As I sat through a screening of West Side Story at a Lincoln Square movie theater—literally in the same neighborhood portrayed in the film—I couldn’t escape a growing realization. These days, we are trapped in a cycle of repetition, one in which the gnarled conflicts and perhaps small triumphs of the postwar era repeat themselves over and […]
Read more
A few months ago in a Tallahassee, Fla., recording studio, the Cuban vocalist and composer Cimafunk was engaged in a climactic meeting of the minds with the Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton when they stumbled on a fascinating connection between African American and Afro-Cuban music. Cimafunk, born Erik Iglesias Rodríguez, was scatting out the 1950s smash “Los Marcianos,” which instantly […]
Read more
Throughout his fiction and nonfiction, Francisco Goldman has mapped the many border lines that pervade his life. Some of his novels have mined his Central American family connections. His journalistic work has uncovered the genocidal policies of the US government and its Guatemalan government collaborators. Sometimes he has adopted the detached demeanor of a forensic […]
Read more
In many ways, Larry Harlow — one of the central figures of salsa and its defining label, Fania Records — was a master at mixing the diverse musical connections between New York and the Caribbean. In a career that spanned six decades, he stitched together overlapping genres like rock, jazz and R&B and various Cuban genres like rumba, son […]
Read more
Over the past 20 years, Raoul Peck has emerged as one of his generation’s leading filmmakers and intellectuals. Beginning with Lumumba and Sometimes in April, his unflinching examinations of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 and the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Peck has shown us the horrors of late-stage decolonization and postcolonialism. With his last two feature […]
Read more
From its opening sequence, Lin Manuel Miranda’s new film “In the Heights” (adapted from the stage musical of the same name) spells out its Disney-ish conceit for the audience. “Once upon a time in a far-away land called Nueva York,” his lead character Usnavi, played by Anthony Ramos, assures a group of small children seated […]
Read more
A quiet story in the entertainment site Deadline that television star Eva Longoria and Black-ish creator Kenya Barris would be developing a new sitcom revolving around a “modern Latinx family” seemed to set off Texas Sen. Ted Cruz Wednesday. “No actual Latino uses the woke made-up term Latinx,” he tweeted, reiterating a now familiar conservative talking point. Since it […]
Read more
Rubén Blades is a renowned vocalist, one of the emblematic singer-songwriters of 1970s salsa. But he’s not always recognized for his achievements in other disciplines: He’s also a Broadway and Hollywood actor, a composer, a Harvard Law School master’s graduate and a one-time candidate for president of his native Panama. And don’t ever say he can’t sing […]
Read more
Last month, an email obtained by Axios revealed that Joe Biden’s administration is encouraging the elimination of the use of the term “alien” or “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented individual” or “undocumented noncitizen” in all official documents, outreach efforts and other communications, to describe those in the US who are not citizens. It’s a significant development that […]
Read more
FRANKIE REYESX ED MORALES On February 25, 2021, Frankie Reyes and Ed Morales had a dialogue, discussing Reyes’ new Album Originalitos, their sound practice, and influences. Below are some excerpts from their conversation. Ed Morales: I did a little research on what you’re about and stuff like that and of course I listened to the album ‘Originalitos’ and it […]
Read more
ED MORALES 