Los Zafiros Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch) The London-based World Circuit label has had phenomenal success with Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban All Stars, and septuagenarian singer Ibrahim Ferrer’s recent solo album. With more than two million records sold, the label is clearly on to something good: the preservation of twentieth-century…
in a straight world
In the rich, varied, and bizarre history of African pop music, the absurd tragedy of the Ethiopian pop recording industry stands alone. Less than a decade separates cradle from grave. When 24-year-old Amha Eshete took the gutsy move of founding Amha Records in Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa in…
Drum and bass is a genre notable for its rhythmic innovation and an ever-changing cutting edge that seems to mutate with the week’s latest twelve-inch single. It’s also all too often marked by a startling lack of musicality. A typical drum and bass single usually starts off establishing the now-familiar…
For decades France’s superiority over America in the area of wine was unquestionable. America retaliated by sending its finest jazz artists to France, where critics and music lovers elevated them to the highest levels of esteem. In the post-cold war era, during which California wines have rivaled the best of…
“Electro and bass is Miami, whether we like it or not. You can’t get away from it,” says Seven, the elusive figure behind Chocolate Industries, the local record label famed for bringing experimental sounds to the world and in the process putting Miami on the map as a hotbed for…
Prominent American musicians wax lyrical over him. In his own country a colleague wrote a tune about him, transforming his name into a verb. Lately it seems that people all across the world have become “Caetano-ized.” But for Brazil’s Caetano Veloso, the universal embrace that he’s currently receiving has been…
Maybe it’s because they recorded tough R&B, raunchy blues, and wildcat rockabilly in a city where straight-line honky-tonkers ruled the Nashville nest. Or maybe it’s because its staggering roster of talent never cracked the pop charts. Whatever the reason, Excello Records and its parent company Nashboro have somehow slid through…
Eliades Ochoa y el Cuarteto Patria Sublime Illusion (Higher Octave Music) It isn’t hard to find a silver lining in Buena Vista Social Club, the enchantingly sensual collaboration between Ry Cooder and some of Cuba’s legendary-but-almost-forgotten musicians that became an unexpected worldwide smash. But one of the sweetest aftershocks is…
Juan-Carlos Formell Songs from a Little Blue House (Wicklow) This isn’t your father’s son. It isn’t Juan-Carlos Formell’s father’s son, either. On Songs from a Little Blue House, Juan-Carlos takes the kind of wide departure from the traditional Cuban son, charanga, and “feeling” genres that daddy Juan Formell probably never…
There was something in his eyes, Augustus Pablo’s inevitably reefer-blurred eyes, that was alternately haunting and sad, chilling and beautiful. In the numerous photos of the dub innovator that grace the slew of albums released during his life (which ended May 17 at the age of 46 after a bout…
Ask for James Baldwin. That’s how you get Chris Rock on the phone this morning, by telling the hotel operator in Philadelphia you want to talk to the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, and Blues for Mr. Charlie. The operator chuckles slightly when…
Where were the Cubans? That was the nagging question hanging in the air at this year’s MIDEM Americas conference. Cuban music may be hotter than ever, but it was virtually invisible at the convention. The official word out of MIDEM head Xavier Roy’s office was that the conference was “diversifying”…
Wayne Coyne is no madman. Julian Cope may have fried his brain and come out the other side barely intact, but Coyne (rock’s other modern-day psychedelic warrior) makes it a point to soberly lead the Flaming Lips into the studio playground to tweak and twist the five senses. The Soft…
The Beta Band fits approximately nowhere. Signed to a label known for spearheading the pop-electronica invasion in America, the band’s records feature nary a danceable track. Beta’s music bears some resemblance to the hip-hop folk of Beck, but the group doesn’t even try to traffic in singles. And now it…
Rubberoom Architechnology (3-2-1) Like Public Enemy in the late ’80s, Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan has cast a long shadow over the ’90s hip-hop scene. Public Enemy’s great innovation was to speed up the beats pioneered by rap artists such as Run DMC, with lyrics as politically direct as the Clash’s…
Delano security is acting a bit nervous. It’s a beautiful afternoon in the hotel’s artfully sculpted grassy back yard, but today’s lounging guests look very different from the usual run of schmoozing businessmen, high-rolling European tourists, and Hollywood figures. Instead it’s a parade of thug chic, with a large gathering…
Miles Davis Panthalassa: The Remixes (Columbia) When the Star Wars trilogy was updated for re-release over the past few years, George Lucas’s crew at Industrial Light & Magic tooled around with added special effects to modernize those sci-fi classics. Fans who were up for a few new surprises were happy…
Kiss the Cameo Theatre goodbye. That’s the word from Chicago-based developer Ken Smith, who has just signed a ten-year lease to take over the operating reins at the Miami Beach venue. The winner of a fierce bidding war for the site, Smith intends to drastically overhaul the interior of the…
Percussionist Francisco Aguabella is emphatic when asked whether anyone else can perform the types of rhythms he has been playing since he came to the United States from Cuba in 1957. “No,” he says in his heavy Cuban accent, “nobody else can play these rhythms because I’m the only one…
The sophomore slump is a popular phenomenon in modern music. A band’s debut release does well; the next album falls short of expectations as the group stumbles to re-create the magic that brought fans into its realm in the first place. Maybe this lack of inspiration is owing to a…
The word crossover hangs in the air at this year’s MIDEM Americas 1999 conference, which rolls into Miami Beach next week with a series of daytime panels and evening music showcases, all spotlighting Latin, Caribbean, and African artists and the record labels eager to sell them to American audiences. “What…
