You have entered a subsistence eked out in greasy late-night food pits and smoky bars filled with lonely whiskey-drinking viejos. There are also the girls from Milwaukee and the club kids filtering in. They have shadowed you for the last ten years. The company you keep defines you. The column…
Uber remixologist Judge Jules mixes hard — house, dance, trance — putting his own spin on tunes from Paul Oakenfold to Beat Pusher in his latest triad release, Tried and Tested. Known as the People’s DJ, Judge is a host on BBC’s high-profile Radio One show, where he was responsible…
A film of Nat Chediak’s life could well begin in his study in Key Biscayne, amid the souvenirs of his sweet moments in film and music. There several pictures frame a widescreen TV and shelves of CDs, among them a photo dedicated “with friendship and admiration” from the great cinematographer…
My heart of hearts shouted Pele, Pele — full of power, with one foot in Africa. How great to be a beautiful people who dance, dance, dance. How great to make music. The power comes from that stone that sings Itapoa; it speaks Tupi, it speaks Yoruba. Caetano Veloso sang…
Down NW 60th Street near 10th Avenue, a group of old-timers play dominoes under a tree, complaining about the weather. Across the street young men in braids lounge on lawn chairs, rousing themselves each time a car slows at the corner. A couple of blocks north, school kids in khaki…
Although transnational, contemporary, and based on the Cuban son, salsa is often assumed to be Puerto Rico’s national song. Enter Plena Libre, purveyors of Puerto Rican pride and promoters of plena, a traditional Boricua music style that remains little-known to mainstream audiences outside the island of Borinquen. “We’d really like…
Bruce Springsteen spent most of the Nineties in an artistic haze. Die-hard fans kept hoping for a return to past greatness after he eliminated the E Street Band and went into a recording tailspin, but it’s safe to bet that not one of those fans would call any album after…
To be alive today, fifteen years after Rata Blanca first tasted fame in mid-Eighties Argentina by playing traditional hard rock and a variation of melodic heavy metal, is a miracle. Walter Giardino, the band’s leader, guitarist, and main songwriter, says that to be able to release a new album, and…
After a week twelve hundred miles away from Miami, it’s time to gather the senses and return to the neon lights and glow stick swirls of Vice Land. A quick little turn in the Big Apple really revitalizes a clubber’s love for, shall we say, the little coconut. But the…
Who needs birthday candles when you’ve got an RSVP from the Radiators and Chubby “Who Stole the Hot Sauce?” Carrier? For almost a century now (okay, so we’re a decade shy), Tobacco Road has sparked up the wildest live shows in town. Not even Miami is hot enough to celebrate…
Something is missing at the Rock the Tiki Luau, the Friday-night party at the Palms Hotel. But what is it? It’s not sex appeal. There’s doorman Rich, with his model good looks, reassuring the hetero-curious that there’s no “construction-worker convention” under way out on the patio. No, packed elbow to…
Since the release in 1991 of Flight to Freedom, Arturo Sandoval’s U.S. recording debut on the GRP label, the Cuban trumpeter has given ample evidence of his indefatigable search for ways to remain true to his muse. In the little more than twelve years that have passed since his defection…
Surprise is the one reaction you don’t anticipate from an Eliades Ochoa album. Admiration, yes. But you don’t expect the unexpected. If anything the master of the Cuban country son usually errs on the side of tradition, as on 1999’s enjoyable yet slightly stiff Sublime Ilusion. But Estoy Como Nunca…
For six years, Songwriters in the Round existed as a kind of Camelot of the Miami music scene. For a time, the monthly event was an enlightened industry gathering, a benevolent amateur opportunity, and a place where Miami’s cultural diversity came together in harmony, quite literally, to create many of…
For such an effective purveyor of paranoia, Your Enemies Friends singer/guitarist Ronnie Washburn is a sunny-side-of-the-street kinda guy. “It’s amazing that we’ve managed to accomplish everything we have on just a six-song EP,” he beams. Sure enough, critics have lauded generous praise upon Your Enemies Friends’ brand of quirky-yet-accessible, muscular-yet-danceable…
By the time MTV Latin America aired Los Prisioneros’ (The Prisoners) video “We Are South American Rockers” — the first video to roll when the network hit the air nine years ago — the Chilean rock band that released four studio albums between 1984 and 1990 was already dead. But…
If you don’t know Teddy Pendergrass by now, you will never, never, never know soul at its most sensual. After all, it was Pendergrass — a Philadelphia native who grew up singing the Lord’s praises and was an ordained minister by the age of ten — who as much as…
Despite the seemingly endless waves of exiled South American rock fanatics washing into Miami in recent years, most Latin rock festivals in town have been flops. Even the 1999 and 2000 Florida stops of the fully beer-sponsorship-funded Watcha tour came up empty despite boasting such big Latin alternative names as…
“Gimme the Light” has become a solid radio anthem for dancehall DJ Sean Paul Henriques, commonly known as Sean Paul. In Jamaica, it isn’t color or racial heritage that sets people apart; it’s class. Paul, lucky enough to be born into an uptown family as the son of an esteemed…
Astute indie listeners with ears to the ground have been coming up to call Rilo Kiley the best new American band of the year. A reputation — including a habit of stealing shows — is ever-growing. Music journalists, having dragged their sprezzatura out to analyze the Breeders, Superchunk, or Weezer,…
Any fan of music, be it hip-hop, jazz, downtempo electronica, or R&B, will find Mark Farina’s latest Mushroom Jazz compilation a successful modern-day fusion. The preternatural DJ who’s made his name on the looped-out frames of San Francisco and Chicago house continues the trend of cutup artists sampling a more…
Nearly 25 years ago Gilberto Gil hit big in Brazil with a Portuguese version of Bob Marley’s anthem “No Woman No Cry.” Now the Brazilian legend pays tribute to the Jamaican legend once again, this time with an entire album honoring the king of reggae. In Brazil, Bob Marley and…
