Jhonny Ortiz is the one who introduced me to the rumble of Colombian sound systems! I first met Jhonny Ortiz at a picò party in Barranquilla. We started talking about each other’s work and he kindly invited me... Read Article
Lucas Silva is a workaholic. If he’s not recording music, he’s shooting a music video or a documentary or writing a script or something else. It was hard to catch him during my first trip to Colombia because... Read Article
Cartagena, Colombia’s Kevin Flórez has a fun, new video featuring fellow champeta urbano artists Mr. Black and Twister El Rey. The music video for “Cuchi Cuchi” begins with a skit depicting a scenario familiar to many young people, in... Read Article
“¡Barranquilla es la capital mundial de la mùsica africana!” (Barranquilla is the world capital of African music). If you ever have the chance to visit the city of Barranquilla on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, then there is a good... Read Article
If you haven’t already, you will soon hear and read his name quite a lot, because Thor Partridge, better known as Thornato is one of the most interesting, up-and-coming musicians, DJs and producers emerging from the New York global... Read Article
Systema Solar hail from the Colombian coast, taking their musical roots from the non-stop music and party scene and Colombian folklore. Their third album Rumbo a Tierra has some great party tracks, but it also goes deeper, in... Read Article
Bogotá, Colombia’s “champeta champions” Tribu Baharú are on their way back to the United States to perform in the nation’s capitol of Washington, D.C., New York, and “pine tree state” of Maine. The mini-tour comes just eight months after the... Read Article
Immemorial is a new film-in-the-making about the natural environments of the Americas and the cultural memory of its people. As an audiovisual journey through the minds and landscapes of two continents, the film uses a rather poetic approach—even... Read Article
It’s a hashtag popular among Colombians these days: #hueleacarnaval. Quite simply, it translates to, “It smells like Carnival.” Indeed, we are just days away from the Battle of the Flowers (La Batalla de Flores), Barranquilla’s main Carnival event,... Read Article
In what is hopefully becoming an annual tradition here is DJ Cal Jader to bring you some of his favourite Latin-flavoured tracks from 2015. As the head honcho of Movimientos (Latin events producers and cultural agitators in London)... Read Article
With The Invention of Nature (subtitled The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science) Andrea Wulf makes a persuasive case that Alexander von Humboldt’s contributions are foundational to modern scientific and environmentalist thought and should... Read Article
No one represents better the current sound of the Afro-descendent population of Colombia’s Caribbean coast than Rey de Rocha, a mammoth sound system (known as a picó in Colombia) that plays champeta at block parties in the big... Read Article
