Music

Sophomore year, 1991. The darkness outside presses like ears up against the windows of a coffeehouse in the woods. I am sitting about three feet away from her as she stands at the microphone, guitar in hand and each of her fingers taped like a boxer. The strings of her…

In a flowing white tunic, the band leader takes up his mallets nimbly like a new appendage. With a subtle four count, his hands maneuver in quick jumps around the concave surface of his steel pan while the band follows with what sounds like a jazzy calypso tune. The plinky…

Heavy beats burst out of car windows across Opa-locka as Trinidadian-American pirate radio DJ Gisselle “the Wassie One” Blanche blasts the latest hip-hop-flavored release from soca queen Alison Hinds. Inside a tidy house on the city’s north side, the big bass of Mixx 96 FM gives way to the tickling…

The four guys lunching at the Beach all look the same, but one lets it be known who the boss is. “I am,” says Cuban-born A.T. Molina, his face hidden behind translucent glasses and a hat, hip-hop style. In the bustling restaurant, people talk and nosh noisily while Molina –…

As spinoffs go, Tom Tom Club came with a remarkable schematic for success. Jettisoning the intellectual elitism that had a grip on their full-time group, Talking Heads, drummer Chris Frantz and his wife, bassist Tina Weymouth, founded their side project on the premise of funky, beachcombing fun. It worked, too:…

Yeah, mate, think I’ve had enough of this heat,” says Dave Ralph without preamble as he strolls into a South Beach coffee shop on a recent summer evening. Wearing sandals, days-old facial scruff, and a white T-shirt depicting the Berlin airlift, the DJ announces that by the time this article…

Yat-Kha’s end-of-the-century Delai Beldiri was a glorious freak show that counterpoised stone-age shamanic Siberian throat singing with Sixties-era rock-combo amplification. No matter how many times I played it, the album never ceased to startle me. But its successor, Aldyn Dashka, is so well crafted, so heady with one good song…

The North Miami Beach offices of Starline Communications look more like a guy’s dorm room than the headquarters of an up-and-coming media enterprise. Posters of Eve, Piccolo, and Eminem smother the wooden panels of the dimly lit four-room suite where hip-hop personalities hang and Jesse Coleman and Danny Compodonico –…

To see it from Birdman’s eye view, the sparse crowd for his Friday-night set recently at Churchill’s might signal a lack of appreciation for the veteran rocker’s special brand of music, a sort of southern Florida culture on the skids. But maybe it was just the shitty weather. Either way…

When singer-songwriter Fred Neil passed away at his Key West home at the age of 64 last July 5, a fabled part of Miami history died with him. In the eyes of American hipsters of the Sixties, Neil embodied Coconut Grove at a time when the city had a major…

Squirming in lawn chairs beneath the afternoon sun and listening patiently to loudspeakers blaring Gloria Estefan’s greatest hits, jazz fans at Bayfront Park watched a stage crew move equipment and tweak microphones for 45 minutes. Sweaty and polite, the crowd represented just the multiethnic mix Music Fest Miami, an event…

He may be from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but few DJs have become more synonymous with Miami than David Padilla. His seasoned sound has been the driving force behind not only his lengthy South Beach residency runs but also the ReMix Party, a roving bash now in its fourth month…

There’s nothing particularly hip about the Sandbar Lounge in North Beach. Dark green walls decorated with beer signs, sombreros, and lava lamps surround three pool tables, a long oval bar, and what passes for a small stage, a tiny space sandwiched between doorways leading to the women’s and men’s bathrooms…

“We’re going to talk about the Latin Grammys,” I propose to Bacilos skeptically, repeating the phrase that has reverberated monotonously through the Magic City like an echo. “Sí, sí, sí,” responds the trio of Latin Americans who played together for six years in Miami before breaking out with a major…

One night in April 1999, in the EGREM studios in Havana, the Cuban producer Tony Pinelli, along with a group of top island musicians, was breathing life into a traditional disc featuring the queen of country music, Celina Gonzalez, and her son Lazaro Reutilio. Musicians came and went from the…

The official story is in: The Source Hip-Hop Music Awards ended on a happy if uninspiring note until Raymond Scott, part owner of the magazine, got into trouble at the end of the party. City of Miami Beach Police arrested the rapper known as Ray Benzino for speeding and resisting…

Charlie Haden, onstage at the Theatre Maisonneuve in Montreal two months ago, caressed the strings of his bass, gently swaying from left to right as he nurtured the genteel rhythms of the Cuban and Mexican boleros heard on his new album, Nocturne. It was a performance of elegance and sophisticated…

Driving through this lavish residential North Miami neighborhood, you would never know that behind the beige iron gates of a towering, almost three-story Mediterranean style villa nestled in the middle of the block is the iriest vibe this side of Jamaica. If you can make it past these private gates,…

Hey, faggot!” The visitor from New York stopped dead in his tracks. An incredulous look crossed his face as he turned toward Washington Avenue. He eyed an SUV speeding down the strip, pumping out DMX and full of do-rag-wearing boys out for a joy ride. “Man, I’ve never been called…

Listening to an old-time radio show years ago, Emilio Reguiera heard a raspy voice slur through a calypso chorus, cracking the words into jagged shards of disappointment without ever losing the beat. He could not understand the English, but he could almost see the lined black face of the chombo,…

Rebellious, provocative, revolting, or simply honest are words that have been used to describe Bersuit, the Argentine rock band partial to naming discs Asqueroza Alegria (Disgusting Delight), Libertinaje (Licentiousness), and, most recently, Hijos del Culo (Sons of the Shit Hole). Sometimes distracted by the noise of his raucous bandmates while…