Chucho Valdés Memorial Hall, Chapel Hil Tuesday, Nov. 27 Looking relaxed in a turtleneck with its long sleeves pushed up and a Kangol cap worn in B-boy style, 71-year-old pianist Chucho Valdés revealed himself to be at the height of his powers Tuesday night in Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall. He led a young, percussion-heavy quintet […]
Sylvia Pfeiffenberger
Bio: Sylvia Pfeiffenberger lives in Durham and hosts a weekly Latin music show on WXDU.
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Jo Gore searches her soul and finds her voice
Jo Gore & The Alternative open for Al Green at the Durham Performing Arts Center Wednesday, Sept. 19. The band plays an album release party the following night, Thursday, Sept. 20, at Cat’s Cradle with The Lizzy Ross Band. Near the North Carolina/ South Carolina line lies Columbus County, a sparsely populated, fertile lowland known […]
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Viva Cackalacky! Latin Music in the New South
Free Copies A limited number of free copies of the compilation are available at Viva Cackalacky. You can also listen online. Migration, as seen from the migrant: That’s the central message uniting the diverse voices on Viva Cackalacky!, a compilation of Latin music played and recorded in North Carolina. Collected by University of North Carolina-Chapel […]
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Yolanda Rabun, the jazz lawyer with that voice
Yolanda Williams Rabun has always known that she was gifted with her family’s proudest heirloom”the voice,” they called it. “We all knew we all had this voice,” she confides. “The question was, where did it come from?” So, a decade ago, Rabun decided to delve into her family’s genealogy. She discovered that her inheritance was […]
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The broad folk resonance of Kairaba
Midtown Dickens and Kairaba co-headline a dual CD release show at Cat’s Cradle Saturday, April 7, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5. In the opening frames of the music video for Kairaba’s “Mali Sadio,” a fishing boat in stark silhouette cruises across the glittering horizon just off the coast of Mbour, Senegal. Back on the […]
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Salsa ‘misfits’ Bio Ritmo find global fans with 20th-anniversary album La Verdad
Bio Ritmo doesn’t look like a traditional salsa band: A mix of Anglos and Latinos, the members don’t wear uniforms on stage. Instead, they dress with individual style, from punk and working-class to velvet-and-polyester vintage-clad dandies. Its Latin rhythmic framework remains essentially unchanged from that of Tito Puente, Bobby Valentin and Rafael Cortijo, the heroes […]
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Two glimpses into the Triangle’s often overlooked musical diversity
How to join Belly dance and Middle Eastern music • General info and class listings by region at NCBellyDance.org • Bimonthly belly dance night with live music by Lost Nomads, last Tuesdays of select months at Fullsteam • Lost Nomads band • Triangle Area Middle Eastern Musicians Meetup • Triangle Belly Dance Meetup • Oud […]
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Charanga Carolina’s La Familia
For information on ordering La Familia, visit UNC’s Charanga Carolina page. A short charanga primer: Essentially dance bands that combine African percussion with European strings and woodwinds, charangas evolved in Cuba more than a century ago. Due to their long and pivotal history in the development of many Latin musical styles, these groups have an […]
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UNC student’s dream project unites musical cultures and a mission
The Mau a Malawi album release concert is 8 p.m. Friday at UNC’s Memorial Hall. Suggested donation levels for tickets are $1, $5, $10 and $15. The album will be available starting Friday via download with an online donation at StoriesofAIDS.com. Irish fiddler Andrew Finn Magill dreams big. Back in August 2008, when he was […]
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Dark Water Rising’s Native American heritage is an inspiration, not a limitation
Dark Water Rising plays Motorco Music Hall Thursday, Sept. 29, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $7. Between pecan and live oak trees, the dark water of the Lumber River flows through the low-lying swamplands of Robeson County, home for generations to the Lumbee Nation. It’s also the home of Dark Water Rising, a sextet of […]