New Life for the Violin in Mexico’s Hotlands
Once upon a time, the music of Tierra Caliente was hidden treasure—wild and charismatic violin melodies lifted up by guitar chords, rooted in driving bass runs, and punctuated by varied…
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Theme: Theater
Musical Transitions
Cuban singer-songwriter Luis Barbería’s album, A Full, was awarded the prize for best album in Cuba’s annual music awards, Cubadisco in May 2015. Vocal group Sexto Sentido, the jazz piano…
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Music for Social Change
When Danilo Pérez Urriola, a salsa singer in Panama, decided to study pedagogy in the 1960s, he faced a difficult challenge: a teaching internship in Colón, one of the poorest cities of the…
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A Magical Journey
I got my first guitar from a classmate in 1967 at age 17 in my last high school year at Liceo Vargas Calvo high school in San José, Costa Rica. I paid thirty colones (around five or six dollars) and…
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La Habana por su música
My mother left Cuba just before the Bay of Pigs in 1961. She was six years old then, and she has never been back. When I arrived in Havana in June, I became the first person from my…
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