Salut Les Cubains captures post-revolution Cuba through Agnès Varda’s curious and optimistic lens. Made up of 1800 photographs taken on a trip to Cuba in 1963, this film-photo-essay shows a moment four years after the revolution in which... Read Article
A burnished man, 40’s, wall-eyed, unshaven, his hair slicked down by the salt spray. He clamps his teeth on a home-rolled “puro,” the tail of a tobacco leaf lifted by the breeze to flap across his grey and... Read Article
Anguelique Kidjo is at it again with her latest album Celia, in which just like last year’s reimagining of the Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, Kidjo gives Celia Cruz’ music an Afrobeat makeover. In her tribute album to... Read Article
The buzz around Cuba’s Cimafunk began earlier this year for us. We kept hearing there was this Cuban funk band we just had to see. Cue to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, in March, and the texts... Read Article
For those not familiar, Carlos Acosta, born in Cuba in ’73 into an impoverished family, is one of the most well renowned ballet dancers in history. Raise the curtains, cue the lights, and get ready to experience the... Read Article
There’s a new kid in in the Big Apple, getting people up and dancing and shaking their booties to global music. But you won’t find it in Manhattan or Brooklyn. It’s in the borough with the most languages... Read Article
The music of Polo Montañez is back in circulation after almost 15 years, thanks to LusAfrica’s reissue of his two recordings, Guajiro Natural (2000) and Guitarra Mia (2002). The albums represent the brief but memorable archive of an... Read Article
The headlines surrounding the South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference these days have been about American politicians, and we’re glad that part of the festival has come to a close and the music part is just getting started. We... Read Article
Years ago in the United States, the only way you’d find Spanish language television programming was on one of two major broadcast networks—Telemundo and Univision. They’d play the (even more dramatic) equivalent of daytime soap operas: telenovelas from... Read Article
The Cuban rapper El Individuo (real name: Rafael Bou), who made the pages of the New York Times in 2017 for his track, “Mi Raza,” is making his New York City debut, but there’s only one opportunity to catch... Read Article
Meet four-piece psych surf punkrock band, MAMIS. Formed in 2015 in Austin, Texas, the capital city best known for hosting the massive SXSW festival each year, Espíritu is the quartet’s first release. We found their bilingual lyrics, which are focused... Read Article
On our radar this week is meaningful music from a Puerto Rican artist affected by Hurricane Maria, a forward-thinking rapper from Cuba who is paying respect to the shared history of jazz, funk, blues and reggae, and lots... Read Article
