This Week: Panel discussions in Miami and Chicago

Two different roundtable discussions in Miami and Chicago this week look promising for those who are able to attend. The Chicago event, From Cuba to Chicago: Pedro Páramo and Havana Blue, will take place on Thursday, March 14 at the Instituto Cervantes and is a panel discussion about artistic exchanges with Cuba. Artists from the River North Dance Chicago, the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Cuba's Teatro Buendía will participate in the discussion. Chicago will host the world premieres of Havana Blue and Pedro Páramo in the near future.
This event is free to the public, but reservations are needed (for reservations, see the web page at GoodmanTheatre.org/CubatoChicago)

The Miami event, Cuban Music in the Transnational Context, is a panel discussion featuring the musicians Gema Corredera, Yosvany Terry and Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez with additional panelist Eva Silot Bravo. This is also on Thursday, March 14. According to the announcement, there will be a music demonstration along with the panel discussion. This is also free to the public and will be focusing upon the impact of musicians who have emigrated to cities like New York, Miami and Madrid and how they are affecting the music globally. Timba.com's regular visitors will note that Yosvany Terry (as well as Yunior Terry) has been mentioned on our site more than once as an artist of special interest in the new music being produced today.

Also, the Creole Choir of Cuba returns to Chicago after their triumphant performance there in 2011 (you can read our review of that performance here.) This time, they will be performing at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Wednesday, March 13 at 8:30pm. This is a full audiovisual experience, and we recommend it highly.

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domingo, 03 marzo 2013, 10:10 am

Article and all photos by Bill Tilford -- All Rights Reserved
(This series of articles is intended primarily for Salseros who are new to Timba,
but Timberos will hopefully also find some items of interest as well.)

Yambú / Guaguancó Workshop

Those of you who know that you are dancing "On 1" or "On 2" but not too much more than that may not realize that originally, everyone that was dancing was moving to things with other names- Son, Guaracha, Guaguancó, Mambo and many others. Some of the rhythms and dances (such as the Pilón and Pachanga) have all but vanished over the years because neither Salsa nor Timba preserved them intact.......click here to read the full article >>>

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sábado, 02 marzo 2013, 10:21 am

(Photo by Massimo Montovani)

Let us begin with a few words of praise for the terrestrial CD store, or as we used to call it, the record store A recent trip to Miami gave us an excuse to run through two of our favorites, the Museo del Disco on SW 70th Street (close to Calle Ocho) and Casino Records (no website) on Calle Ocho. We also like Lily's on Calle Ocho for some things, but our best finds are usually at the first two.Yes, we know that most of you probably buy on-line these days, but you are missing out on some things when you don't do the physical experience. For one thing, it's a lot harder to go crate-digging on line. When I'm in a real store, I usually walk out with finds that I was never looking for in the first place. Those finds are often better than the things I was looking for. You may also hear something over the loudspeakers that you never dreamed you might like. This has happened to me more than once.

(Photo by Alejandro Azcuy)

Also, the physical CD, if done as well as it should be, will come with liner notes telling you more about the band, the musicians and the project. If you truly care about the details surrounding the band and the recording, track downloads won't get you there from here, and if you hope to rely on the band's website, well, good luck with that. Some are better than others, and most websites aren't forever.

(Cover photo by Jose Ortega)

So, if you have one of these kinds of stores where you live, take the time to go check it out. It's worth the trouble. In the meantime, here are three reviews of interesting CDs we acquired recently; the last two came from the stores in Miami:

For a review of Omar Sosa 's Eggūn, click here.
For a review of Maykel Blanco 's A Toda Maquina , click here.
For a review of Leslie Cartaya 's No Pares , click here.

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lunes, 18 febrero 2013, 04:36 pm

PRELUDIO As I type this, I can already hear the screams of some of my most hard-line Timbero friends and colleagues that I have committed the supreme blasphemy by writing an extended article here about a Salsa Congress, so please allow me to begin by addressing those dear friends. For quite some time now, I have been wandering about looking for insights into whether there are ways to effectively tackle the biggest challenge facing Timba music in the United States: we as a community have basically failed to attract the levels of mass paying (that word "paying" is important) audiences that the music truly deserves, and at the very time when it is politically easier than it has ever been for bands to tour the United States from Cuba, the economic realities of the position of Timba music in the marketplace have slowed what could be a flood of amazing bands touring the country to a relative trickle touring primarily the East and West coasts. Even in those places, the audience numbers have frequently failed to live up to initial expectations. What's more, many of the US-based bands that play Timba have either fallen upon hard times, adapted by playing more fusion and/or Salsa and/or survived by touring extensively out of the United States. There are a prosperous few, but they are exceptions that prove the rule. This problem is truly odd because much of the Salsa audience is already halfway home - many of the songs they listen to were written and originally performed in Cuba, and most of the most important roots of Salsa come from Cuban music..... click here to read the full article >>>