felix Contreras called the “Latin alternative” genre. “It represents a sonic shift away from regionalism and points to a new global Latin identity,” he said, adding that record executives began coining the term “as a way to…
Those who enjoy reading what Ego Miami magazine editor Jason “Fitzroy” Jeffers has to say will be psyched to hear what he has to sing. The Barbadian, who has worked as a journalist for the Miami Herald, the Miami SunPost, and the now-defunct Street Weekly, is beginning to explore his…
Descemer Bueno, frontman for the Afro-Cuban fusion band Siete Rayo, says the art of making the apparently complex arrangements of cumbia, hip-hop, reggae, and other world beat sounds on his new self-titled album is surprisingly simple. And simplicity, he says, is the key to taking Latin fusion to new frontiers…
I need variety, which is why I hog the headphones at the Putumayo World Music sampler stand every time I go to Wild Oats supermarket. This year, while everyone else in the store was contemplating low-fat tofu, I was daydreaming of nibbling Serrano ham tapas and sipping red wine in…
Spanish-to-English-Dictionary Tereso: n. (1) Literal: Argentine slang for a piece of shit; (2) Modern: an Argentine rock band created in Miami whose hard-driving, retro-grunge rock causes audiences to bang their heads, shake their butts, and flail like entranced Pentecostals tripping into sideways jumping jacks. After eleven years rocking the local…
Today’s Cinderellas scrub the floors to the tropical beat of Latin Grammy nominee Bachá, whose duets inspire dreams of princes and brighter futures. Creators of the theme song for Telemundo’s Anita No Te Rajes — a popular soap opera about a poor Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles — Bachá’s…
Brazilian composer and saxophonist Livio Tragtenberg has reassembled his Nervous City Orchestra and is set to take Miami audiences on a second trip around the world. And though Nervous City may ostensibly be dubbed world music — for lack of a better description — Tragtenberg’s project has more in common…
Spanish singer Pau Donés and his fusion band Jarabe de Palo prove on their latest album, Un Metro Cuadrado, that thinking inside the box can be as creative as thinking outside it. “It’s important that people have a little space where they can go and be themselves,” Donés explains of…
