LatinBeat Film Festival Dec. 8-14 Galaxy Cinema, Village Square Shopping Center, 770 Cary Towne Blvd. Schedule: www.mygalaxycinema.com or 463-9989 Ticket discounts available for advance tickets and multiple films Art, miracles and other cons as seen through the eyes of nine groundbreaking Latin American filmmakers opens this Friday. The weeklong LatinBeat Festival at the Galaxy picks […]
Sylvia Pfeiffenberger
Bio: Sylvia Pfeiffenberger lives in Durham and hosts a weekly Latin music show on WXDU.
Posted inMusic
Hell’s bells
John Santos and his quintet rolled quietly into Duke’s Nelson Music Room on Yom Kippur. Word of the event, sponsored by the Hispanic student group Mi Gente, barely made it outside campus, but some local drummers boosted turn out. Bradley Simmons, director of Duke’s Afro-Cuban and Djembe ensembles, loaned Santos some beautiful LP Giovanni series […]
Posted inArt
The life you save
If you were to close your eyes and not see Catherine McCall’s athletic haircut, or the tanned, toned arms of a competitive swimmer, you might think you were listening to a Southern belle. The author of Lifeguarding, an intimate memoir of growing up gay and Southern in an alcoholic family, still has the accent of […]
Posted inMusic
The Peruvian rock
Alternative rocker Santino Delatore is a half-breed: “Half of me is rock ‘n’ roll, half of me is Latino,” says the Peruvian born singer-songwriter. “You see me on stage without audio, you see a rock ‘n’ roll dude. Put on the audio, and you hear a Latino.” Santino–his real first name and stage name–came of […]
Posted inMusic
Kicking brass
There’s a saying about certain volatile regions that sums up Ozomatli’s versatility: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. The variety of songs on an Ozomatli album is like that. Their music develops out of a swirling stormcloud, little tornados touching down every few minutes, dropping tango into alternative rock, punk into merengue, […]
Posted inMusic
Devil went down to Georgia
This provocation from the man we had all come to see, pianist Larry Harlow, “El Judio Maravilloso,” was the final tease. This March evening, on the 40th anniversary of the Fania record label, a reunion of some 20 of salsa’s original superstars was about to perform in Atlanta’s Tabernacle. The impatient crowd had already shooed […]
Posted inGuides
Summer camp for b-boys and b-girls
Aerosol art, b-boying, deejaying and the history of hip hop are just some of the subjects kids can study this summer at a multicultural arts program in Chapel Hill. The Arts, Culture and Enrichment (ACE) Summer Program offers a curriculum of music, dance, creative writing, visual arts, theater and cultural studies to kids in grades […]
Posted inTheater
The blackness of tango
It is just as important to be well danced as it is to be well versed or well read. Robert Farris Thompson, Tango: An Art History of Love (Pantheon, 2005) Every Argentinian is proud of the tango. Yet, it’s a commonly held belief that Argentina’s black minority is so small as to have played no […]
Posted inMusic
Bochinche: Salsa theory and the scoop on Cachao
I have a confession to make: I’ve been thinking about salsa all wrong. One internal complaint in the salsa wars, a family quarrel as it were, frames the debate as “commercial” vs. “old school.” The aesthetic preference–one I’ve shared and promulgated over the years–is for streetwise, hardcore salsa dura over lame, overproduced salsa romantica. There’s […]
Posted inMusic
Hugh’s trumpet triumph
Hugh Masekela: If you’re a boomlet, like me, you remember this South African-born trumpeter for his musical activism in the 1980s. Besides his involvement with the Broadway musical Sarafina and Paul Simon’s Graceland tour, Masekela’s 1987 hit song “Bring Him Back Home!” pictured Nelson Mandela walking free through the streets of Soweto. That song mobilized […]