For too long, rap in Miami was synonymous in the nation-at-large’s mind with Luke’s 2 Live Crew. And given that ol’ Uncle Luke has been little more than an embarrassing punch line for nigh on a decade now, the ascension of Trick Daddy’s gleaming gold smile to MTV is more…
The Caribbean, claims Cuban writer Antonio Benitez-Rojo, is a meta-archipelago: a giant sponge spiraling out from the Caribbean Sea to Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, the universe, endlessly repeating. The Caribbean, in short, is the rhythmic center of the world. And so the Afro-Polyphonic World Orchestra, an…
For the purist, Miami has a wealth of fine jazz musicians who know their way around an Ellington composition or conserve the stylistic touches of Dizzy, Miles, or Coltrane. Jesse Jones, Jr., Melton Mustafa, Randy Gerber, and Paquito Hechavarria are just a few of the virtuosos who keep the flame…
Oh, happy dilemma. More than one indie night to choose from. More than two! More than three! This past year has been a great one for the local indie pop scene, with long-brewing enthusiasm finally coming to a boil. But savvy disc-curating sets PopLife above the rest, mixing deep, dark…
You left/and since you left, Castro lost/Miami, no/we hope you’ll stay/(Making beautiful salsa/Showing us how it’s done)/You left/and since you left CANF is lost/what does it mean?/we hope you’ll stay/And now you are the king/of the Hialeah festival in the spring/And now you are the king/of the Hialeah festival in…
There isn’t much competition for this category in a majority Latin county, but that’s not Volumen Cero’s fault. It’s been doing all it can to give us a good name. These hard-working boys, with their emo-gothy-hard-rock-en-español (except-often-in-English) sound, have been playing seriously, recording seriously, touring seriously, showing up on time…
Some say the battle has already been won. That the long reign of compas kings T-Vice has come to an end. No, the pretender to the throne is not KDans, Djakout Mizik, or Zin. The upstarts are the newest of the New Generation Compa: Carlo Vieux, Richard Cave, and Mickael…
One look at Bozo Porno Circus and you instantly know they’re not from around here — no matter where here may be. “We were eating at Wendy’s and I was talking on my phone, looking out the window. I turned around and [saw that] everybody in line wasn’t facing the…
What pressure? On the eve of Timo Maas’s 27-gig, 6-week North American tour to promote Loud (Kinetic), his debut album as an artist, the jovial Hanover, Germany, native is holed up in a San Francisco hotel watching dark clouds and rain spray the Bay area. But the dank atmosphere doesn’t…
Jeff Rollason, lead singer and guitarist of Miami’s experimental rock outfit the Curious Hair, is not at all interested in the music industry. “That’s not what I think about every day,” the 29-year-old professes before a late-night performance on the patio of a Coral Gables bookstore. Behind his small black-framed…
Growing up in Puerto Rico’s projects, or caseríos, may be no different than in any other hood on the U.S. mainland. Bullets, drugs, and a rap sheet are part of everyday life. But so is music, a legit way for many a street philosopher to escape the surrounding crude reality…
First-time director Michelle Lindenberger enjoys the wild. She was raised near the mountains of Arizona, did social work with delinquent kids, and led expeditions through the Florida river systems of Everglades National Park. But it was the sonic-and-strobe jungle of South Beach that propelled her to filmmaking. “I went to…
here’s a story of a jazz saxophone player, one of the great avant-garde tenors, who was approached after a concert in Europe a few years back by a fan wanting an autograph. The fan handed him two CDs recorded by the sax player’s son, Joshua Redman, and asked him to…
When a musician cites influences as diverse as the poetry of William Blake, the country blues of Sleepy John Estes, and the field recordings of Alan Lomax all in the same breath, you know you’re in for something interesting. With all that poetry and roots mixed with jazz, rock, and…
Who the hell is this tramp, Miss Kittin? Just a few short months ago, nobody but snobby music journalists and in-the-know hipster DJs had ever heard of this sardonic Frenchie. But now she’s, like, everywhere — featured prominently on Felix Da Housecat’s 2001 album Kittenz and Thee Glitz, as well…
Purveyors of the myth that trance music germinated in Detroit in the late Seventies or on the beaches of Goa, India, sometime after that had better hope that not too many Day-Glo-sporting members of the trance nation get their hands on Egyptian drummer Mahmoud Fadl’s new The Drummers of the…
The legendary Cuban-born percussionist Francisco Aguabella certainly doesn’t have anything left to prove. After pioneering the mixture of Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz with a handful of others from the 1950s on, his legacy would be assured even if he decided to hang up his batá drum and congas for the…
Pitchshifter is trying to earn a black belt in Digitsu, fusing breakbeats, schizo dynamics, and rapid-fire techno with industrial rock. Unfortunately its influences seem to only stretch back to early Nine Inch Nails with a pinch of Filter’s sense of melody. And lyrically, save for the cryptic refrain “Science never…
Bowery rock cooked up in Spokane, Washington. An interesting elixir. The Makers look and sound like a mission statement for Seventies rock glam: leather and scarves and skinny legs, lyrics charged with suicide, vintage Gibson SG’s for authentic buzz. And on their tenth LP, Strangest Parade, the Makers expand on…
The strongest, strangest folk-based music out of Western Europe sounds closer to medieval Bulgarian grain-threshing songs than anything from modern Scandinavia. But don’t tell that to the members of Finland’s “girl group” Värttinä, who have invented a delirium-inducing flavor of pop anchored to a seventeenth-century Finnish Karelian musical genre called…
An upbeat Pepe Alva stands unrecognized outside Billboardlive, passing out flyers to clusters of concertgoers scurrying down the escalator after the Fito Paez show. With his wavy hair tangling in the breeze, Alva sifts through the crowd unnoticed at first even though the flyers are plastered with his face. The…
Dang-dut! The sound of the tabla is unmistakable. Sharp, hollow, and surprisingly melodic for a drum, it can percolate in the background like water dripping in a subterranean pool or rattle at full throttle at machine-gun pace. Many people know the distinctive timbre of the tabla from its backbone role…
