Latin
Matt Wolf
Domestics of varying kinds have always figured prominently in the cinema, from Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Mary Reilly. (Julia Roberts playing the hired help? Uh, don't think so.) But there's rarely been as sullen and indrawn a family employee as the stone-faced Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), the eponymous nana, or maid, in the Chilean film of the same name. The script posits that Raquel has been working for the clearly prosperous Valdes family for 23 years and is going to carry on doing so, and what difference if she's an agent of destruction who hoovers Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
“You see! This is America! All races, genders and everything else blending together to make something beautiful!” This a quote from an American fan living in the Middle East currently on Pink Martini’s website. Thomas Lauderdale, the musical director of the band was involved in politics, about to run for Mayor in Portland, Oregon when he put Pink Martini together. When their first international hit came along in 2004, at the height of "the anti-American craze", as the singer Caetano Veloso put it, the band were an export from America that liberals could love.Pink Martini were multi-cultural Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
You forget how fast the night descends in the tropics, in half an hour the light goes, the sun disappearing with a grand melodramatic finality. You understand the Mexican tribe who believe without their prayers it will never rise again. But it leaves behind a warmth in the enveloping womblike darkness. With the breeze against our faces in the Bahian night, Brazil’s most celebrated pop star is showing me his domain, a fabulous clifftop house in Salvador de Bahia in the state in the North-East coast where Cabral’s boat came ashore half a millennium ago, and where Caetano Veloso was born 67 Read more ...
sue.steward
Latin Music USA is a long-overdue exploration of the Latino influence on American popular music. The four-part BBC Four Friday-night series zooms in on the bicultural American populations rooted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico, but living in their original entry points, Miami, New York, LA and the Tex-Mex border. The series examines the lifestyles and politics behind the music and their impact in the US beyond Spanish-speaking neighbourhoods. “Each programme looks and feels different, matching the cultures,” explains the London director, Jeremy Marre. In the early days, the Cubans and Puerto Read more ...
sue.steward
Ballet was never meant to be like this: the London production of Havana Rakatan at the Peacock Theatre last night shattered all definitions and formalities and left the audience uttering squeals and sighs of delight (and sexual ecstasy) in response to the Cuban dancers’ remake of classical poses and lifts and pelvic-thrusting salsa moves.Havana Rakatan is a journey through Cuban music and history, opening on a silent scene where a lone dancer stares out to sea – facing Miami, 90 miles away. That brief reflective, solitary moment is unique in a show lasting over two hours and exploding with Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here for the initial programme). That is certainly exciting for a city like London trying to live down its last decade (writes Josh Spero).
Kelly, the Southbank Centre’s artistic director, was keen to talk about the "ardent escapism" Brazilian culture manifests in its desire to forget its often tough reality. To this end, the livelier muses have been invoked: Ernesto Neto’s vibrant, delicate and organic art at the Hayward Gallery (19 June-5 September); the Campana Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The singer Lhasa de Sela passed away from breast cancer in her Montreal home on 1 January just before midnight, at the age of 37. Since this news emerged my email box has had numerous messages about this tragic loss, including from theartsdesk critic Robert Sandall who wrote about her “extraordinary talent, amazing life… a total original, a real artist”, and adds a note below this article. Howard Male said, “The Living Road is one of the truly great albums in any genre, in my opinion.” While never forming a conventional career, her three albums La Llorona, The Living Road and the self- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The new album of Honduran singer Aurelio Martinez hasn’t got a title yet, or a record label, and will probably come out next year. But already there’s enough buzz about him and it for his UK debut to bring out the great and good from the world music scene. Editors, PRs, DJs, record company types, promoters and journalists were out in force on a rainy December night last Friday in the decidedly un-fiesta-like atmosphere of Islington’s Union Chapel.Some clues were provided in the middle of one of his more downbeat songs, “Lumala Lumaniga” - “The voice that quiets the silence” - about calling Read more ...
sheila.johnston
The tourist cruise boat chugging up the Amazon pauses for another photo opportunity. A dozen or so tribesman with clay-daubed faces and loincloths are discovered posed like a tableau: a colourful addition to the rainforest fauna. The boat marks time for a beat till the natives, glowering resentfully, fire off a stream of half-hearted arrows. Then it quickly revs up and motors on. But wait: a reverse angle shot shows the action from another perspective. The rubberneckers barely out of sight, the naked savages hurriedly swop their loin cloths for t-shirts and trainers, and flock to collect Read more ...