La guayabita

Encuentro NYC Colombian Music Festival

2011-10-17T17:42:00.001-04:00

Encuentro NYC Colombian Music Festival

EncuentroNYC

(VIII Encounter "Encuentro" of Colombian Musicians in NY)

Oct 22-23 Queens and Manhattan

visit our Facebook page: Encuentro de Músicos Colombianos en NY

find the 2-day event on Facebook: Encuentro Familiar/Encuentro Gala

DAY 1: Saturday, Oct 22, 1-5pm

Encuentro Familiar/Family Day

Flushing Town Hall

Flushing, Queens

Family Day Tickets $10 adults/$5 kids in advance or at the door

Produced in collaboration with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and FolkColombia, this is your chance to learn about the traditions of Colombia, with groups representing each of the four main musical regions of Colombia, including dance workshops. The programming is kid friendly, so come with the family! Empanadas by Mama's Empanadas in case you get hungry...

FLUSHING TOWN HALL---main stage and art gallery

1:00 PM Daniel Fetecua Soto (of the Limon Dance Company and Pajarillo Pinta'o)

Pacific coast dance workshop, main stage

1:20 PM Grupo Chonta Performance (led by master marimba player and multi-instrumentalist Diego Obregon/Afro-Colombian music from the Pacific Coast)

main stage

2:00 PM Meet the Artist with Diego

2:15 PM Torbellino/Ribbon dance main stage with Daniel Fetecua and Alejandro Florez guitar trio (virtuoso guitarist of his group Tibaguí, playing traditional torbellinos for the kids dance activity) Main stage

3:00 PM Gaita performance with Martin Vejarano (of La Cumbiamba eNeYe and Chia's Dance Party) (Gallery)

3:30 PM Songs from Los Llanos with Johanna Castañeda y su Grupo Llanero (traditional music from the Plains region of Colombia with harp, cuatro, and percussion) (Gallery)

4:00 Caribbean dance workshop with Lucy Cruz (learn to dance to such rhythms as the cumbia!)

4:20 Grupo Rebolú Performance and Carnival parade (representing the traditions of Colombia's Caribbean coast, led by Ronald Polo and Moris Cañate)

DAY 2: Sunday Oct 23, 5pm-1am

Encuentro Gala Showcase

Le Poisson Rouge, Manhattan

(Bleecker between Thompson and Sullivan in the West Village)

Encuentro Gala Tickets

$25 in advance, $30 at the door, minors $15 at the door only

tickets also available at the box office in advance

Eight Hours of the best of Colombian music, traditional and modern, in New York City in one night at one of NYC's most renowned music venues. This year, we're incorporating music and dance on the floor between acts, with Daniel Fetecua Soto and Pajarillo Pinta'o, Jonathan Gómez y su Papayera la Original, guitarist Nilko Andreas Guarin, and Daniel Rojas and his joropo ensemble. There's a great dance floor, a nice "tapas" style menu with a variety of small dishes from empanadas to sushi, and a bar. Come eat, drink, dance, and celebrate! Here's the breakdown:

Doors 4:30pm

5:00 Joropiada with Daniel Rojas (traditional llanero music)

5:20 Alejandro Flórez-Tibaguí (modern, sophisticated, and original Andean guitar-based music)

5:50 Daniel Fetecua and Pajarillo Pinta'o Dance Company

6:15 Lucía Pulido (renowned soulful Colombian singer)

7:00 Chia's Dance Party (Martin Vejarano's funky sextet blending jazz and Chirimia, reminiscent of a New Orleans jazz band a la Colombiana)

7:25 Tribute to Ricardo Leon Peña Villa and Ligia Naya with classical guitar virtuoso Nilko Andreas Guarin

7:40 Samuel Torres y Yaounde (world renowned virtuoso conga player and his band)

8:20 Andrea Tierra (singer/songwriter presenting her own poetry about love, life, and the land, with renowned musicians, including Edmar Castañeda on harp)

8:40 Edmar Castañeda (harpist extraordinaire and his group presenting a jazzy take on the traditions of the Plains region of Colombia)

9:05 Jonathan Gómez y su Papayera la Original (an acoustic Colombian street band)

9:20 Sebastián Cruz Cheap Landscape Trio (earthy, urban, funky fusion of rock, jazz, and traditional Colombian rhythms)

9:45 Jonathan Gómez y su Papayera la Original

10:05 Pablo Mayor's Folklore Urbano Orchestra (renowned 12-piece dance band)

10:50 Gregorio Uribe Big Band (16-piece big band under the direction of rising star vocalist/drummer/percussionist Gregorio Uribe)

11:20 Alejandro Zuleta Vallenato Quartet (from the dynasty of the Zuleta family of Vallenato stars) starting off the ALL STAR JAM uniting Day 1 and Day 2 of the festival, bringing together artists from both days in a celebratory jam to close the night, including Ronald Polo, Moris Cañate from Rebolú, Diego Obregon fromGrupo Chonta, Memo Acevedo, Johanna Castañeda, and more!

Conversatorio "La música en el San Pacho"

2011-09-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

"LA MÚSICA EN EL SAN PACHO"

La Fiesta de San Pacho, es una de las escenas culturales más ricas y complejas de la región; por este motivo para entenderla, hay que vivirla, gozarla, bailarla, bebérsela y saborearla...

Pero también hay que pensarla y reflexionarla. La Corp- Oraloteca UTCH se complace en invitarte a su primer Conversatorio titulado "La Música en San Pacho".

El objetivo de este espacio es escuchar a aquellos que llevan años haciendo parte de la escena musical y organizativa del San Pacho para entender cuál es el rol que cumple la música y cómo se han ido transformando dichos roles junto con los paisajes sonoros y prácticas corporales propias de esta actividad.

Día: 14 de septiembre de 2011

Lugar: Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó "Diego Luis Córdoba".

Bloque: 11 salón 215

Hora: 6:00 p.m.

--
http://corporaloteca.blogspot.com/

2011-09-06T17:16:00.001-04:00

Nuevo video "Te vengo a cantar" - Grupo Bahía

2011-09-06T17:15:00.000-04:00

Grabado en Guapi...

2011-07-16T10:55:00.000-04:00

Más malas noticias del Pacífico

2011-07-16T10:50:00.001-04:00

Desplazamiento masivo, Municipio de Barbacoas (Nariño) - Informe de Situación N°. 1
Report

· Cerca de 300 personas se han desplazado en zona rural del municipio de Barbacoas como consecuencia de enfrentamientos armados.
· La población permaneció confinada por los combates y se vio obligada a desplazarse posteriormente por el desabastecimiento de alimentos y provisiones básicas.
· Se reporta la necesidad inmediata de alimentos y elementos básicos para atender la emergencia.

ENFRENTAMIENTOS ENTRE EJERCITO Y LAS FARC EN CONSEJO COMUNITARIO DEL ALTO GUAPI - MUNICIPIO DE GUAPI (COSTA PACIFICA DE CAUCA)

Desde el 29 de junio hasta hoy 14 de julio de julio de 2011 y de manera esporádica se han venido enfrentando el ejército y las Farc, en el territorio colectivo del Consejo comunitario del Alto Guapi municipio de Guapi- costa pacífica del Cauca.
Al parecer los habitantes de las comunidades de los Consejos comunitarios de Napi, San francisco y del Alto Guapi están siendo sometidas a restricción alimentaria pero también en estado de indefensión como el caso de la comunidad de "Caimito", que a raíz del recrudecimiento de los combates y también por los allanamientos del ejercito que se realizan sobre las casas de la población civil, desde el día miércoles 13 de julio de 2011 se ha estado desplazando.
En el momento la mayoría de los habitantes de la comunidad de Caimito estimada en 250 habitantes aproximadamente, se comenta que alrededor del 95% se encuentra desplazada en la comunidad de Callehonda y se dice que están confinadas.
Reiteramos las exigencias al gobierno nacional y los actores del conflicto armado que libren la guerra fuera de los territorios colectivos étnicos, y respeten los protocolos del derecho Internacional humanitario entre los cuales está la distinción de la población civil.
Solicitamos a los organismos de derechos humanos nacionales e internacionales, la mayor atención frente a la crisis humanitaria que se presenta y que ponen en vilo la vida de la población civil.

Guapi - Cauca, 14 de julio de 2011.

Regional COCOCAUCA

2011-07-16T10:47:00.001-04:00

Bobby Sanabria on the Grammys fiasco

2011-06-28T12:17:00.001-04:00

Latinos and The Grammys:

The Death of Musical Diversity?

By Bobby Sanabria (June 27, 2011)

There isn't one person reading this who hasn't seen or heard of the Grammys. You know, the TV show that comes on every February that gives out those gold trophies that are replicas of a vintage gramophone record player in miniature. Getting nominated for one changes one's career. All of a sudden your visibility quotient goes up as a recording artist. People who never spoke to you are suddenly congratulating you and, the best part? The phone starts to ring for offers of work. Imagine what happens when you actually win one.

For most of us watching, the show is a form of simple escapism. We really don't know how the award winners are selected and all we see, for the most part, are the current pop stars of the day performing on the telecast. As Latinos we notice that there aren't many of us represented on the show except for the perfunctory appearances recently by artists like Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, J.Lo and, of course, everyone remembers when Ricky Martin shaked his bon bon way back in . . . what year was that? It's great they have appeared as performers and presenters, but as conga legend Ray Barretto once said, "They got there under false pretenses." In other words, they didn't perform music that represents the depth of our cultural experience . . . they performed "pop music."

You're probably saying, "Who really cares? As has always been our history in this country, we're lucky to get the crumbs and should be happy." Right? WRONG!!!

Wake up hermanos and hermanas. It's 2011 and as the statistics show, Latinos ARE the largest minority group in this country and we're leading the charge in this multi-cultural Universe we call the USA. That's the set up for several questions that beg to be answered.

Why has an artist like salsa pioneer, piano virtuoso, bandleader and nine-time Grammy winner Eddie Palmieri never been asked to appear on the telecast? Why hasn't Los Tigres del Norte, a legendary band from Mexico that sells out stadiums to crowds of 40 to 50,000, not been asked to perform on the mainstream broadcast (as opposed to the Latin Grammys (which, by the way, are another can of worms)? You get it. I could go on and on.

The optimist would think, "Well, we've come this far, eventually we'll get someone performing some music on the Grammy telecast that represents our "real" culture in one form or another . . . and didn't Santana play a few years ago on the show?" But wait, it has happened before, way back in the '80s and '90s when Celia Cruz and Tito Puente appeared on the telecast. Linda Ronstadt shocked mainstream America by performing authentic mariachi music on the Grammy telecast and showing everyone she was proud of her Mexican heritage. Cuban Latin jazz and jazz piano virtuoso Gonzalo Rubalcaba played piano on the Grammys. We were actually getting somewhere in terms of our musical contributions to this country being displayed in the music world's biggest night, Grammy night.

So what happened?

Since November 2002, when current NARAS (The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) President Neil Portnow took office, not only have all things Latino been excised from the main telecast, but anything remotely displaying America's cultural diversity has disappeared from it. No jazz, classical, or Latin music (in any of its diverse forms) have been featured since 2002. Mind you, this country's cultural diversity has grown exponentially.

The mission statement of the Grammys, or NARAS states it was formed to honor, propagate, and nurture all forms of American born music. It also states that its mission is to also EDUCATE the general public about all these forms, not giving preference to one genre over the other.

As Frank Sinatra said at the first Grammy Awards in 1959, "Remember ladies and gentlemen, it's about excellence, not popularity." Following this mandate, the Grammys' two previous Presidents before Portnow, Michael Greene (a former saxophonist with Frank Zappa) and Michael Melvoin (a jazz pianist and Sephardic Jew who speaks fluent Spanish) grew the Academy to 109 robust categories celebrating America's musical/cultural heritage and diversity and brought the membership to an all time high of 28,000. Categories like Latin Jazz, Zydeco, Cajun, Hawaiian, Native American, Polka, Norteño, Ranchera, Classical, Contemporary Jazz, Traditional and Contemporary Blues and Gospel, Instrumental Country, as well as many others which were added during these two progressive-minded Presidents' tenures and displayed our magnificence as a collective culture.

But then something happened. Portnow became President after Greene was forced to resign following a now famous speech he gave during the telecast criticizing the Bush administration for cutting arts programs. Greene, a musician-friendly President (practically the entire NARAS membership is made up of musicians), was now replaced by a major label-friendly President.

Portnow used to work as the West Coast Vice President of Jive Records, a division of Zomba. Since 2001, independent recording companies, many run by musicians themselves, or by Mom & Pop operations, began getting nominated for Grammys and, in many cases, winning them. Since these labels are a haven for truly creative artists who buck the tide of commercialism, they began being perceived as a threat to the major labels.

Why? Because getting nominated and, if you're graced with winning one of those little miniature gramophones as I stated before, changes careers but, more importantly, increases CD sales. Having a progressive jazz rock group like Steely Dan win Record of the Year over Eminem in 2001 sent shudders through the pop music community. In 2008 jazz piano legend Herbie Hancock won Record of the Year over Amy Winehouse and Kanye West. I guess you can imagine what happened when they didn't hear their names announced.

It all culminated this past February with more Grammys being won by Indie record companies last year than in any other year. In addition, Esperanza Spalding (a jazz artist who at the most had sold between 10,000 to 15,000 units) won the coveted Best New Artist of The Year Grammy over Justin Beiber last year as well.

Before you start saying, like most people did, "Esperanza who?," you have to keep in mind that the Grammys is a peer-based award. It isn't a popularity contest like American Idol or the American Music Awards. We, the members of the Academy, voted as Ole' Blue Eyes stated, for excellence. Spalding is a virtuosic bassist, vocalist, composer, a musician par excellence. It was easy for us as members of the Academy to vote for her. It was also the first time a true musician won over an entertainer in that category.

What was the reaction? A few days after this unprecedented event, Steven Stoute, a music industry insider-lobbyist, whose client list includes Jay Z, took out a $40,000 full page ad in the New York Times insulting the Academy for its decision and insulting Esperanza Spalding by stating that Justin Beiber should have won. Talk about sour grapes!

When one insults the Academy one is, in fact, insulting the membership. Of course, you heard and read about Justin Beiber fans going viral with their insults at Ms. Spalding, even going the extra mile and hijacking her Wikipedia page by writing the vilest of commentary.

What did our Grammys President do? Absolutely nothing. No press statement or press conference defending the membership and its decision, no teaching moment for the young Beiber-heads letting them know that the Grammys are a peer based award and not a popularity contest> Nothing.

Lobbyist Stoute has been notorious for his criticism of the Academy and his transparent views. Just look him up on the internet and you'll be shocked at some of the things he has said. To him, if Jay Z is going to appear on the Grammy telecast then he should be guaranteed a Grammy. The fact that President Portnow is an ex-record company exec and was reaching out to someone who is working for major artists and labels who insulted the Academy raised eyebrows from coast to coast with the membership. The joke on the Hip Hop scene was that Stoute was trying to hijack the Grammys. It gets better Read on.

All of a sudden, on April 6^th this year, NARAS sent out an e-mail blast to all of its 21,000 members (a 7,000 member drop, by the way, from previous years) telling us there was a major announcement about the Grammys and to follow the link they had posted. Guess what? They cut 31 categories, downsizing the awards from 109 to 78. All the categories I mentioned before and more, categories that celebrated this country's incredible musical diversity, were cut. Over 70percent of these categories represent ethnic and race- based styles of music. Any human resources department at a major corporation would have recommended in the strongest of terms: don't do this or you'll have a torrent of protest from Black and Latino communities.

There was no warning, no asking the 21,000 members, no asking the Grammy Chapter City Governors who represent the membership in all 12 Grammy Chapter cities. Nothing, nada. They just went ahead and did it. In a meeting that President Portnow held with the New York City Chapter on April 11^th, he stated that the Grammys have become "...too big of a musical collage." Really?

Their rationale? They said they consolidated categories to give more parity because it's become too easy to get a Grammy. Really? I've been fortunate to have been nominated four times and, believe me, it's probably the hardest thing to attain in the music business. Ask anyone.

Portnow said everyone still has a chance --- all they did was "streamline" everything. Really? Now a contemporary jazz CD (like Kenny G) has to compete against a Latin jazz CD (like me), against a traditional jazz CD (like Wynton Marsalis). Guess who is not going to win? It's like having a mariachi CD competing against a salsa CD competing against a merengue CD. Completely different genres all competing against each other in one category. The kicker is, if you were dreaming about Eddie Palmieri ever getting on the main telecast, you can now totally forget about it.

You may be asking at this point: "How could they do this without asking the membership?" NARAS' answer? They formed a secret sub-committee right after Herbie Hancock won in 2008. That committee met for 18 months in order to form a plan to downsize the Grammys. Nice of them not to tell the membership!

Who was on this ultra secret sub-committee of twelve? NARAS refuses to say despite the fact that, according to the Academy's By Laws, they have to disclose this information upon the request of any NARAS member. But, of course, if they did it wouldn't be secret anymore.

What NARAS has done is initiate the largest act of cultural insensitivity in the history of arts organizations. They have, in fact, erased us, silenced us, from the Awards.

Since April 6th there has been an upheaval of protest led by committed members of the Latin jazz community on both coasts like John Santos, Bobby Matos, Sandy Cressman, Wayne Wallace, Clay Leander, yours truly and many others. Press conferences have been held in San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles. Major artists like Carlos Santana (the first to speak out), Eddie Palmieri, Paul Simon, Bill Cosby, Bonnie Raitt, Alison Krauss, Herbie Hancock, Larry Harlow, Ruben Blades, Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D'Rivera, and others have publicly protested this outrageous ill-advised action by NARAS and asked, in solidarity, for the return of all the 31 cut categories, not just the Latin Jazz category.

What did our President do? As reported by Rolling Stone magazine, he actually reached out to industry lobbyist Stoute to have a discussion about diversity and better representation of Hip Hop in the Grammys. Nice guy. It would have been nicer if he reached out to us to discuss the reinstatement of the categories.

What has been the NARAS response? On June 15 at the Academy's New York offices, President Portnow told long time NARAS member, Grammy-winning pianist Arturo O'Farill, NARAS Latin Music committee President Elvira Franco, BMI Latin Music Head and newly-elected New York. Chapter Governor Porfirio Piña, and others, after a four hour meeting, that he admits they made a mistake but they will not re-instate the categories. Oh, but maybe we'll consider it for next year. Nice guy. In a simultaneous meeting held in San Francisco over which NARAS Vice President of Awards, Bill Friemuth presided and that was attended by several Board of Trustees members (including new Trustee Sheila E.), he told John Santos, Wayne Wallace, Sandy Cressman, Pete Escovedo and others present the exact same thing. Another nice guy.

What are the consequences of this infamnia?

First, the entire mission of the Grammys has been compromised because the 31 categories that were cut represent the most marginalized communities and music. In effect, they will never be recognized and exposed to larger audiences. You will never see an Indie artist like Esperanza Spalding or Arcade Fire (they record for a small Mom & Pop label in North Carolina and won the Best Record of the Year at the last Grammys) win a Grammy ever again.

Second, the major record labels have, in effect, attained a monopoly on the Grammys. This is the case since they have eliminated all of the competition.

Third, the lives of thousands of musicians who have spent thousands of dollars on recordings, and the small record labels they either own or record for, in the hope of getting a Grammy nomination and possibly a win, are now destroyed since they can't enter an appropriate category.

Fourth? The Grammys have sent a clear message to the entire world: WE DON'T CARE ABOUT CULTURAL DIVERSITY.

What is even more insulting to Latinos is that our category, Latin jazz, was installed after a long, hard struggle. Musicians like Eddie Palmieri and John Santos as well as noted jazz writers, historians, ethnomusicologists, and consultants began fighting for it many years ago. The roots of it go back to 1975 when Salsa (the Tropical Music category in the Grammys) was finally installed through the efforts of legendary pianist Larry Harlow when he was a New York Chapter Governor. Finally in 1994, after 19 years of asking and campaigning, we finally got the Latin Jazz category. The following year, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval was the first winner of this coveted and respected prize. On April 6, 2011 they summarily took it away, I repeat, without warning, without a heads up or a legitimate excuse.

Portnow and company state that the cut categories were not getting the minimum number of submissions, which is 25. When I asked Vice President of Awards Friedmuth at the April 11th meeting how many submissions Latin jazz was getting, he replied, "The average number of submissions for the Latin jazz category each year for the last five years has been 31." So, what gives? We met the criteria.

NARAS has also instituted a new rule stating that now any category that only receives between 25 and 39 submissions will only get three nominations. Forty and over will get the full five as was the case with previous rule. We still have made the criteria and yet the category was cut! So, what gives? We met the criteria!

Even if low submissions were indeed the case in any category, it is the duty of NARAS to let representatives in all these categories become aware of the problem so that it can be rectified. That's if there is one.

Remember, their mission is not only to celebrate excellence but to propagate, nurture, and educate. During previous NARAS administrations, outreach was done and all categories were healthy with submissions. In this regard, the current administration has dropped the ball and just took out the hatchet without warning. Nice guys.

A curious fact that no one seems to be addressing is that NARAS will save between half a million to a million dollars by cutting these categories. Those trophies, the medals (you get a gold medal from Tiffany & Co. when you get nominated plus an engraved certificate), the six screeners that are assigned to each category that listen to all submitted recordings in each category and are placed in a first class hotel for three days with all expenses paid, the two tickets every nominee gets, the mailings, press, etc, etc., etc., all that costs money.

Add to that the purchase, instead of leasing, of a new office building to house the administrative offices, while rent of over half a million dollars yearly is still being paid on the building that used to house the old Grammy offices. Top this off with 7,000 members who have left the organization (a full quarter of the membership) as well as rumblings about certain Grammy chapter offices in various cities being closed, and one can see what may be the real reason these categories were cut. How quaint that the money is being saved by cutting out cultural diversity. I repeat, over 70 percent of the cut categories are ethnic and race based.

What does all of this have to do with you, the reader, and why you should be afraid?

Because it's yet another example of how we are being wiped off the face of the earth as far as recognition is concerned. It is another sign of the homogenization and corporatization of culture going on at all levels in our society. Welcome to today's new form of racism. It even has a politically correct name, "cultural insensitivity." In other words, even though you've been invited to the party, no one will speak to you because in their minds you don't even exist. First we get Ken Burns ignoring us in baseball, then in the Civil War, then in WW II, and finally in Jazz.

Looks like the Grammys have followed suit.

Want to help? Go to www.grammywatch.org and sign the growing petition to reinstate the 31 cut categories. You can write directly to Grammy President/CEO Neil Portnow at neil@grammy.com and give him your thoughts.

Bobby Sanabria is a noted drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator and a four-time Grammy nominee. He is a professor at the Manhattan School of Music and an Associate Professor at the New School University. He is a 1979 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, where he was the first Puerto Rican to attend the school. He has performed and recorded with such legendary figures as Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Barretto, Paquito D'Rivera, Larry Harlow, Dizzy Gillespie and Mario Bauzá. His newest CD is entitled Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!! He was recently named by The Jazz Journalists Association as Percussionist of the Year for 2011. He is a long time member of NARAS. His website is www.bobbysanabria.com and he can be reached at nujackrican@yahoo.com.

Grupo Bahía Trío + Voz va a Europa y África

2011-06-24T14:27:00.001-04:00

http://bahiapacifico.blogspot.com/2011/06/el-grupo-bahia-trio-mas-voz-de-gira-por.html

El Grupo Bahía Trío más voz gran exponente del folclor musical del Pacífico Colombiano, inicia su gira 2011 por Europa y África el próximo mes de julio.

La gira es coordinada a través de la Oficina de la Dirección de Asuntos Culturales del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Colombia y es pensada como un homenaje a la Música de Marimba declarada por la UNESCO como patrimonio inmaterial de la humanidad, en el marco de la conmemoración del Año Internacional de los Afrodescendientes.

Incluye presentaciones en Berlín (Alemania) el 14 de julio, presentación que se hará en la Sala Otto Braun del Instituto Ibero-Americano. En Varsovia (Polonia) el 15 de julio en el Teatro del Centro de Cultura de Praga y en Nairobi (Kenia) el 20 de julio, programada en el Museo Nacional de Kenia considerado de gran trascendencia en África, como cierre a la exhibición “Eyedentity”.

Así mismo, el Grupo Bahía se presentará en el Festival Fusión en Berlín (Alemania) el 3 de julio. Recomendamos mirar el siguiente link:

http://www.fusion-festival.de/

El Grupo Bahía transitará por el viejo continente con su más reciente producción musical Mulataje, trabajo discográfico que se plantea como un homenaje a los sonidos de la tierra, los sonidos que brotan de la selva, del río, de la montaña, del valle y de esa mezcla especial del negro, del indio y del blanco. Sonidos que a través del tiempo se pueden combinar, mezclar, pero no se pueden transformar porque sencillamente son naturales, son propios, auténticos, son parte fundamental de nuestra herencia y esencia musical.

“2011 is going to be a crazy fucking year for online music”

2011-06-05T16:25:00.002-04:00

Aplle iCloud and what it might mean for online music: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/04/apple-icloud-cloud-music_n_871186.html

Apple iCloud Release Puts Music Streaming Startups In Spotlight

by Amy Lee

Apple’s highly anticipated iCloud is expected to make it easier than ever before to listen to your own music anywhere you have an Internet connection. But its entry into the online music world could squeeze out the smaller players already crowding the market.

Apple has confirmed it will announce a new iCloud service on Monday. It will likely be a subscription service that allows users to buy, play and store music -- and perhaps other media -- online. Even though Apple has yet to share many details about iCloud, analysts agree the new service will help shape the future landscape of digital music.

Apple’s service, which comes on the heels of new products from tech giants Google and Amazon, is just the latest entry alongside an eager crop of startups already forging a new model for digital music.

But Apple's dominance in the digital music world may hinder existing startups once the tech behemoth enters the game, experts warn.

“If Apple wins, everybody else dies,” said Bob Lefsetz, a music industry analyst. “We learned it with the iPad. We learned it with the iPod.”

Cloud services have been the focus of serious industry interest in recent days. The idea that files -- music or not -- can be stored in remote servers and yet be accessible from any point is a highly attractive Internet-forward idea, but it is also rife with potential risks.

With the iCloud, Apple will enter into an already teeming sphere of music streaming sites, including Grooveshark, Pandora, Spotify, MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody. These sites generally fall into one of three categories: music lockers, like Google and Amazon; subscription-based, unlimited streaming sites, like Rdio or Rhapsody; and radio-style personalized play sites, like Pandora.

But though these sites provide services distinct from those of the big players, they cannot match the big companies in brand power, reach and cash flow, key elements required to win over both users and record labels.

Apple’s biggest advantage in the digital music race is, well, being Apple. As the largest music retailer in the country, with near 70 percent of the digital music market, the company has established its brand as the go-to source for finding, buying, storing and playing music on a computer. Apple’s iTunes store has around 200 million credit cards on file. Startups -- as well as web giants Amazon and Google -- face the challenge of changing users’ habits and convincing them to abandon one music library for another.

"I’d certainly sound naive if I said I wasn’t worried," said Rdio CEO Drew Larner. “Apple, Google and Amazon are three of the most dominant companies not only in the Internet space, but generally in business.”

Apple’s brand has also been bolstered by its big ticket advertising, something that startups would be hard pressed to match. And, along with the music itself, Apple’s empire of connected devices -- iPod, iPad and iPhone among them -- helps keep customers in their consumer ecosystem.

"If you think about it, the outbound marketing from these services has been pretty muted," said Michael McGuire, VP of research at Gartner, a tech consulting firm. “Apple is coming into the market based on more than ten years of almost saturation volume of advertising.”

Despite the difficulty of getting people to pay for digital music instead of pirating it, experts say that if anyone is going to be able to successfully charge for music, it’s Apple. After all, with the opening of the iTunes store 10 years ago, Apple proved that if purchasing music was easy, reliable and safe enough, it could convince people to buy music instead of download it illegally. Experts say that if Apple can convince a portion of its existing iTunes customers to sign up for iCloud, it will keep those same customers from spending money for other services. After all, Apple can give users instant access to songs they already own, on devices they already have, in a system that already has their credit card on file.

“If I can access my 6,000 songs from the cloud, that’s going to eat up a lot of my time and steal a lot of attention from Grooveshark, Rdio, whoever,” said Paul Resnikoff, publisher of Digital Music News, an industry site. “Even if Apple’s service isn’t free, there’s considerable incentive for me to put money down and that eats at the money I might spend at another service.”

Analysts say that even if users don’t leave smaller music services for the big companies, the very presence of an Apple service will make it increasingly difficult for startups to woo new customers. If, as has been rumored, Apple’s service costs $25 a year, it will be almost a hundred dollars less than most services, which run around $10 a month.

“I don’t think everybody drops everything and moves to iTunes,” said McGuire. “But it may make it more difficult to peel off customers from iTunes.”

In the end, users will only choose a service if it offers all the music they want to hear. Yet securing rights to that music is a complicated and hugely expensive task that relies on cash and connections. Apple, Google and Amazon also have far deeper pockets than any smaller competitor, offering those three a big boost in starting a music service. (Though thus far, both Amazon and Google have chosen to provides services that don't rely on these deals.) And for any company hoping to get off the ground in the digital music world, significant capital is necessary just to build a viable service.

Yet even after securing deals with top record labels, turning a profit can be a Sisyphean task. Licensing fees do not come cheap: recent reports suggest Apple will pay somewhere between $100 and $125 million to the record labels so that it can offer full song catalogues for its service.

“I’m not optimistic that digital music startups have a bright future,” said David Pakman, partner at venture capital firm Venrock, co-founder of Apple Music Group and former CEO of digital music site eMusic. “It’s a hard space to build a business in to be self-sustaining because the economics are so challenged by the rules imposed by record labels.”

Nor is it possible to simply bypass the labels. Grooveshark, one of the streaming sites that lets users listen to anything they want for free without ever having to pay a subscription fee, has been sued by both Universal Music Group and EMI since its launch. The Grooveshark app was subsequently pulled from both the Android and Apple app stores. Licensing negotiations are also reported to be the issue holding up European-based Spotify’s U.S. debut.

Even after sites obtain licenses, agreements with record companies often require profit splits of around 70 percent for the music industry and 30 percent for the music service. Even Apple’s iTunes store, the number one music retailer of any kind in the U.S., does little better than break even after the labels take their cut.

Pandora, a music startup currently preparing for its IPO, is an exception to many of these sites in a number of ways. Rather than asking for subscription fees, it makes money on advertising. Further, Pandora is able to get radio licensing, which is far cheaper than licensing for streaming.

Still, anyone and everyone trying to make it in the new cloud-based digital music ecosystem -- including Apple -- confronts the same major obstacles: convincing users music is worth paying for and persuading them of the safety of the cloud.

It’s hard to run a business selling music when free options, legal or illegal, have set up shop outside your door. Every music service, regardless of its model or scale, is engaged in the battle to get people to pay for what they can just as easily get for free.

“We’re all competing with piracy,” said Grooveshark spokesperson Ben Westermann-Clark. “You have to get the people they want to listen to in a legal way that’s just as compelling as piracy, if not better.”

The problem of free music is over a decade old and though the old illegal downloading sites have long since fallen from the mainstream, new options to access music for free have emerged. The Napster era of the illegal download has been surpassed by the streaming revolution. A user can now use sites like Grooveshark and Spotify forever without ever having to pay for the privilege.

“With the rise of Grooveshark, and the rise of Spotify, something funny happened -- a lot of users just started streaming music from the cloud,” said Resnikoff. “That introduced a solution but also another problem. Suddenly you have this consumer in a bullpen you can identify. You can control them a little more, but they’re still not paying. They might be following the law, but they’re not paying.”

Many question whether the record labels’ stance is a justifiable defense against pirated music, or a dangerous adherence to stubborn traditionalism that stops new music models from ever becoming viable. Critics point to the massive decline of the industry, which has floundered its way through the digital music era.

“The huge shortsightedness of the music industry here is, why are they setting pricing in a way that puts all their partners out of business? They could get a thousand startups licensed, with 40 percent margins instead of 30,” said Pakman, “Wouldn’t it be better if you had hundreds of thousands of great companies having music for sale? Instead they’ve essentially forced everyone out of business and only the big guys can play.”

But online music services must also assure readers that cloud storage is safe and reliable. Anyone who’s used a smartphone knows wireless access is far from perfect and can lead to a listening experience marred by stutters and halts. And consumers could have legitimate questions about the new type of service. For example, what do users do when their Internet is down and all of their songs are trapped in the cloud? What do they do if the company accidentally wipes out their entire collection and can’t retrieve it?

“The streaming music sites are a pretty good deal,” said Carl Howe, analyst with Yankee Group. “With the caveat that if you stop paying your subscription fee all your music goes away.”

Still, many of the music startups believe that Apple, Amazon and Google’s entry into music streaming will help bring public awareness to a service that many consumers have overlooked, misunderstood or distrusted. Analysts say, however, that smaller sites will have to fight to distinguish themselves from one another in the eyes of consumers, who might not have a real preference between an unlimited streaming site and a cloud-based locker.

“People want their own stuff, they want their own library,” said Resnikoff. “Even in their own library, people rarely listen to their entire library, they don’t make it through. The assumption that people then go: 'I want ten million songs' is a little bit of a stretch, and it may not scale towards the broader music fan.”

In the best case scenario, consumers will be able to pick and choose from a wide range of services that all fulfill different needs.

“2011 is going to be a crazy fucking year for online music,” said Westermann-Clark. “It’s finally this perfect storm where these things have been developing for years, and now the big players are getting into the game and lots of things are changing.”

Free Trade Agreement with Colombia is bad news...

2011-05-26T16:44:00.003-04:00

The Obama administration, disappointingly, is moving towards a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia that would be disastrous for American workers and Colombian trade unionists, peasant, Afro-Colombian, and indigenous populations. Below are many, many reasons why, as articulated by policy makers, journalists, US and Colombian organized labor, the Afro-Colombian movement, and more - from the Latin American Working Group.

Things to do at the end...

Fact Sheets and Reports

Congressional Statements Opposing the FTA

NGO and Human Rights Groups Statements Opposing the FTA

Union Statements Opposing the FTA

Statement by AFL-CIO

Statement by USLEAP

Press Release by Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Articles, Op-Eds, and Videos Opposing the FTA

Upcoming Local Action Planning Sessions to Oppose the FTA

Illinois: Chicago. For next meeting details contact cozettelada@ameritech.net
Maine: Statewide Call. Thursday May 26, 5:30pm. Call-in (218) 844-3377; Passcode 1845721#. RSVP at daphne@mainefairtrade.org
Michigan: Detroit. Saturday June 4, 1:30pm. Solidarity House, 8000 E. Jefferson Ave, 3rd Floor. RSVP at gcajamarc@sinaltrainal.org
Minnesota: Minneapolis. For next meeting details contact mnfc@citizenstrade.org
Ohio: Statewide organizing, For next meeting details contact klh.ohio@gmail.com
Oregon: Eugene. Monday June 13, 5:30pm. AFSCME Building 688 Charnelton. RSVP at samantha@oregonfairtrade.org
Oregon: Portland. Next meeting details TBA. Contact at info@oregonfreetrade.org
Oregon: Salem. Monday June 6. Details TBA. RSVP at elizabeth@oregonfreetrade.org
Pennsylvania: Statewide Call. Friday May 27, 10:00am. Call in (712) 432-3100; Passcode 193472. RSVP at amy@citizenstrade.org
Texas: Dallas. For next meeting details contact bobcash@citizenstrade.org
Texas: Houston. For next meeting details contact bobcash@citizenstrade.org
Washington: Seattle. Thursday May 26, 5:30pm. Call-in (213)-289-0500; Passcode 993207#. RSVP at kristen@washingtonfairtrade.org

Also...

Send an email to your congress people.

If you want to send a message right now, click here to email both your senators and your representative.

“Like” and share the Facebook page “Stop the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”

An in-depth look at the complicated and situation in the Afro-Colombian city of Tumaco

2011-05-26T16:28:00.005-04:00

This dispatch from Tumaco, by Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), has an excellent summary of the current state of affairs in Tumaco, including a historical summary, a discussion of US policy, Colombia's governability problem, human rights violations, and Afro-Colombian responses to the situation. And video! The original post is on the Just the Facts blog, jointly run by the Center for International Policy, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and the Washington Office on Latin America.

In troubled Tumaco, little progress

During the last week of April a group from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA, Washington), the Center for International Policy (CIP, Washington), Asociación MINGA (Bogotá), and the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ, Bogotá) traveled to Tumaco, on the Pacific coast of Colombia’s far southwest, near the border with Ecuador.

Driving through Tumaco, Colombia (Short version) from Adam Isacson on Vimeo.

With a population of 180,000 and a land area about equal to Rhode Island, the city and surrounding municipality (county) of Tumaco make up one of Colombia’s most troubled and violent territories. Every year, Tumaco is listed as Colombia’s number-one or number-two municipality for the cultivation of coca, the crop used to make cocaine (the country has 1,100 municipalities). It also has one of the country’s highest murder rates — well over 100 homicides per 100,000 residents — and a strong guerrilla and paramilitary-group presence.

We traveled to Tumaco because it is also one of about fourteen sites chosen for a U.S.-supported military and development aid program that is, in a way, the successor to “Plan Colombia.” Known as “Consolidation” or “Integrated Action,” this large-scale program purports to introduce a functioning government in long–neglected territories.

Our four organizations are carrying out a joint project to monitor this program. Though its design indicates that learning has taken place since Plan Colombia’s launch in 2000, we have concerns about Consolidation: the role of the military, coordination between government bodies, consultation with communities, effects on land tenure, and several others.

In each of the chosen zones, the Consolidation strategy begins with offensive military operations to establish “security conditions.” Then, it aims quickly to bring in the rest of the government to provide basic services in a phased, coordinated way. According to the Consolidation program’s documents, the desired end state is the military’s near-total pullout from the zone, leaving behind a functioning government, greatly reduced violence, the absence of armed groups, and the elimination of drug production.

Though we were looking at it in Tumaco, the United States has invested most heavily in Consolidation elsewhere in Colombia since the program began, in its current form, in 2007. A December 2009 report by the Center for international Policy, “After Plan Colombia,” looks at Consolidation in two of those zones of greater investment: the La Macarena region south of Bogotá, and the Montes de María region near the Caribbean coast. U.S. officials tell us that the program is advancing with Washington’s support in the southern part of Tolima department, west of Bogotá, but we have not yet visited that zone.

Though it appears in the list of consolidation zones and is clearly a priority because of drug production, we hadn’t heard as much about how the program was proceeding in Tumaco. We chose to visit the city, though, because of a close tie to U.S. policy: its crisis of violence and drug-trafficking owes in part to Plan Colombia’s unintended consequences.

Fumigation planes share the tarmac at Tumaco's airport.

In 2000, a US$1.3 billion aid package from the United States, the first outlay of funds for Plan Colombia, allowed a dramatic expansion of aerial herbicide fumigation in the department of Putumayo, about 250 miles east of Tumaco, bordering Tumaco’s home department of Nariño. At the time, Putumayo was Colombia’s largest producer of coca. Plan Colombia extended into Putumayo a huge aerial herbicide fumigation program. U.S. planners did not accompany this spraying program with anywhere near enough alternative development assistance for Putumayo’s farmers. In fact, Plan Colombia lacked any real attempt to establish a permanent civilian government presence there; it continues to be weak in Putumayo.

As a result, many Putumayans whose crops were sprayed and found themselves with no economic options migrated to the Pacific coast, particularly Tumaco. The town of Llorente, in the eastern part of Tumaco municipality, is occasionally called “Putumayito” because of the large number of Putumayan migrants.

The displacement of coca, and coca growers, to Putumayo upset the social order in what was then one of Colombia’s most forgotten corners. Tumaco’s mostly Afro-Colombian population lives in near-total isolation from the rest of the country, engaging in subsistence agriculture or growing basic cash crops like coconuts, cacao, or plantains. Lining the many rivers flowing into the Pacific are communities settled by freed and escaped slaves, whose descendants were excluded and held apart from Colombia’s national life.

In 1993, two years after Colombia approved a progressive new constitution, a new law — Law 70 — recognized the landholdings of these and hundreds of other Afro-Colombian communities in the country’s isolated, undeveloped, densely jungled Pacific lowlands. These landholdings, known as Community Councils, are held in common. Titled collectively, they make up a significant percentage of Tumaco’s land area. A smaller but significant amount of land is in the hands of indigenous communities.

This major advance in recognition of their property rights, unfortunately, came at the same time that these communities entered into greater contact with the outside world. Instead of government officials offering security, justice and basic services, though, “contact” meant encounters with narcotraffickers and large landowners, who were often the same people.

The narcotraffickers were attracted by Tumaco’s strategic value. Its rivers have proven to be ideal corridors for taking shipments of drugs to the Pacific Ocean — directly or through Ecuador — and on to Mexico, Central America, and the United States. Its dense jungles provide cover for laboratories to make cocaine. Its coastal mangrove estuaries provide innumerable hiding spots for boats transshipping drugs. (They also hide “semi-submersibles:” homemade submarines, usually pulled behind a boat, that carry tons of cocaine at a time and are difficult to detect.) As coca cultivation migrated to Tumaco during the early 2000s, the municipality became a center of cocaine cultivation, production, and transshipment -– one of few territories where all phases of the cocaine production process take place simultaneously.

For their part, large landowners saw vast expanses of well-watered, undeveloped land ideal for large-scale, capital-intensive agribusiness. These include profitable products like African oil palm and cattle ranching. The oil palm — used increasingly in biofuels — experienced a boom during the mid-2000s, along with massive land purchases, until a blight destroyed most of Tumaco’s crop.

While landowners began encroaching on the Community Councils’ territories, the profitable coca trade proved to be a temptation to many of the Councils’ residents. UNODC has found (PDF page 62) coca-growers earning a net income of perhaps US$10-12 per day — about double the minimum wage in Colombia’s formal economy, and better than most cash crops offer. Its product, a highly portable paste that traffickers later refine into cocaine, is far easier to market in roadless territories.

With the coca boom, however, came a far greater presence of illegal armed groups whose presence in Tumaco had been only sporadic before. In fact, while economics enticed some to grow coca, many others have been forced to plant the crop by the guerrillas or paramilitaries who held sway in their territories.

The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and ELN (National Liberation Army) guerrilla groups started out raising funds to buy guns by taxing coca growers, but soon went on to participate in production and trafficking. They built up their presence in the municipality during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Guerrillas, especially the FARC’s 29th front, began killing community leaders whom they viewed as threats to their dominion, extorted funds from business owners, and controlled communities’ movements along the rivers.

The guerrillas had little competition from Colombia’s state, which was barely present in Tumaco beyond a few military and police posts and a badly corrupt municipal government. Government representatives spent very little time outside the county seat, leaving the forgotten communities along the rivers at the armed groups’ mercy.

The drug trade’s wealth then attracted an illegal armed group from the other side: the pro-government, drug funded paramilitary network known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. The AUC’s so-called Liberators of the South Bloc, headed by Guillermo Pérez Alzate, who went by the name “Pablo Sevillano,” moved into the zone after 2000. As in other zones of guerrilla influence, the newly arrived paramilitaries carried out a brutal wave of hundreds of extrajudicial killings and massacres of those they believed to be guerrilla collaborators. The violence displaced tens of thousands of people to Tumaco’s town center and to cities elsewhere in the country, while thousands more crossed the border into Ecuador. For their part, Colombia’s security forces combated “Pablo Sevillano’s” men only on the rarest of occasions.

After pushing the coca economy from Putumayo, Plan Colombia followed the coca crops to Tumaco. The U.S. and Colombian governments’ initial response to Tumaco’s drug and violence crisis was not to strengthen the state’s presence in the municipality. Instead, Plan Colombia offered a sharp increase in aerial herbicide fumigation over the Community Councils’ collectively held lands. Nariño, led by Tumaco, has been by far the most fumigated of Colombia’s 32 departments during the past ten years.

"People gave up ... leaving their own land abandoned." from Adam Isacson on Vimeo.

Víctor Quiñones of the Chagüí Community Council, whose USAID-funded development project was repeatedly fumigated.

The fumigation came with alternative development programs, financed by USAID and other donors. These covered only a small portion of the affected communities, though, and could do little in a context of statelessness, lack of transportation, uncertain land tenure, and out-of-control violence. Worse, the U.S.–backed Colombian National Police fumigation program has insisted on spraying any coca plants it detects, meaning that alternative development projects funded by USAID have routinely been sprayed merely because of the proximity of coca plants.

Despite large-scale fumigation, coca growing has proved stubborn in Tumaco. This is largely a result of the state’s absence from most of the territory and the lack of other economic alternatives for growers. So when the U.S. and Colombian governments begin pursuing Consolidation — a strategy that explicitly seeks to build up the government’s on-the-ground presence — Tumaco appeared to be a prime candidate.

Despite that, our attempt to evaluate Consolidation’s performance in Tumaco was more challenging than we expected. The main problem was that nobody in the municipality seemed to know what we were talking about, even though Consolidation had officially been functioning and present in Tumaco since 2008.

In other parts of the country, Consolidation is also often known as CCAI, after the name of the agency in the Colombian Presidency (Center for the Coordination of Integrated Action) that manages it. In Tumaco, however, when we asked civil society leaders about the CCAI (pronounced “Say-Kigh”), they responded, “What kind of fruit is that?” A top municipal government official told us of having received e-mail about the program and hearing nothing since, until the CCAI held a meeting in early April.

The CCAI "Coordination Center" in Tumaco.

We paid a visit to the CCAI headquarters for Tumaco: it is a room with desks, computer equipment and maps at a beachside hotel complex heavily used by police and contractors involved with coca-eradication missions. The office is meant to coordinate all government agencies’ activities to establish a presence in the zone; the Tumaco “coordination center,” however, appeared to have only a handful of staff and a very small administrative footprint.

Unlike La Macarena — a zone where the United States has helped finance hundreds of millions of dollars in military offensives and development projects — Tumaco has seen very little investment in the Consolidation framework. Instead, the activities the United States is actually paying for in Tumaco look more like the same Plan Colombia programs of a decade ago.

As in Putumayo circa 2002, fumigation is massive, while alternative development projects lag behind in stateless, insecure areas. Building up a civilian, institutional state presence on the ground is still a faraway goal toward which little progress is notable, even in the town center.

When fumigation eliminates growers’ legal crops or food crops, food security assistance is rarely available. Local human rights and development workers affirmed that a significant portion of those who displace from Tumaco’s Afro Colombian communities today are fleeing repeated fumigation.

Why has “Consolidation” stumbled at the starting gate in Tumaco? The main reason is resources. Its far-flung geography makes Tumaco very hard to govern, and its high poverty and indigence rates mean that needs are greater. A proper Consolidation program in Tumaco would require an immense amount of funding, a large multiple of what USAID, other donors and the Colombian treasury are currently providing. The United States has not planned to invest such resources in Tumaco — a great shame considering the amount that the United States has invested in forced eradication — and Colombia’s government has done little to fill the gap.

"The sense of brotherhood returned" from Adam Isacson on Vimeo.

Leaders of the Las Varas community exude optimism.

To date, the significant exception appears to be a program begun by the Nariño governor’s office called “Si Se Puede” (Yes We Can). This is a small program –- the governor’s office, in the hands of a leftist opposition party under Governor Antonio Navarro Wolff, a former leader of the disbanded M-19 guerrillas –- is strapped for cash and heavily indebted. Nonetheless, the Si Se Puede program did answer positively to a request for development financing from the leaders of one Afro-Colombian Community Council in Tumaco: the community of Rescate-Las Varas.

Here, in exchange for the community’s willingness to eradicate their own coca, the government is offering assistance with USAID support. Farmers are getting food-security aid as they switch to legal cash craps like cacao, coconuts, managed forestry, fish farming and others. The successful eradication of most coca in Las Varas is leading local officials to consider the community a model. Local coordinators of the CCAI in Tumaco say they plan to work with the Las Varas community to guarantee further investment and to extend the model elsewhere in Tumaco.

This expectation to provide future support was the main concrete example we heard of the Consolidation program’s activity in Tumaco. As Governor Navarro (and likely his party) leave office at the end of this year, the sustainability of the government’s commitment to Las Varas is in question. Consolidation may have to pick up where “Sí Se Puede” left off.

This may be far more difficult than it sounds. The community's trust in the government remains fragile, and relationships forged with the governor's office may not be easily transferrable to a new entity. Meanwhile the Las Varas community faces friction with other Community Councils uncomfortable with its embrace of the state or unhappy that they are not receiving similar investment.

The Consolidation program is proceeding haltingly in conditions that continue to be among the least secure in the country. Indeed, the Las Varas community has suffered the death of six or seven village leaders (depending on whether or not some were accidents or homicides) as a result of their choice to abandon coca and work with the state. The FARC guerrillas remain very active in Tumaco and neighboring municipalities, participating in the drug trade, targeting local leaders, particularly indigenous leaders, attacking military and police targets, and making travel difficult on the few existing secondary and tertiary roads.

"Nobody can move around here, not even to fish." from Adam Isacson on Vimeo.

Two anonymous sources, indicating points on a map, talk about security conditions in Tumaco.

Further downriver and along the coast itself, one finds the heirs of the AUC paramilitary group, which disbanded officially in 2006. (Pablo Sevillano, the head of the AUC’s Liberators of the South Bloc, is now in a U.S. prison serving time for drug trafficking.) Former mid-level AUC commanders now control smaller groups that exist mainly for the drug trade, but still regularly threaten local leaders and engage in land theft. These so-called “emerging criminal groups” are popping up all over the country. Many reportedly have little to fear from the police and military, though this is usually a result of corruption, not alliance. Some in fact do drug business with the FARC guerrillas, and often fight each other for territory.

In Tumaco, the “new” paramilitary group that appears to have wrested control from the others is called Los Rastrojos (the word refers to what is left behind after a harvest), which is one of the most powerful of the new groups nationwide. The Rastrojos now control most riverine traffic in coastal Tumaco, especially the boatloads of cocaine that continue to leave the zone. The FARC, however, do continue to control some rivers and corridors, and joint guerrilla-paramilitary drug shipments have been detected.

The security situation in Tumaco remains dire. Most people we talked to, regardless of their social sector, were reluctant to talk at length about the perpetrators of the zone’s violence and narcotrafficking. Some authorities, however, said that the number of incidents of murder and other violent crime had dropped since the middle of last year; this, they suspect, may be a result of the Rastrojos’ defeat of their paramilitary rivals and assumption of greater territorial control. Tumaco’s trafficking routes may be somewhat less contested than before, and the FARC — with the exception of some recent kidnapping-for-ransom attempts in the city center — are largely forced to operate upriver, further from the coast.

The government response to the Rastrojos remains unclear. As in other parts of the country, the armed forces tend to consider them primarily to be a police responsibility. Colombia’s police forces, however, are meant to operate in urban areas (with the exception of small, specialized units like Carabineros or Junglas). When they operate in rural zones, as they usually do, the Rastrojos end up in a “doughnut hole” of security-force responsibility: they are in the jurisdiction of army and marine units who consider them primarily to be a police issue. This is compounded by a chronic lack of coordination between the armed forces and police.

Amid this panorama of violence and narcotrafficking, the Consolidation or Integrated Action effort has barely begun. Tumaco’s challenges make it difficult to determine where to start, especially when U.S. and Colombian government funding hasn’t been generous.

The Colombian government is currently evaluating or rethinking the national Consolidation effort. When the government announces the results of this rethinking — probably in June — these will include a reduction in the number of “Consolidation” zones from the current fourteen. Several zones will see their CCAI offices close, and promises of state presence and investment will go unfulfilled. The remaining zones, however, will presumably see far greater investment than before.

It is likely that Tumaco will remain in the national Consolidation scheme. If so, perhaps a year or two from now Tumaco’s local leaders will have heard and seen enough of Consolidation to be able to evaluate the program and gauge its impact on their communities — which to date has been nearly zero.

This is a "first take" on our trip to Tumaco written by WOLA Senior Associate Adam Isacson. We'll soon post observations from other participants in this visit and one we took to the La Macarena Consolidation zone. We'll be visiting La Macarena and other Consolidation sites again in a few months, and publishing joint reports about each.

Flexible labor in the classical music world

2011-05-23T09:38:00.002-04:00

The shady world of low-cost, foreign-guest-worker-staffed, traveling orchestras, like the Dublin Philharmonic, mostly staffed by Bulgarians: here.
And, of course, the City Opera took a step in that direction (not quite there yet) by leaving Lincoln Center - future home or destination unknown...

Matchines: Una persepctiva hemisférica

2011-05-21T14:22:00.001-04:00

PROGRAMACIÓN II FORO INTERNACIONAL AFROCOLOMBIANO

2011-05-19T16:24:00.001-04:00

PROGRAMACIÓN
II FORO INTERNACIONAL AFROCOLOMBIANO
PARTICIPACIÓN Y APORTES DE LOS AFRODESCENDIENTES EN EL CONTEXTO DE LAS AMÉRICAS Y COLOMBIA, A 160 AÑOS DE ABOLICIÓN LEGAL DE LA ESCLAVIZACIÓN
18 Y 19 DE MAYO DE 2011. HOTEL DEL PARQUE CRA 5 NRO. 24-34 HORA: 8AM.

EXPOSICIÓN ITINERANTE VELORIOS Y SANTOS VIVOS
Lugar: Secretaria Distrital de Integración social. Cra 7 N° 32-16 Piso 9 hora: 8am.

AFROCANDELARIA, VELORIO Y LUMBALU POR MUERTOS
21 DE MAYO RESTAURANTE SECRETOS DEL MAR de 11am a 11pm

HOMENAJE A LA CULTURA AFRO EN BOGOTA Y SEGUNDA ENTREGA DE LOS PREMIOS BENKOS BIOHO PRESENTACION DEL XII ENCUENTRO INTERNACIONAL DE EXPRESION NEGRA Y CONCIERTO CON CHOC QUIB TOWN, K-YO, GUALAJO, ZULLY MURILLO Y DANZAS DE LAS ORGANIZACIONES ORMUAFRO Y LA FUNDACION COLOMBIA NEGRA.
22 DE MAYO DE 2011. HORA: 3PM LUGAR: TEATRO JORGE ELIECER GAITAN (CRA 7 Nro. 22-47)

SEPTIMAFRO: DESFILE DE COMPARSAS AFROCOLOMBIANAS
Desde la plaza de toros hasta la plaza de bolívar de 3pm a 5pm

CONCIERTAFRO.: presentación de grupos musicales afrocolombianos
28 de mayo de 2011. 5pm plaza de Bolívar.

Entrada gratuita a todas las actividades

RIP Cornell Dupree QEPD

2011-05-16T18:05:00.000-04:00

Festival de Currulao en Chicago/Currulao Festival in Chicago

2011-05-16T17:38:00.001-04:00

ECOS DEL PACIFICO AFROCOLOMBIA

“ E P A ! ”

Has the Pleasure to Invite You and Your

Family to II “KURRULAO”

World Festival of Afro Art and Culture,

a celebration of Juneteenth”.

June 3, 17 y 18

* 2 0 1 1 *

CFP: Producing Race: Technology and the African Diaspora

2011-05-12T15:49:00.000-04:00

Producing Race: Technology and the African Diaspora
full name / name of organization:
Columbia University
contact email:
producingrace@gmail.com
PRODUCING RACE:
TECHNOLOGY AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

Recent scholarship has witnessed a proliferation of critical inquiry into the intersection of technology and race. This body of work asks us to think through technology as an extension of so-called human faculties. Within the terrain of literary studies, technology has allowed us to engage questions of publication, poetics, and the archive. This graduate student symposium seeks to put literary scholars in conversation with scholars in fields such as, but not limited to, anthropology, history, musicology, and sociology. As such, we are interested in exploring the implication of this technological turn within the field of African Diaspora Studies more broadly.
From the slave ship to the human genome, the daguerreotype to the digital camera, the chain gang to the prison industrial complex, technology has been intimately intertwined with black social life and its cultural artifacts. Within this intimate bond, one might consider: How might the phonograph not only produce beautiful sounds but at the same time perform the political work of recording history? Also, how do we come to consider the instrumentality of the black body—wielded both for repressive and radical ends? Indeed, what would it mean to imagine race as a technology?
While the possibilities for thinking about race and technology are endless, this graduate student symposium is ultimately concerned with mining new categories of the human and otherwise. We invite paper submissions on topics that include but are not limited to:
• Literary experimentation and mixed media
• Science Fiction
• The Archive
• Gender and Sexuality
• Film, Photography, and Visual Culture
• Music, Soundscapes and Social noise
• Incarceration, Law, and Governmentality
• Performance and Performativity
• Geography and Space
• Affect, Corporeality, and the Sensorium
• Genetics, Biopolitics, and the History of Science

This graduate student symposium will be held at Columbia University on Friday, October 28, 2011. Symposium keynotes include:

• Brent Hayes Edwards, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University
• Fred Moten, English Department, Duke University
• Alondra Nelson, Department of Sociology and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia University

To submit a proposal, please email your name, institution, email address, and a proposal abstract of no more than 500 words to ProducingRace@gmail.com by May 15, 2011.

A limited number of travel stipends are available for graduate students who are traveling from a considerable distance and cannot procure travel funding from their home department. These travel grants are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

cfp categories:
african-american
american
cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches
film_and_television
general_announcements
graduate_conferences
interdisciplinary
popular_culture
twentieth_century_and_beyond

2011-05-12T15:42:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Bobby Sanabria
May 9, 2011 Phone: 917.539.4647
E-mail: nujackrican@yahoo.com

May 22nd PRESS CONFERENCE IN PROTEST OF GRAMMY TRAVESTY
NARAS ERASES 31 CATEGORIES FROM GRAMMYS
OUTRAGED MUSIC COMMUNITY RESPONDS

The world-famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, N.Y., will host a press conference by artists, presenters, celebrities and media to voice opposition to the recent announcement by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) to eliminate Latin Jazz from Grammy consideration along with many other styles of music which represent the musical diversity of the American musical landscape.

Sunday, May 22, 2011 -- 1 PM

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

236 East 3rd Street

between Avenues B & C

New York City

(212) 780.9386

There will be brief statements presented in support of the reinstatement of the eliminated fields followed by Q&A. Among the distinguished panel of presenters and others from the various

musical communities affected by this decision will be:

Eddie Palmieri - Legendary pianist, 8-time Grammy winner and former NARAS Board of
Governors member, responsible for getting Latin jazz recognized as a category;

Larry Harlow - Legendary Salsa pianist/bandleader, former NARAS Board of Governors member, responsible for getting Salsa recognized as a category, 3-time Grammy nominee;

(more)

Arturo O'Farrill - Grammy winner, pianist, bandleader, educator;

Bobby Sanabria – Drummer, percussionist, bandleader, educator, 4-time Grammy nominee,

May 22^nd press-conference moderator;

René Lopez – Grammy-winning producer, Latin-music historian, advisor to Jazz at Lincoln Center;

Candido Camero - Legendary conguero, NEA Jazz Master;

Ned Sublette - N.Y. Times bestselling author of Cuba and Its Music: From The First Drums

to the Mambo and New Orleans: After The Flood; President, QBA Disc Records;

T.J. English - N.Y.Times bestselling author of The Westies, Havana Nocturne, The Savage City;

Chris Washburne - Trombonist, Professor of Ethnomusioclogy at Columbia University,

Director of Jazz Studies;

Jochem Becher - President of ZOHO Records;

Ivan Acosta – Award-winning film maker, President of Latin Jazz U.S.A.,

NARAS Committee Member Latin Music;

Randy Klein - President of Jazzheads Records, pianist, composer, 4-time EMMY winner;
Jackie Harris – Executive Director, Louis Armstrong Jazz Camp; New Orleans, Louisiana.
And More….

THIS PRESS CONFERENCE IS COMPLETELY OPEN TO THE PUBLIC,

NO RSVP NEEDED!!!

The ill-advised April 6th announcement by NARAS to cut thirty-one categories from the celebrated Grammy awards has been met with shock and loud protests nationally and internationally. Latin Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Cajun, Zydeco, Hawaiian, Polka, Traditional World, and certain gospel, Blues, R&B, and Mexican categories, among others, have all been unceremoniously erased.

At various regional chapter meetings, NARAS has defended the cuts as being fair and well thought out, although they were made behind closed doors with no input from the membership nor from the respective boards of governors of the regional chapters. This action clearly caters to the established pop and commercial styles that have always dominated the Awards and the controversial annual TV show.

As the grassroots movement from the public sector is going viral, and the unrest and distrust from within the NARAS membership has skyrocketed from coast to coast, NARAS’ stock responses have done little to quell the ground spring of questions about their motives.

The May 22^nd press conference follows one on May 9th at Yoshi's in Oakland, CA, where considerable opposition to this unprecedented decision, as culturally insensitive and non-supportive of musical diversity, was made by leading musicians including 5X Grammy nominee, John Santos; Grammy-nominated vocalist, Sandy Cressman; members of the Carlos Santana band; Grammy-nominated trombonist, Wayne Wallace; Randall Kline, Head of the SF Jazz Fest; Peter Williams of Yoshi's and more.

For related background info, articles, letters to and from NARAS,
growing petition with more than 2500 signatures, etc., please visit
www.GrammyWatch.info

####

2011-04-26T22:56:00.000-04:00

The Shocking Truth of a Deep Undercover Journalistic Investigation: Inside Auctioneer School

2011-04-22T19:39:00.001-04:00

http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library/979-the-auctioneer

Latin Jazz Grammy eliminated - people are pissed

2011-04-22T16:01:00.003-04:00

Se ha elimindado el premio Grammy para Latin Jazz, y la gente está berraca...
(Is this the wrath of Bieberites?)

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/04/grammys_latin_jazz_eddie_palmieri_larry_harlow.php

Latin Jazz Heavyweights Protest Grammy Snub

By Larry Blumenfeld

Wed., Apr. 13 2011 @ 12:00PM

The scene outside the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium Monday night suggested a Latin jazz celebration; pianist Eddie Palmieri, pianist/bandleader Larry Harlow, drummer Bobby Sanabria, trombonist Chris Washburne, and trumpeter Brian Lynch milled about. But this wasn't a concert, nor was it a celebration; it was an informational meeting organized by the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) where the musicians gathered would soon sound off in polite yet impassioned protest of the Grammys' elimination of the Best Latin Jazz Album category.

Last week, as part of several reforms, NARAS announced a reduction in the number of Grammy prizes to 78 <http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/04/grammys_cut_categories.php>, from 109. The changes, which will take effect next year, were being made to ensure "that the Grammy remains a rare and distinct honor, and continues to be music's most prestigious and only peer-recognized award," said NARAS president Neil Portnow. The value of a Grammy was in danger of dilution, he explained; the first Grammy ceremony in 1959 honored nominees in only 28 categories, and over the years that number had swelled in an unorganized fashion. "It had become a collage," he said. Some categories failed to produce a suitable number of entries each year, added NARAS VP of Awards Bill Freimuth. "But [even after the reforms,] every submission will have a home," he assured.

But where will that home be, and what effects will the move have? Many genre distinctions--traditional blues, Hawaiian album--were eliminated or "merged," as the NARAS officials put it. The consolidation of categories will particularly affect jazz; it's lost key categories, a point not lost on drummer Roy Haynes, who was also present. In the case of Latin jazz, the move touched a delicate nerve. One by one, musicians and music-label executives stepped up to testify as to why.

Palmieri, who has won nine Grammy Awards and whose /Listen Here!/ won the category in 2006, described his work within the organization through the years, including serving as a past governor. "This hurts so much," he said, "I can feel it in my heart. It's like a Grammy scar." And he reflected on his first Grammy victory, for /Sun of Latin Music/, which won the Best Latin Music category in 1975. "It felt like I was representing every Latin-jazz artist in the world that night."

Sanabria, who has been nominated in the category twice, called the change "an insult. It strikes me as cultural insensitivity," he said. "It's the denial of things we've worked long and hard to achieve." Randy Klein, who runs the Jazzheads label, claimed the category changes flew in the face of NARAS' commitment to music education. "By cutting the Latin-jazz category, we stop mentioning it, stop teaching people what this is," he said. "A name is important," added Ileana Palmieri, Eddie's daughter and an independent music executive. "When it's tied to an ethnic identity and a cultural tradition, it's a source of pride."

The powerful response highlights a conundrum. Most jazz musicians, listeners and critics in the U.S. have long recognized basic signposts to the intersections of Latin music and American jazz: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's work with the Cuban bandleader Frank "Machito" Grillo and with percussionist Chano Pozo in the 1940s; Louis Armstrong's 1930 recording of the Cuban song "El Manisero"; Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton's even-earlier assertion that jazz had to have a "Spanish tinge" to be authentic. Still, Afro Latin culture had widely been regarded as an exotic "other."

Latin-jazz musicians have celebrated the acceptance in recent years of their music into the broader mainstream jazz canon. At the Grammys, the Best Latin Jazz Performance category was established in 1994, and renamed Best Latin Jazz Album in 2000. Also, there exists a specific awards showcase for Latin music, the Latin Grammy Awards, established in 2000. But many Latin musicians feel that's a ghetto. "There are no two Oscars," said Mr. Palmieri, "no two Emmys." Many within the Latin jazz community feels it important to retain a specific identity not just as a cultural signifier within the mainstream but, especially in the case of the Grammys, to achieve commercial viability. Sanabria noted since that Latin-jazz recordings will mostly compete within the overall jazz category, "We don't have a chance in hell now."

On the phone from his office yesterday, Blue Note Records president Bruce Lundvall-who signed the great Cuban band Irakere to Columbia Records; their 1979 Best Latin Recording Grammy led to American followings for pianist Chucho Valdés and saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, among others-groaned as he assessed the new Grammy system. "It is a terrible mistake to eliminate this very valid category," he said. "It should be reinstated immediately. Grammy recognition was absolutely the key ingredient in building an American market for one of the most exciting avenues of new music, and I don't know how we would have done it otherwise."

Portnow defended his organization's decisions Monday night, saying that the changes were carefully considered-and that they needn't be permanent. "If you don't like what they decided," he said, "throw the bums out of office." He drew a comparison to Congress: "They didn't ask you how you felt about the budget, they just voted on your behalf."

Perhaps the analogy was unfortunate, because Washburne seized on it. "It's almost like what the Tea Party wants to do-repeal all the things that have happened in the past few decades." He challenged Portnow's determination that the "collage" created by 109 categories was problematic. "Of course it's a collage," Washburne fired back. "That's what we are."

* * *
The following is from Bobby Sanabria:
* * *

Below is a timeline I've constructed that I think puts things in perspective...

2001 - Progressive Jazz Rock group Steely Dan wins Record of the Year Grammy over Eminem. Hip Hop. Pop music industry/community is in shock

1990's - to present - Small independent record companies (mostly begun by artists themselves) steadily begin to demonstrate their presence as nominees and winners of Grammys culminating with Multi-Cultural jazz musician Esperanza Spalding's win for Best New Artist over teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber.

2008 - Jazz legend Herbie Hancock wins Record of the Year Grammy over Kanye West. West's and his management are incensed. Hip Hop, Pop music industry/community again in shock. NARAS begins secret meetings in earnest after the telecast to explore the possibility of downsizing the Grammy Awards because they have become "devalued" because according to current President Neil Portnow, "The Grammys have become a huge collage." President Portnow's own words at NYC Chapter Emergency Meeting, Monday April 11, 2011 - 6pm at New York Institute of Technology Auditorium 61st St. & Broadway, NYC.

2011 - Indie record labels are nominated and win more Grammys than at anytime in the history of the Grammy Awards. Multi-Cultural jazz artist Esperanza Spalding wins Best New Artist Grammy over teenage Pop sensation Justin Bieber. It is the first time a musician wins over an entertainer. Pop music industry and the World in general are in a state of shock.

Immediately after the Grammy telecast Stephen Stoute, an industry insider and employee of Jay Z takes out a FULL one page ad in the New York Times blasting NARAS stating that they are out of touch with current popular society and must be RESTRUCTURED. He insults Esperanza Spalding and the Grammy membership. It was the membership who gave her the win for her incredible musicianship. THE FIRST TIME A MUSICIAN IS CHOSEN OVER AN ENTERTAINER IN THIS CATEGORY. NARAS DOES NOT offer a rebuttal to defend the Academy and/or its members.

Justin Bieber fans begin an anti-Esperanza Spalding campaign that goes viral globally insulting her and Academy thus insulting the membership. Again, no response from the Academy.

Legendary Hip Hop and R&B Producer Jimmy Jam (of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis) who is second in command to President Neil Portnow approves ALL category cuts in secret meetings with Grammy Board members in the Los Angeles Mother chapter. The question begs to be asked, how is this person even a Grammy executive? Is there not a conflict of interest?

Black Wednesday - April 6, 2011 - NARAS sends out a mass e-mail to its membership stating to follow a link for a major announcement regarding the Grammys. The announcement states that a RESTRUCTURING (DOWNSIZING) OF THE GRAMYS HAS BEEN DECIDED UPON. The original 108 categories are now cut by 31. Some categories are CONSOLIDATED into unrelated categories thus giving no chance for independent record companies to compete. For example: Latin Jazz and Contemporary Jazz (two completely different styles) are now consolidated into JUST Best Jazz Recording and Best Large Jazz Ensemble, thus giving Latin Jazz artists virtually no chance to compete for a Grammy. Other categories like Hawaiian, Polka, Zydeco, Cajun, etc. and as a final insult, Native American, are cut. MOST OF THE CUT CATEGORIES ARE ETHNIC CATEGORIES. THE DECISON BY NARAS IS MADE IN SECRET WITHOUT CONSULTING ANY OF ITS MEMBERSHIP OR CITY CHAPTER BOARD OF GOVERNORS.

Music community, particularly Latin Jazz and Jazz community are in shock.

Realizing there will be flak, NARAS decides on a 13 city damage control/emergency tour to all major NARAS Chapter cities to explain how the NEW RESTRUCTURING gives PARITY to all artists and that no one is shut out from competing.

APRIL 11, 2011 - NARAS A FEW DAYS EARLIER sends out a mass e-mail inviting its NYC membership to come to the first meeting on Monday April 11 at 6pm at the New York Institute of Technology auditorium located at 1871 Broadway at 61rst. The e-mail specifically states that NON-MEMBERS are invited as well. THERE IS ABSOLUTLEY NO ANNOUNCEMENT IN THE E-MAIL THAT AN RSVP IS REQUIRED.

Members and non-members show up as do Larry Rohter of the NY Times, Monika Fabian of the Daily News, and Larry Blumenfeld of The Wall St, Journal and the The Village Voice who were contacted the night before, (Daily News contacted the day of) by yours truly. WE ARE ALL TOLD THAT IF WE DIDN'T RSVP WE CAN'T GET IN. EDDIE PALMIERI 9 TIME GRAMMY WINNER AND FORMER BOARD OF GOVENOR MEMBER AND THE PERSON WHO FOUGHT FOR 17 YEARS TO GET LATIN JAZZ RECOGNIZED BY NARAS AS WELL AS LARRY HARLOW, LARAS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER AND 3 TIME GRAMMY NOMINEE AND THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR GETTING SALSA RECOGNIZED AS A GRAMMY CATEGORY TOLD TO WAIT OUTSIDE, THAT THEY/WE CAN'T GET IN UNLESS THEY/WE RSVP'D. BOB SANCHO SHOWS PRINT OUT OF E-MAIL INVITE TO NARAS REPRESENTATIVE PROVING THERE WAS NO RSVP REQUIREMENT. LARRY LEAVES IN DISGUST STATING OUT LOUD "THIS USE TO BE A CLASSY ORGANIZATION". A current Member of the Board of Governors arrives and greets/speaks to Paquito D'Rivera's wife (Brenda Feliciano). Brenda informs her of the situation. The Board of Governor representative speaks to those in charge and insists to "Let these people in, they are NARAS members." A representative of NARAS FINALLY informs me on the side that somehow something got screwed up. Some received RSVP invites, others (like us) did not. She apologizes and informs me that we will all be finally let in after the RSVP"s are let in first. After two opening questions about Blues and Hip Hop categories from audience attendees entire comments made by attending members are about the elimination of the Latin jazz and Contemporary music categories. FILMING OR PHOTOGARHY IS NOT ALLOWED BY NARAS AND SECURITY GUARD TRIES TO REMOVE ALFIE ALVARADO WHO HAS A VIDEO CAMERA AT THE READY. NARAS THINKS TWICE AFTER NOTING THAT REPORTERS ARE PRESENT AND TAKING NOTES. MS. ALVARADO PREVAILS AND VIDEOS THE ENTIRE APPORXIMATELY THREE HOUR MEETING BUT IS WARNED BY NARAS EXECUTIVES FROM THE NYC CHAPTER TO NOT POST ANYTHING ON YOUTUBE. PHOTOGRAPHER LENA ADASHEVA SECRETLY FILMS WHAT HAPPENS IN LOBBY WITH A FLIP PHONE AND RECORDS AUDIO OF MEETING AND LATER POSTS SHORT EDITED VERSION ON YOUTUBE.

Public outcry begins as musicians, fans, and the general public begin to e-mail NARAS President Portnow at neil@grammy.com <http://us.mc651.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=neil@grammy.com>

Next Grammy Chapter meeting for so called explanation of NEW Grammy RESTRUCTURING by NARAS President Neil Portnow scheduled for May 10th in San Francisco. If you receive an invite NO MATTER WHAT, RSVP. Meeting is open to non-Grammy members. Call the San Francisco NARAS Chapter offices if you wish to attend and get an invite.

The Recording Academy

San Francisco Chapter

1702 Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
Ph: 415.749.0779
Fx: 415.749.1780
*/sanfrancisco@grammy.com/* <http://us.mc651.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sanfrancisco@grammy.com>

For a full accounting of what went down at the NYC Chapter meeting with President Portnow go to...

http://www.chipboaz.com/blog/2011/04/14/bobby-sanabria-on-the-41111-new-york-naras-meeting-the-latin-jazz-grammy/

Ache' and in solidarity,

Bobby Sanabria

2011-04-12T18:09:00.001-04:00

CONVOCATORIA

REVISTA COLOMBIANA DE ANTROPOLOGÍA

INSTITUTO COLOMBIANO DE ANTROPOLOGÍA E HISTORIA, ICANH

Dossier: Tendencias actuales de la Bioantropología en Colombia

Editores Invitados:

Miguel E. Delgado B.

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). División Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Javier Rosique

Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia.

La Revista Colombiana de Antropología invita a estudiantes de postgrado, profesores universitarios, investigadores y académicos en antropología, arqueología y disciplinas afines a presentar artículos inéditos sobre diferentes temas y enfoques de la bioantropología en Colombia.

Recientemente la bioantropología en nuestro país ha tenido un notable desarrollo gracias a la preocupación de un variado grupo de investigadores, profesores universitarios, estudiantes de grado y postgrado en antropología y otras disciplinas. Prueba de ello son los tradicionales simposios en los congresos de antropología y arqueología que desde hace algunos años se vienen llevando acabo en el país con bastante éxito. Igualmente la idea de organizarse profesionalmente y la celebración del primer encuentro oficial de antropología biológica en Colombia en el marco del pasado 13er Congreso de Antropología en el año 2009 sugieren un creciente interés en la disciplina. En este contexto consideramos que es pertinente abrir una convocatoria de trabajos inéditos que den cuenta de las actuales tendencias de investigación de la bioantropología en nuestro país.

La presente convocatoria está abierta a artículos que aborden aspectos teóricos y metodológicos y que provengan de investigaciones enmarcadas en diferentes proyectos y líneas de investigación. El dossier está compuesto por tres ejes principales, el primero intenta abordar reflexiones teóricas sobre la práctica investigativa y la enseñanza de la bioantropología en nuestro país. Un segundo eje contempla contribuciones sobre diversos aspectos teórico-metodológicos de la investigación de los grupos humanos contemporáneos. Finalmente el tercer eje esta compuesto por artículos que presenten nuevos aportes al conocimiento de los grupos que habitaron el país en tiempos prehispánicos. Se espera que los autores puedan integrar de manera explícita, clara y sucinta aspectos de la teoría y método de la antropología al interior de sus contribuciones. Así mismo se recomienda a los autores incluir contribuciones con un alto estándar de calidad.

***

La RCA es una publicación semestral indexada nacional e internacionalmente, que se edita desde 1953. Los artículos son sometidos a evaluación anónima por pares especializados. Está incluida en las siguientes bases bibliográficas e índices internacionales de citación: Internacional Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), The London School of Economics and Political Science; Hispanic American Periodical Index (HAPI) de la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles; Anthropological Index Online del Royal Anthropological Institute de Inglaterra; Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CLASE), de la Universidad Autónoma de México; Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS), de la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos; Directorio de LATINDEX (Sistema regional de información en línea para revistas científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal); e IBN Publindex de Colciencias, Colombia.

Normas de presentación de artículos

Formato del texto: La RCA recomienda que los artículos sometidos a evaluación cuenten con introducción, metodología, conclusiones y bibliografía actualizada.

Esta convocatoria solicita artículos cortos de máximo 25 páginas (incluyendo citas, notas a pie de página, tablas, leyendas de figuras y referencias bibliográficas), y estar digitados en letra Times New Roman, 12 puntos, a doble espacio, en hoja tamaño carta, con márgenes izquierda y derecha de 2,5 cm y superior e inferior de 3 cm. En cuanto a la bibliografía y las referencias la revista utiliza el sistema APA Academic.

La primera página debe incluir: título del artículo, nombre del autor, correo electrónico, y una breve nota sobre los estudios realizados y la afiliación institucional del mismo -máximo tres líneas-. Es indispensable que incluya además el resumen (130 palabras) y palabras clave en español e inglés, así como un breve comentario acerca del origen del artículo (investigación, curso, revisión bibliográfica, reflexión personal, etc.)

Para ver las normas de presentación de artículos lo invitamos a visitar nuestra página web:

http://www.icanh.gov.co/index.php?idcategoria=1302

Los originales deben ser remitidos vía correo electrónico a:

los editores invitados: medelgado@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar, csrogrja@antares.udea.edu.co. Con copia al Editor de la Revista Colombiana de Antropología, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia – ICANH

rca.icanh@gmail.com

Fecha límite para la recepción de artículos: 1 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2011

CFP" NY Folklore Society Graduate Student Conference: Legends and Tales

2011-04-12T17:56:00.000-04:00

NY Folklore Society Graduate Student Conference: Legends and Tales
November 12, 2011
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY
CALL FOR PROPOSALS

For over 65 years, the New York Folklore Society (NYFS) has held an annual conference, typically with guest speakers, such as master artists and academic scholars, who have addressed a particular theme. This year, in collaboration with Binghamton University’s English Department, we invite graduate students to present their work on legends and tales. In this way, students will be given a platform at a local conference to share their work and connect with other young academics from around the state. The NYFS seeks to encourage young scholars to continue their studies and become active contributors to the fields of folklore, ethnomusicology, anthropology and more. This conference presents students with the opportunity for feedback on works-in-progress and mentorship from the academy.

Theme: Legends and Tales
Legends and tales present characters under duress in extraordinary circumstances. They preserve cultural patterns and facilitate social change. Legends such as “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” and “The Killer in the Back Seat” have a kernel of truth; tales such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Armless Maiden” are clearly fictional but have complex layers of meaning. When legends and tales inspire literature and films, they bring richly resonant traditions to the minds of readers and viewers.

This multidisciplinary conference welcomes papers about legends and/or tales from graduate students in literature, folklore, anthropology, American studies, cultural studies, film studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, social and cultural history, and other fields. We especially encourage papers related to the cultural traditions of New York State.

Questions? Please contact: Dr. Ellen McHale, nyfs@nyfolklore.org, 518-346-7008

PRIMER CUMBRE MUNDIAL DE AFRODESCENDIENTES EN HONDURAS

2011-04-04T10:16:00.002-04:00

Link: http://afro.bienes.comuf.com/

La Cumbre Mundial de Afrodescendientes se realizara del 18 al 21 de agosto de 2011, y es convocada por la Organización de Desarrollo Étnico Comunitario, ODECO, que tiene su sede en la ciudad de La Ceiba, Honduras, Centroamérica.

El propósito principal de esta Cumbre es aprovechar la inigualable oportunidad que se presenta con la proclamación del “2011 Año Internacional de los Afrodescendientes” para realizar una análisis crítico, evaluar las condiciones de las poblaciones Afrodescendientes, los logros alcanzados en el marco de la implementación de los tratados internacionales, y no menos importante, un análisis de la situación del movimiento social afro-descendiente diez años después del desarrollo de la III Conferencia Mundial Contra el Racismo, realizada en Durban, Sudáfrica en el año 2001; donde los Gobiernos firmante de la Declaración y Plan de Acción asumieron compromisos para contribuir a mejorar las condiciones económicas, sociales, políticas, ambientales y culturales de los-as Afrodescendientes.

Resultados Esperados

Documentar importantes aspectos considerados centrales a las causas de la pobreza prevaleciente entre las poblaciones Afrodescendientes alrededor del mundo.

Consensuado el conocimiento entre todas las partes involucradas-gobiernos, cooperación internacional, sociedad civil y representantes de las comunidades-de las condiciones en que viven las poblaciones Afrodescendientes y las brechas existentes entre estas poblaciones y otras poblaciones pobres en sus respectivos países.

Establecidos compromisos concretos-incluyendo la creación de estrategias y asignación de recursos financieros –que permiten crear una plataforma para el desarrollo sustentable con identidad de las poblaciones Afrodescendientes en el corto. Mediano y largo plazo para cerrar las brechas de desarrollo.

Definida una estrategia y establecidos compromisos para fortalecer las capacidades institucionales de las Comunidades y Organizaciones Afrodescendientes.

Establecidos compromisos entre gobiernos, la cooperación internacional y organizaciones de sociedad civil para promover el desarrollo integral sostenible con identidad de las comunidades y poblaciones Afrodescendientes.

Definido un mecanismo de seguimiento para el cumplimiento de los principales acuerdos de la Cumbre Mundial de los Afrodescendientes.

Quienes Participan

Organizaciones del Movimiento Afrodescendiente a nivel mundial.

Poblaciones y Comunidades de África y la Diáspora.

Gobiernos

Entidades de cooperación internacional

Organizaciones de la sociedad civil procedentes de las Américas, África, Europa y Asia

Razones para Convocar la Cumbre Mundial de Afrodescendientes

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas mediante Resolución 64/169 Proclama el año que comienza el 1º de Enero de 2011 AÑO INTERNACIONAL DE LOS AFRODESCENDIENTES, con miras a fortalecer las medidas nacionales y la cooperación regional e internacional en beneficio de los Afrodescendientes en relación con el goce pleno de sus derechos económicos, culturales, sociales, civiles y políticos.

Recordar que la población Africana y Afrodescendiente alrededor del mundo se estima en más de 1,000 millones de personas o cerca del 15 por ciento de la población mundial. De esta población, 840 millones viven en África, cerca de 200 millones en la Américas, 10 millones en la Unión Europea, y se estima que más de 300,000 afro-descendientes viven en Asia y el Pacifico. Un número indeterminado de afro-descendientes vive en Rusia y los Estados de la antigua Unión Soviética, donde existen antiguas poblaciones—remanentes del tráfico de esclavos—que se asentaron en las costas del Mar Negro, y una gran parte de los 400,000 estudiantes—y sus descendientes—que permanecieron en Rusia después de asistir a las universidades Soviéticas a partir de la independencia de los países africanos en la década de 1960. Otras poblaciones significativas de Afrodescendientes viven en el oriente medio.

A nivel mundial, la población afro-descendiente enfrenta graves condiciones de pobreza y pobreza extrema como resultado de la marginalización y exclusión, y crecientes problemas de intolerancia relacionados a su condición de raza o etnicidad.

En septiembre de 2001, se llevó a cabo la Conferencia Mundial Contra el Racismo, Discriminación Racial, Xenofobia y otras formas de Intolerancia, en Durban, Sur África, cuyas declaraciones llenaron de esperanzas a los afro-descendientes alrededor del mundo.

I CONGRESO UNIVERSITARIO DE ETNOMUSICOLOGÍA: Música, Educación y Desarrollo Cultural de los Pueblos

2011-04-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA

COORDINACIÓN DE PROGRAMAS PARA LOS UNIVERSITARIOS

DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DEL ÁREA ACADÉMICA DE ARTES

FACULTAD DE MÚSICA (LEM)

FCAS (LPRP)

CONVOCAN:

A los estudiantes de etnomusicología, etnomusicólogos, educadores, pedagogos, investigadores, músicos, sociólogos, antropólogos, arqueólogos, grupos culturales e interesados en el tema, a participar en él:

“I CONGRESO UNIVERSITARIO DE ETNOMUSICOLOGÍA”

Música, Educación y Desarrollo Cultural de los Pueblos.

A realizarse del 10 al 12 de junio del año en curso en la ciudad de Xalapa, Veracruz, bajo la siguiente temática:

- Música y tradición: metodologías de enseñanza.

- La investigación etnomusicológica en el ámbito educativo.

- Función actual de la música en las sociedades modernas.

Los trabajos a exponer serán distribuidos en mesas de lectura y exposición, con las siguientes modalidades:

· Ponencia escrita.

· Ponencia interactiva (intervención en vivo de músicos, bailarines, etc.).

· Ponencia multimedia (con proyecciones, videos, música y otras grabaciones o medios electrónicos, etc.).

· Documental (video).

· Concierto didáctico.

· Taller.

· Demostración didáctica o pedagógica.

Bajo las siguientes bases:

- Ser estudiante universitario o equivalente, investigador o profesional en el área que se propone.

- Participación individual o colectiva (máx. 5 integrantes, sin contar músicos, bailarines, etc.).

- Duración máxima por trabajo participante: 20 min. (aprox. 10 cuartillas).

- Enviar un abstract, ficha técnica o resumen sinóptico del trabajo a exponer, especificando tema, duración de la ponencia, objetivo, nombre y número de participantes, nombre del responsable, domicilio, teléfono y/o correo electrónico (máximo una cuartilla), considerando los siguientes puntos:

· Tipo de presentación.

· Punto principal de la presentación.

· Cómo voy a probar la hipótesis.

· Qué impacto espero demostrar con la comprobación de la hipótesis.

- Anexar ficha de requerimientos técnicos (media cuartilla)*.

- Anexar ficha o síntesis curricular de cada miembro del equipo (máximo media cuartilla)*.

- Enviar ponencia redactada en fuente Arial 12 a 1.5 espacios*.

Fecha límite paras recepción de abstract o fichas: el 15 de abril 2011.

Fecha limite en la recepción de ponencias: 22 de mayo de 2011. (Incluir formatos DVD, CD u otro), anexado a sus fichas técnicas y curriculares de cada presentación).

CUPO LIMITADO

Estos datos y documentos serán enviados por correo electrónico aetnomusicologia11@yahoo.com.mx, para su revisión y selección, o a la siguiente dirección:

Facultad de Música de la Universidad Veracruzana.

Barragán No. 32, Centro, Xalapa, Veracruz, C. p. 91000

Tel/fax.: (228) 818 7662

At´n. Comité Organizador del I CONGRESO UNIVERSITARIO DE ETNOMUSICOLOGÍA,

Música, Educación y Desarrollo Cultural de los Pueblos.

Publicación de resultados: 31 de mayo de 2011, vía correo electrónico. (Cada participante es responsable de sus gastos).

*El envío de documentación no compromete o condiciona la participación del aspirante, por lo que se recomienda esperar la notificación de visto bueno para enviar la ponencia y las fichas antes mencionadas, así como la notificación de aceptación de la ponencia para confirmar su asistencia y participación.

No se admitirán ponencias de aspirantes que no hayan cumplido con el envío del abtract u otro pre-requisito, o que no hayan sido notificadas como aceptadas.

Cualquier caso no previsto será resuelto y notificado en su momento por el comité organizador.

COORDINADOR DEL COMITÉ ORGANIZADOR:

Ortega Medina, Luis Alberto laom7001@yahoo.com.mx

AUXILIARES:

Reyes Castañeda, Daniel indominor@hotmail.com

Martínez Gutiérrez, Héctor Julio hj_pmb@hotmail.com

COORDINACIÓN GENERAL:

Dr. Randall Kohl rckohl@yahoo.com

RIP Pinetop Perkins QEPD

2011-03-22T15:17:00.002-04:00

Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins 1917-2011
English Obituary
Biografía en castellano

Call For Papers: Afro-Latin@s Now! Strategies for Visibility and Action

2011-03-18T16:20:00.001-04:00

Call For Papers: Afro-Latin@s Now! Strategies for Visibility and Action

The afrolatin@ forum invites proposals for “Afro-Latin@s Now: Strategies for Visibility & Action” a conference to be held November 3-5, 2011 in New York City. The three-day international conference will gather scholars, community leaders and artists to advance a dialogue on issues of importance to Black Latin@s in the United States as well as foster positive relations between Latin@s, African Americans and other peoples of color. Recognizing that studies of Afro-Latin@s are multidisciplinary, we seek proposals for papers, panels, performances (music or theater), film, and graphic arts from any branch of Afro-Latin@ studies. The goal of the conference will be to promote dialogue and mutual understanding amongst and between Afro-Latin@s, the broader Latin@ and African American populations, and the general public including other peoples of color. We aim to expand and solidify the widening network of educators and activists working on related themes, and to begin defining the key educational and policy issues that bear on the recognition and empowerment of this largely overlooked and underserved population. The afrolatin@ forum, as an institution founded in New York City, is proud to partner with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Center for the Humanities of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, El Museo del Barrio, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research in presenting this conference. The afrolatin@ forum works to build and strengthen research and activist networks among Latin@s of African descent in the United States. Our focus is on Black Latin@s in the United States and their relationships with other communities of color. This emphasis is guided by a transnational perspective that recognizes the centrality of race in understanding today's global reality and the struggle for social justice.

Papers and submission

Individual abstracts should be 250 words or less. Abstracts should be submitted by Monday, May 16, 2011. Please include a five-line biography, and your institutional/organizational affiliation and contact information. Direct all submissions to Guesnerth Josúe Perea at gjperea@ http://www.facebook.com/l/6928ax3uR8Xm6KPhCzMiYYKFbiA/gmail.com or info@ http://www.facebook.com/l/6928aY69tumdi7ez-sayor0RKJA/afrolatinoforum.org. You can also visit the forum's conference website: http://www.facebook.com/l/6928afC4oaOmFJ_Aq4CmNCzcV2g/www.afrolatinoforum.org/call-for-papers.html to submit your paper or presentation proposal. This three-day conference will be held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the CUNY Graduate Center and El Museo del Barrio on November 3-5, 2011, for more information on the conference please visit:http://www.facebook.com/l/6928aMC2NYNy1a1X985t6maX9tA/www.afrolatinoforum.org

Música colombiana en la radio gringa/Colombian music on NPR

2011-03-15T22:58:00.003-04:00

The NPR program alt.latino was in Colombia recently along with the PBS Music Voyager folks, and made three radio episodes:

El programa radial alt.latino estuvo en Colombia recientemente con los del programa de televisión Music Voyager y sacaron 3 programas sobre la música contemporánea colombiana:

Obviamente, en inglés/In English, of course...

1st episode/1er programa: Herencia de Timbiquí, La Mojarra Eléctrica & Andrea Echeverri
2do programa/2nd episode: La Mojarra Eléctrica, Bomba Estéreo, Aterciopelados, Herencia de Timbiquí, Vilmar Soler (vallenatero del programa Canta Conmigo, programa para desmobilizados/vallenato singer for a program for demobilized paramilitaries and guerrillas), Totó la Momposina
#3: Systema Solar, Iván Benavides (Interview/Entrevista), ChocQuibTown, Juanes (Entrevista/Interview), Puerto Candelaria, Joe Arroyo

Video here/aquí

DOMUS magazine's "sounds of cities" mixtapes

2011-03-11T15:40:00.004-05:00

From DOMUS magazine
So far they have:
Mexico City (Daniel Hernández)
Harlem (DJ Rupture with Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts)
Buenos Aires (Leandro Erlich w/ n-ron)

Sonidos de ciudades: México DF, Harlem y Buenos Aires

La venganza del picó...

2011-03-05T13:11:00.002-05:00

En una imprevista guerra sonora entre Carlos Vives y un equipo de sonido no nombrado en pleno Carnaval de Barranquilla, la fusionada nostalgia folklórica de Vives pierde un punto ante la estrepitosa y desmedida exuberancia popular:

De El Tiempo:

Carlos Vives tuvo que terminar antes su concierto por ruido callejero

Por: BARRANQUILLA | 3:34 a.m. |

El alto volumen de los equipos de los carros impidió que el artista continuara su show.

Nadie pudo controlar a los dueños de los vehículos parqueados a las afueras del Hotel del Prado; el artista llevaba hora y media de show, pero no pudo continuar debido al ruido callejero.

Todavía con los cables del monitoreo enganchados en el cuerpo, luego de hora y media de show, regresaron al camerino todos y cada uno de los integrantes de La Provincia, incluido el mismo Carlos Vives, quienes por culpa de los ensordecedores ruidos de los equipos de sonido de los vehículos que se parquearon a las afueras del Hotel del Prado, en Barranquilla, no pudieron concluir el concierto de este viernes (Vea acá más noticias relacionadas con el Carnaval de Barranquilla).

El regguetón y los ritmos electrónicos provenientes de la calle zumbaban cada vez que el samario intentaba dirigirse, entre canción y canción, a las cerca de tres mil personas que pagaron la boleta para verlo en la apertura del Carnaval 2011.

A las 10:35 de la noche las notas de la canción 'Sí, sí, sí' prendieron la fiesta así como por más de 11 temas coreados por el público y que contaron con una entrega total del artista.

La paciencia se colmó después de la canción 'Canté', alusiva al Carnaval y a distintas fiestas colombianas. "Hey vamos a decirle al man del picó de afuera que por lo menos se ponga en el mismo tono de nosotros pa' aprovéchalo", dijo el cantante para quejarse de la falta de garantías para seguir presentándose.

Luego de varios minutos, mientras Andrés Castro y Carlos Huertas, de La Provincia, intentaban mantener la atención con improvisadas notas de guitarra, la agrupación se bajó de la tarima sin siquiera poder despedirse de los asistentes que observaban el concierto, incluido el mismo alcalde de Barranquilla, Alejandro Char Chaljub.

"Es algo que nunca nos había pasado en los más de 60 países que hemos recorrido en estos años", dijo el acordeonero Egidio Cuadrado.

Vives, por su parte, aseguró que seguía contento de haber podido estar en el Carnaval, pero vuelve a irse de Barranquilla con un mal sabor de boca como en 2006 cuando le criticaron en Barranquilla luego de su presentación en una carroza en la Batalla de Flores de aquel entonces. Se dijo que los atrasos del desfile corrieron por cuenta de su montaje desmedido.

"Sigo creyendo en Barranquilla, porque al menos pude estar aquí y a pesar de lo sucedido la gente estuvo conmigo. Para mí la ciudad es muy importante", declaró minutos después de abandonar la tarima.

"Faltaba al menos media hora de show", agregó su esposa Claudia Elena Vásquez. A la 1:30 a.m. la cartelera del Hotel del Prado continuó con la agrupación de Los Betos y todavía faltaban Sensación Orquesta, Elvis Crespo, Tito Nieves, Iván Villazón y Jorge Celedón.

Sobre la aglomeración de la gente a las afueras del hotel, a lo que popularmente se le conoce como el 'Carnaval del Pradito', se le había preguntado el pasado el lunes en rueda de prensa al empresario responsable del evento, Ludwing Landazabal, y este respondió que sería controlada por las autoridades porque en 2010 la situación por poco deja una pared desplomada.

Sin embargo, control sobre los que ponen a todo volumen la música de los vehículos y se parquean en sitios públicos fue lo que más faltó.

El público, que pagó cada entrada a 190 mil pesos, se quejó también de que en la boleta se anunció que las orquestas iniciaban a las 6 de la tarde, pero la primera presentación fue la de Carlvos Vives, con varias horas de retardo a lo prometido.

Este, sin duda, pasará a la historia del cantante como uno de los más desastrosos de su carrera incluido el de sus inicios en Santa Marta luego de protagonizar la serie Escalona.

Aquella vez fue telonero de Chayanne y solo hasta las 4 de la madrugada pudo presentarse en el estadio Eduardo Santos con unos tantos en el público. Este viernes, en Barranquilla, ni 'La gota fría', ni 'La tierra del olvido' fueron escuchadas.

BARRANQUILLA

CFP: Symposium on African American Culture & Philosophy: "Afro-Latin America: Rethinking, Identity, Politics and Culture"

2011-03-03T16:34:00.000-05:00

Call for Papers

The 27th Annual Symposium on African American Culture & Philosophy

Afro-Latin America:
Rethinking, Identity, Politics and Culture

Plenary Speaker: Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall, Michigan State University

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kim Butler, Rutgers University

African American Studies and Research Center
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
December 1-3, 2011

In recent decades we have witnessed an outpouring of new research on African-descended
communities throughout Latin America. Black political organizing and grassroots activism have
also exploded in the region, as activists from Colombia to Puerto Rico have sought to increase
the visibility of ongoing questions related to black socioeconomic marginalization. These
endeavors continue to unfold however, within colonial and neoliberal contexts that frequently
interpret Afro-Latin histories and political mobilizations as auxiliary to or subsumed within other
local or national narratives. In particular, black cultural expressions are frequently depoliticized
within the realm of “folklore,” or highly racialized within Latin American film, performance culture,
and national mythology.

Though Latin America has the largest populations of African-descended people outside of
Africa, recent events illuminate the recurring tendency for black histories, cultures and political
expressions to be pushed to the margins of conferences on Latin America, minimizing of the
roles of the multitude of communities of African descent in shaping the contemporary realities
and interactions with nation states. For this reason, there remains an acute need for public
intellectual spaces that privilege Latin American blackness, and rigorously examine the
discourses around it. Thus, the time is certainly propitious to assess the state and direction of
the field of the African Diaspora in Latin America. The symposium responds to this call by
exploring various ways to locate interrogations of Afro-Latin America squarely within the larger
framework of the African Diaspora.

Our focus is designed: (1) to initiate interventionist dialogues about the African presence in Latin
America (2) to generate interaction and discussion around some of the more salient concerns in
the field and (3) to publish selected papers from the proceedings. Through a variety of prisms,
our sessions will promote a reevaluation of African-descended communities vis-à-vis their
agency and objectives past and present. In this manner, we will consider exciting new directions
that African diasporic research is capable of taking when Latin American blackness is placed at
the center.

This conference is framed with the eve of 2012 in mind, a year that marks the bicentennial of
Cuba’s “Aponte Movement” of 1812, and the centennial of Cuba’s “Little War of 1912,” which
followed the organization of the first black political party in the western hemisphere. Albeit one
hundred years apart, both episodes were met with bloody state repressions that became crucial
barometers for the possibilities of racial equity throughout the region. Furthermore, both
anniversaries point to many forms of black resistance throughout the Americas, in colonial and
postcolonial times.

We seek papers and panels from across the disciplines on such sample topics as:

African-descended Communities in Iberia from Medieval to Early Modern Times
The Experiences of Afro-Jamaicans under Spanish Rule
African-descended Women in Colonial and or Post Colonial Latin America
Relations among Native, African, and Asian Communities in Latin America
Religious Interactions among African Theologies, Christianity, and Islam
Relations among Hispanic and non-Hispanic Antilleans at Home and Abroad
Dominicans, Haitians, and Africans in the United States and Spain
Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Communities in Belize, Curaçao, St. Croix, and Trinidad-Tobago
Marronage and other Forms of Militant Resistance
Afro-Latin Americans in the Military
Afro-Latin Americans in Sports Industries
Afro-Latin Americans in Entertainment Industries
Afro-Latin Americans as Authors and Protagonists in Literature
Afro-Cuban Exiles, 1845-2010
Gender, Sexuality and Hip-hop Culture
Blackness and the Spanish American Wars of Independence
Black History, Culture, and Politics in Argentina and the Andes
Black Identity and Spanish Identity in the Central American Republics
Recent Research on Afro-Mexican History and Culture
Racial Belonging and Exclusion in Post-special Cuba

Send paper and panel submissions by May 2, 2011 to:

Venetria K. Patton, Director African American Studies
27th Annual Symposium on Philosophy & Culture
Beering Hall, Room 6182
100 North University Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098
Email abstracts to: aasrc@purdue.edu [Include “Abstract” in subject line]
Website: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/african-american/

Becas de Viaje para Investigación

2011-02-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

Becas de Viaje para Investigación
LILLAS - Colección Latinoamericana Nettie Lee Benson
Convocatoria para el período académico 2011–2012

El Instituto Teresa Lozano Long de Estudios Latinoamericanos (LLILAS) y la Colección Latinoamericana Benson de la Universidad de Texas en Austin tienen el placer de anunciar la siguiente convocatoria para investigadores de México y Centroamérica.

A partir del año 2011, LLILAS y la Colección Benson otorgarán un máximo de siete becas para llevar a cabo investigación en las importantes colecciones de manuscritos, libros, y otros materiales relacionados con México y Centroamérica que alberga la Colección Benson de la Universidad de Texas en Austin.

La beca está dirigida a investigadores con título de Doctorado y profesionales de museos de arte o instituciones de investigación con sustancial experiencia profesional; así como estudiantes mexicanos y centroamericanos en trayectoria de doctorado. Cada beca consiste en un máximo de $3,000 dólares, los cuales pueden ser utilizados para cubrir gastos de transporte aéreo y alojamiento.

Los interesados deberán remitir su solicitud antes del 25 de marzo de 2011 a las oficinas del LLILAS. Para más detalles visite:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/centers-and-programs/mexico/fellowships.php#Benson-LLILAS

O, contacte a Gail Sanders (g.sanders@austin.utexas.edu), Coordinadora del Centro Mexicano de LLILAS. Teléfono 512.232.2423.

Miércoles de cine en la Corp-oraloteca en Quibdó...

2011-02-12T13:47:00.002-05:00

El próximo miércoles 16 de febrero comienza miércoles de cine!

Este es un espacio que abre la Corp- Oraloteca de la Licenciatura en Música y Danzas de la Universidad Tenológica del Chocó "Diego Luis Córdoba", con el fin de ofrecer a toda la comunidad universitaria y a la ciudad de Quibdó en general, acceso a diferentes géneros cinematográficos.

ENTRADA LIBRE6:30 p.m.

Bloque 11 primer piso

Universidad Tenológica del Chocó "Diego Luis Córdoba"

La primera película que presentaremos en este espacio es "Contracorriente" del director Javier Fuentes León.

Ethno job in New Zealand

2011-02-10T19:50:00.001-05:00

Lectureship in Pacific Music and World Music and/or Popular Music

https://otago.taleo.net/careersection/2/joblist.ftl?lang=en (job number 1100140)

Please find below details of a position we are advertising at the University of Otago, New Zealand. The appointee will be a specialist in Pacific Music and World Music and/or Popular Music, and will join a flourishing department that offers musical diversity across teaching, research and performance. Otago has developed strengths in the fields of ethnomusicology and popular music at all levels of teaching and in research, and the appointee will help consolidate these areas. Informal enquiries are welcome to Professor Henry Johnson, Head of Department (henry.johnson@otago.ac.nz)

The Lecturer in Music is expected to contribute to the research and teaching efforts of the Department. The appointee will be a specialist in the area of Pacific Music and in addition will also be expected to teach in the area of World Music and/or Popular Music. The Department is strengthening its offerings in these areas and the position requires advanced knowledge of relevant theoretical issues and culture areas. Candidates are advised to assess other areas within the Department to which they might be able to contribute. Administrative duties will be agreed upon in consultation with the Head of Department. A completed PhD is required, as well as proven potential for distinguished scholarship and effective teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The Department of Music offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees within a musically diverse curriculum. Pacific music is an established area in the Department, which includes strong links with Pacific Studies and related fields, and the successful applicant would support this field in teaching and research. The successful applicant will also be supportive to colleagues and students across the whole range of the department’s work, willing to participate in interdisciplinary activities in research and teaching, and a good contributor to the strategic and detailed planning of the Department’s work.

Más sobre el pretendido desalojo de las comunidades de bajamar en Buenaventura

2011-01-30T17:24:00.001-05:00

"Marcando Territorio" - Jóvenes porteños protestan la violencia y amenzasa de desalojo en el B/Lleras

2011-01-30T14:43:00.002-05:00

Esto desde la pastoral Afrocaleña:

Los invitamos a ver el video Marcando Territorio, un mensaje de resistencia de los jóvenes del barrio Lleras de Buenaventura.
El barrio Lleras, ubicado en zona de baja mar (manglar) en Buenaventura, ha sido considerado en los últimos años como el barrio más violento de Buenaventura, se conoce por fuentes oficiales de presencia de grupos armados al margen de la ley. En el documental Los Pacificadores del Pacifico 1, se describe gran parte de la problemática. La violencia es un problema grave que afecta significativamente la vida, no sólo de sus moradores sino de toda Buenaventura. Es difícil llegar a entender en su totalidad la complejidad del problema.

Toda esta situación ha llevado a que los jóvenes reflexionen sobre el hecho y que tomen acciones, y no me refiero precisamente a la violencia, porque en la dura adversidad se destacan cientos de artistas con el potencial para triunfar en la música y que hoy lideran una lucha no violenta, de resistencia en contra de aquellos que quieren oprimirlos. Ellos son atacados diariamente con armas de fuego y la indiferencia, ellos se defienden y atacan con la música en la defensa de sus derechos. He aquí una muestra.

RIP Milton Babbit QEPD

2011-01-30T14:36:00.002-05:00

Composer Milton Babbitt has died.

El compositor Milton Babbitt ha muerto.

Obituaries below, here's his in/famous essay "Who Cares if You Listen?"

From The Times:

January 29, 2011

Milton Babbitt, Composer, Dies at 94

By ALLAN KOZINN

Milton Babbitt, an influential composer, theorist and teacher who wrote music that was intensely rational and for many listeners impenetrably abstruse, died on Saturday. He was 94 and lived in Princeton, N.J.

Paul Lansky, a composer who studied with Mr. Babbitt and was a colleague at Princeton University, where Mr. Babbitt remained an emeritus professor of composition, said that Mr. Babbitt died at a hospital in Princeton.

Mr. Babbitt, who had a lively sense of humor despite the reputation for severity that his music fostered, sometimes referred to himself as a maximalist to stress the musical and philosophical distance between his style and the simpler, more direct style of younger contemporaries like Philip Glass, Steve Reich and other Minimalist composers. It was an apt description.

Although he dabbled early in his career with theater music, his Composition for Orchestra (1940) ushered in a structurally complex, profoundly organized style that was rooted in Arnold Schoenberg’s serial method.

But Mr. Babbitt expanded on Mr. Schoenberg’s approach. In Mr. Schoenberg’s system, a composer begins by arranging the 12 notes of the Western scale in a particular order called a tone row, or series, on which the work is based. Mr. Babbitt was the first to use this serial ordering not only with pitches but also with dynamics, timbre, duration, registration and other elements. His methods became the basis of the “total serialism” championed in the 1950s by Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono and other European composers.

Mr. Babbitt began exploring this path in Three Compositions for Piano (1947) and Composition for Four Instruments (1948), and adhered to it through his entire career. He composed prolifically for chamber ensembles and instrumental soloists and created a substantial and varied catalog of vocal works. He also composed a compact but vital group of orchestral pieces and an enduring series of works for synthesizer, often in combination with voices or acoustic instruments.

Mr. Babbitt liked to give his pieces colorful titles, often with puns (“The Joy of More Sextets,” for example), and said that in selecting titles he tried to avoid both the stale and the obscure. Yet when Mr. Babbitt explained his compositional approach in essays, lectures and program notes, they could be as difficult to understand as his music. In one program note, he spoke of “models of similar, interval-preserving, registrally uninterpreted pitch-class and metrically durationally uninterpreted time-point aggregate arrays.”

He often said in interviews that every note in a contemporary composition should be so thoroughly justified that the alteration of a tone color or a dynamic would ruin the work’s structure. And although colleagues who worked in atonal music objected when their music was described as cerebral or academic, Mr. Babbitt embraced both terms and came to be regarded as the standard-bearer of the ultrarational extreme in American composition.

That reputation was based in part on an article published by High Fidelity magazine in February 1958 under the title “Who Cares if You Listen?” The headline was often cited as evidence of contemporary composers’ disregard for the public’s sensibilities, and Mr. Babbitt objected that it had been added by an editor, without his permission. But whatever his objections, the article did argue that contemporary composition was a business for specialists, on both the composing and listening end of the transaction, and that the general public’s objections were irrelevant.

“Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity?” Mr. Babbitt wrote. “The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example, mathematics, philosophy and physics. Advanced music, to the extent that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been even less extensive than his background in other fields.”

Listeners who overlooked Mr. Babbitt’s philosophical abstractions and thorny analyses — who simply sat back and listened, rather than trying to understand his harmonies and structural processes — often discovered works of great expressive variety.

These range from the intense emotionality of “A Solo Requiem” (1976) to the shimmering surfaces and eerie pictorialism of “Philomel” (1964) and the poetic flow of some of the solo piano works, which have the spirit of advanced jazz improvisations. Indeed, in his “All Set for Jazz” (1957), for winds, brasses and percussion, he achieved a freely improvisatory feeling within an atonal harmonic context.

Milton Byron Babbitt was born in Philadelphia on May 10, 1916, and grew up in Jackson, Miss. He began studying the violin when he was 4 but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music.

He was making his own arrangements of popular songs at 7, and when he was 13, he won a local songwriting contest.

Although the music he went on to write rejected the easily assimilated tonal language of popular music, Mr. Babbitt retained a fondness for theater songs all his life and was said to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the style.

“If you know anybody who knows more popular music of the ’20s or ’30s than I do, I want to know who it is,” he said in an Internet interview with the New Music Box in 2001. “I grew up playing every kind of music in the world, and I know more pop music from the ’20s and ’30s, it’s because of where I grew up. We had to imitate Jan Garber one night; we had to imitate Jean Goldkette the next night. We heard everything from the radio; we had to do it all by ear. We took down their arrangements; we stole their arrangements; we transcribed them, approximately. We played them for a country club dance one night and for a high school dance the next.”

In 1946, Mr. Babbitt tried his hand at a musical, a collaboration with Richard Koch and Richard S. Childs called “Fabulous Voyage.” The work was not produced, but in 1982 Mr. Babbitt published three of its songs, which showed a firm command of the idiom and considerable charm.

But Mr. Babbitt set his course toward serious avant-garde composition in 1932, when he played through the scores of some Schoenberg piano music that an uncle had brought home from Europe. At the time, Mr. Babbitt was a 16-year-old philosophy student at the University of Pennsylvania. The next year he became a composition student of Marion Bauer and Philip James atNew York University, and in 1935 he began studying privately with Roger Sessions.

In 1938, Sessions invited Mr. Babbitt to join the Princeton composition faculty, and Mr. Babbitt succeeded him as the William Shubael Conant Professor of Music in 1965. Mr. Babbitt was also on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he began teaching in 1973, as well as at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies; the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood; the new-music academy at Darmstadt, Germany; and the New England Conservatory in Boston. A series of six lectures he gave at theUniversity of Wisconsin was published as “Words About Music” in 1987. Mr. Babbitt’s articles about music were published as“The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt” by Princeton University Press in 2003.

His students included Mario Davidovsky and John Eaton, who have followed essentially in Mr. Babbitt’s atonal path (although Mr. Eaton later broke away), and the theater composer Stephen Sondheim.

During World War II, Mr. Babbitt taught mathematics at Princeton and undertook secret research in Washington. He also evolved his extended form of serialism during these years. But immediately after the war he pursued a split musical path, exploring his rigorous serial style in his abstract concert works, on one hand, and completing “Fabulous Voyage” and a film score, “Into the Ground” (1949).

In the 1950s Mr. Babbitt was hired as a consultant by RCA, which was developing the most sophisticated electronic-music instrument of the time, the Mark II synthesizer. The Mark II became the centerpiece of the new Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959. Mr. Babbitt was one of the center’s first directors, along with Sessions, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening.

Mr. Babbitt’s earliest electronic pieces, Composition for Synthesizer (1961) and Ensembles for Synthesizer (1964), were as intensely organized as his instrumental music had been. Indeed, he saw the synthesizer as a kind of liberation from the physical limitations of living performers.

“The medium provides a kind of full satisfaction for the composer,” he said in a 1969 interview with The New York Times. “I love going to the studio with my work in my head, realizing it while I am there and walking out with the tape under my arm. I can then send it anywhere in the world, knowing exactly how it will sound.”

The early synthesizer pieces have become classics, but Mr. Babbitt quickly moved forward, writing works in which electronic soundtracks accompanied live performers. Particularly striking are the vocal works “Vision and Prayer” (1961) and “Philomel,” and “Reflections” (1975) for piano and tape. He stopped composing music with an electronic component in 1976, when the Columbia-Princeton studio was vandalized, and it was decided that restoring it would be too expensive.

Many of Mr. Babbitt’s works have been recorded, and he has always had the loyalty of performers willing to devote the effort required to render his music sensibly. Among his earliest champions were the soprano Bethany Beardslee, for whom he wrote many of his vocal works (“A Solo Requiem” was written in memory of her husband, Godfrey Winham); the Juilliard String Quartet; the pianists Robert Miller and Robert Helps; the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble; and the Group of Contemporary Music.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a generation of young instrumentalists inured to the complexities of contemporary music became eloquent champions of Mr. Babbitt’s music . Among them are the pianists Robert Taub and the guitarist David Starobin, who have commissioned and recorded Mr. Babbitt’s works.

Mr. Babbitt’s orchestral music is so exceedingly complex that both the New York Philharmonic, in 1969, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in 1989, postponed premieres when the available rehearsal time proved insufficient. He did, however, have champions among top-flight conductors, the most notable being James Levine, who in 1967, as a 24-year-old fledgling conductor, led the premiere of Mr. Babbitt’s “Correspondences.” Mr. Levine later recorded Mr. Babbitt’s music with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and commissioned his Second Piano Concerto for the Met Orchestra and Mr. Taub in 1998. He regularly included Mr. Babbitt’s chamber works on his Met Chamber Ensemble programs, and in 2004 Mr. Babbitt dedicated his Concerti for Orchestra to Mr. Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned it.

Mr. Babbitt received a special Pulitzer citation for his life’s work in 1982, and in 1986 he was awarded a $300,000 MacArthur Fellowship. His earlier awards included the Joseph Bearns Prize from Columbia University, for his “Music for the Mass” in 1941; the New York Music Critics Circle Awards, for Composition for Four Instruments in 1949 and for “Philomel” in 1964; and the Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University in 1970. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1965.

Mr. Babbitt’s wife, Sylvia, died in 2005. He is survived by a daughter, Betty Anne Duggan, and two grandchildren, Julie and Adam.

De Radio Beethoven FM:

El músico dejó de existir a los 94 años tras una larga enfermedad. Babbitt compuso numerosas obras para medios electrónicos, mixtos e instrumentales. Entre sus composiciones más destacadas se cuenta “Philomel” para soprano y cinta magnética.

Desde hace varios años que Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) se veía aquejado en su salud. Luego de componer su última obra en el año 2006 (“An Encore” para violín y piano), el prestigioso compositor norteamericano dejó la vida activa en su arte, por problemas de salud derivados de su avanzada edad. Babbitt finalmente dejó de existir en la mañana del sábado 29 de enero del año 2011.

Procedente de Jackson, Mississippi, en sus inicios estudió clarinete, violín y saxofón, y desarrolló una fuerte pasión por el jazz, que lo acompañaría toda la vida. Hijo de un matemático, originalmente siguió los pasos de su progenitor para luego optar por la composición. Su profundo interés por los autores de la Segunda Escuela de Viena abrió sus ojos a las posibilidades que le ofrecía el serialismo.

Fue así que luego de estudiar con Roger Sessions, Babbitt empezó a aplicar sus conocimientos matemáticos en la composición. Esta exploración tuvo un breve paréntesis en 1946, cuando el joven compositor escribió un musical para Broadway, titulado “Fabolous Voyage”. Cabe decir, que Babbitt siempre se consideró un gran admirador del mundo de los musicales estadounidenses, y que fue mentor de Stephen Sondheim, uno de los principales autores del género.

En 1947 compusó “Three Compositions for Piano”, uno de los ejemplos más tempranos de lo que después se denominaría “serialismo total”. En los años '50, su ya mencionada pasión por el jazz lo llevó a colaborar con el movimiento denominado “Third Stream”, que aunaba este mundo musical junto con las técnicas de composición modernas. El aporte de Babbitt se llamó “All Set”, y bien podríamos hablar de esta pieza como “jazz serial”.

En 1961 Babbitt fue contratado por la RCA la como compositor consultor para trabajar con su RCA Mark II Synthesizer, lo que dio pie a su primera obra para el medio electrónico, titulada “Composition for Synthesizer”. El músico se fascinó por la infinita gama de timbres novedosos que el naciente medio de la música electrónica ofrecía a su disposición. El hito en esta dirección, sin embargo, fue la obra “Philomel” de 1964, en donde a la rigidez de los sonidos en cinta magnética, Babbitt agrega una voz solista (una soprano) en vivo, lo que sería un paso gigantezco a lo que hoy denominamos “música para medios mixtos”.

A contar de los años ’80, el interés de Babbitt por la electrónica se redujo considerablemente, prefiriendo los medios instrumentales para sus partituras. Es así como surgen gran cantidad de piezas orquestales, vocales y de cámara, incluyendo una numerosa cantidad de obras para instrumentos solos.

En 1982 Babbitt recibió una mención especial del prestigioso Premio Pulitzer, como “un distinguido y pionero compositor estadounidense”. En las últimas décadas, diversos honores enriquecieron su notable currículum y su catálogo de obras se engrosó con encargos provenientes de los más renombrados artistas del medio musical.

Nos ha dejado un pionero. Un artista que aportó de manera significativa a dos de los lenguajes musicales más determinantes de los últimos cien años: el serialismo y la música electroacústica.

Por Álvaro Gallegos M.

29/01/2011

Surge escuela de música en el puerto de Buenaventura

2011-01-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

De El País:

Desde febrero de este año iniciará actividades la escuela de música del Pacífico como una alternativa de formación de hombres y mujeres de la región.

La escuela se constituye en la primera entidad en proponer la formación formal en educación musical para niños, jóvenes y adultos con una variada oferta académica.

"Vamos a contar con la carrera técnica laboral en música, algo muy novedoso pues permite la formación técnica de muchas personas que tienen conocimientos de la música de forma empírica", dijo Mónica Correa, directora de la escuela.

Esta carrera tendrá una duración de seis semestres con el aval respectivo del Ministerio de Educación.
La misma proporcionará la oportunidad a muchos musicos y amantes de la misma de acceder a actividades laborales en muchos campos.

Correa especialista en música viene de dirigir por muchos años el proceso de Batuta en la ciudad así como de promocionar el surgimiento de grupos corales de la música del Pacífico.

Más de 200 niños de todo el Pacífico colombiano surgieron como interpretes de la música de la región gracias al proyecto de "Cantando la Ley 70", del cual fue artífice la educadora musical Mónica Correa.

CFP: Music and Everyday Life

2011-01-28T15:25:00.001-05:00

Music and Everyday Life

2011 Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting

Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, April 8-10, 2011

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Harris M. Berger, Texas A&M University

The Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (MIDSEM) will hold its annual meeting April 8-10, 2011. MIDSEM welcomes proposals from SEM members, students, teachers, and anyone working in related fields. Submissions from musicology, music theory, communications, media studies, folklore, performance studies, and popular culture studies are particularly welcomed. Regional SEM meetings offer a unique opportunity for students to present works in progress and gain valuable conference experience and MIDSEM particularly encourages graduate and undergraduate students to submit abstracts. The JaFran Jones Award is awarded annually to the best student paper.

The conference theme for the 2011 meeting will be “Music and Everyday Life.” We especially encourage proposals related to the following themes:

Portable Music Technologies
Phenomenological Ethnomusicology
Music-Making and the Maintenance of Community
Mediated Performance Technologies (Karaoke, Guitar Hero, DDR, etc.)
Circulation of Music-Related Commodities

Informal Music Pedagogies

Proposals on other topics relevant to ethnomusicology are also welcome. We welcome submissions for scholarly papers (20-minute presentation, 10-minute discussion immediately following), organized panels of three or four papers, poster sessions, lecture-demonstrations, film/video screenings, or workshops.

Paper proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words; panel proposals should include a 250-word abstract for each paper plus a 200-word panel abstract. Please include with your proposal: the name(s) of presenter(s), institutional affiliation, title of presentation, format of presentation (paper, panel, poster, workshop, etc.), A/V equipment requirements, e-mail address, and phone number. These should be sent by e-mail to: Jeremy Wallach, MIDSEM President, jeremyw@bgsu.edu, with the exact subject line: MIDSEM 2011 Proposal Submission.

Deadline: Tuesday, February 1, 2011, 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time

The program committee will notify participants of acceptances by February 20, 2011.

Program Committee, MIDSEM 2011: Jeremy Wallach (Chair), Kate Brucher, Sonja Downing, David Harnish, Jesse Johnston, David McDonald, Katherine Meizel, Ruth Rosenberg.

For more information, please contact:

Jeremy Wallach
Associate Professor
Department of Popular Culture
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0190
(419) 372-8204
fax (419) 372-2577
jeremyw@bgsu.edu

RIP Eugenio Arango "Totico" QEPD

2011-01-23T10:02:00.004-05:00

Que descanse en paz, o que rumbee en el cielo

Here's an obituary from worldmusiccentral By Les Moncada:

Influential singer and percussionist Eugenio Arango “Totico” died Friday, January 21st in New York. He was a well known vocalist, who recorded Patato y Totico, a seminal Cuban rumba album in 1967, together with his boyhood friend Carlos ‘Patato’ Valdes.

Totico was a legend and well known as a rumbero, and individual that had the knowledge and ability to play, sing and dance the Cuban rumba rhythms of guaguancó, yambú and rumba columbia. Totico was also an akpuón, a lead singer for Afro-Cuban santeria ceremonies.

Totico was know for his quinto conga drumming style and his rumba singing. Totico recorded a legendary album that is a classic for all rumberos and drummers with the famed conga player/dancer Carlos “Patato” Valdes entitled Patato and Totico. Patato y Totico featured percussionist Carlos “Patato” Valdés on congas and Eugenio “Totico” Arango on vocals and congas, together with the legendary blind tresero (tres guitarist) Arsenio Rodriguez and the late Israel “Cachao” Lopez on bass. Originally released in 1967, Verve Records reissued it on CD in 2004.

Totico was born in Havana, in the Los Sitios barrio (district). After moving to the United States he performed and recorded with artists such as Israel “Cachao” López, Francisco “Kako” Bastar, Carlos “Patato” Valdés and Alfredo Rodríguez.

Totico’s discography includes Patato y Totico (Verve V6-5037, 1967), Totico y sus Rumberos (Montuno 515, 1992), and Sonido Sólido, with Alfredo Rodriguez, Patato and Totico (Top Ten Records 1995).

***
And a review for a classic Totico record, from Totico's MySpace page

NY Times Review: (c) Robert Palmer
Published: August 14, 1981

To many New Yorkers, summer music is the music people play on the front steps of apartment buildings and in the city's parks, music that usually involves one or two conga drums, some other percussion instruments and singing, primarily in Spanish. Some summer strollers and joggers consider street-corner Latin music a nuisance, but it has a rich history and is often a singular blend of the staunchest traditionalism and more recent influences. It is rarely recorded, and it has probably never been recorded as winningly as on ''Totico y Sus Rumberos,'' a new album on the Montuno label.

Totico is Eugenio F. Arango, a native of Havana who has lived in New York for a number of years but still sings in the forcefully fluid style of the great Cuban vocalists. He most frequently performs music that derives directly from the rituals of Santeria, the African-derived religions that still flourish in Cuba, though he is also at home in more popular idioms.

The ''rumberos'' he has assembled for his album include expert players of the bata, the Nigerian drum associated with Santeria rituals. But except for a couple of religious chants, the music is street-corner rumba, sung with much feeling and exquisite musicality by Totico and backed by a lusty vocal chorus and some exceptionally fancy percussion, with Andy Gonzalez's string bass added as an anchor.

One selection on the album is a kind of summation of New York as the ultimate cultural melting pot. It is ''What's Your Name?'' the familiar rock-and-roll hit from the 1950's, and Totico and his producer, Rene Lopez, have given it a subtitle: ''Doo-Whop Bata Rumba.''

They have taken the original rock-and-roll song, sung it in the street-corner style that is usually spelled ''doo wop,'' put a rumba rhythm to it and added cross-rhythms on the bata drums. The result is one of the most striking examples of New York summer music to be found on records. ''Totico y Sus Rumberos'' is available in many shops or or call Montuno Records, 840-0580. Robert Palmer
***
Audio:
"Agua que va caer" A classic of summertime NYC rumba in Central Park and Tompkins Square Park back in the day - lots of memories here.

A guaguancó cover of the Brazilian bossa nova "Mas que nada"

Covering the Don and Juan doo-wop piece "What's Your Name?" (Ignore the video).

2011-01-22T13:34:00.001-05:00

http://www.music.pitt.edu/graduate/ethnomusicology/macsem

2011 Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual
Meeting and Pre-Conference Symposium on Romani/Gypsy Music at the
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, March 18-20 2011

Keynote Speaker: Peter Manuel, Professor of Ethnomusicology
CUNY Graduate Center

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (MACSEM)
will hold its annual meeting March 19-20, 2011, with a pre-conference
Symposium on Romani/Gypsy Music on March 18, 2011 introducing the University
of Pittsburgh's new 3-week Romani music study abroad program in the
Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine (May/June, 2012) and featuring lectures by

Zuzana Jurkova (Institute of Ethnology, Prague)
Svanibor Pettan (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Petra Gelbart (New York University)

with musical performance by Harmonia http://www.harmoniaband.com/

MACSEM welcomes proposals from SEM members, students,
teachers, and scholars working in related fields.
Submissions from musicology, anthropology, media studies,
folklore, performance studies, and popular culture studies are
particularly welcomed. MACSEM strongly encourages graduate and
undergraduate students to submit abstracts.

Proposals on all topics pertaining to ethnomusicology are welcomed.
Though there is no specific theme for the MACSEM 2011 conference, we
especially encourage proposals relating to the following issues:

* Gender and Sexuality
* Cultural Rights
* Global Music Industries
* Music and Postcolonialism

Submissions include scholarly papers (20-minute presentation,
10-minute discussion), organized panels of three or four papers,
poster sessions, lecture-demonstrations, film/video screenings, and
workshops. Paper proposals consist of a 250-word abstract;
panel proposals must have a 250-word abstract for each
paper plus a 200-word panel abstract. Please include with your
proposal: the name(s) of presenter(s), institutional affiliation,
title of presentation, format of presentation (paper, panel, poster,
workshop, etc.), A/V equipment requirements, e-mail address, and phone
number. Please e-mail all information to:

Adriana Helbig, anh59@pitt.edu, MACSEM 2011 program committee
and local arrangements committee chair, with the subject line:
MACSEM 2011 Proposal Submission.

Deadline: January 25, 2011

The program committee will notify participants of acceptances by
February 8, 2011.

Program Committee, MACSEM 2011: Adriana Helbig (Chair), Atesh Sonneborn,
Andrew Weintraub, Emily Pinkerton, Andrew Eisenberg, Sylvia Alajaji, Max
Katz, Yoko Suzuki, Colter Harper

Student Committee, MACSEM 2011: Benjamin Pachter, Colter Harper, Indra
Ridwan, Yoko Suzuki, Yuko Eguchi, Stephen Hager, Alison Decker, Da Lin,
Jungwon Kim, Meng Ren, Oyebade Ajibola Dosunmu, Charles Lwanga, Brandi Neal

For more information, please contact:

Adriana Helbig
Assistant Professor of Music
University of Pittsburgh
110 Music Building
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
412-624-4193
anh59@pitt.edu

Premio Otto Mayer-Serra de Investigación Musical/Otto Mayer-Serra Award for Music Research

2011-01-18T10:34:00.002-05:00

En castellano abajo
Abaixo em portugûes

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Otto Mayer-Serra Award for Music Research

The University of California Riverside and the Center for Iberian and Latin-
American Music (CILAM) call for submissions for the Otto Mayer-Serra Award,
given annually for the best unpublished article on Latin American music.

Award

A single, undivided award of 1,500 USD; the award-winning essay will be
published in the Latin American Music Review.

Eligibility

All scholars are eligible to apply, regardless of age, nationality or place of
residence.

Administration

The winner will be selected by a committee of outside reviewers, nominated by
CILAM. The names of the committee members will be made public after a
decision has been reached. The committee’s decision is final and may not be
appealed. If no submission is deemed worthy the prize may not be awarded. The
committee may disqualify any participant who does not meet the requirements
established by this call.

Application process

A completed application will consist of the following:

1. Authors of articles to be considered for the award should submit one
complete copy in word doc or pdf format as an attachment to an email
addressed to Benicia Jacob (benicia.jacob@ucr.edu). Articles should not exceed
40 pages, inclusive of references, illustrations, and musical examples. All
material should be double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman Font, with
margins of at least one inch.

2. To allow for the anonymous review of submissions, the author’s name should
appear only in the cover letter, which should also contain the full title of the
submission and all relevant contact information. Authors should avoid
identifying themselves in the manuscript itself (title page, header, notes) or in
the file information.

3. The article must be unpublished and written in Spanish or Portuguese and will
be published correspondingly in either language.
Application deadline: April 15, 2011. The winner of the prize will be notified in
June 2011.

After being notified, the winning author will submit publication-quality musical
examples and illustrations in TIFF (300dpi) and the text in Word format. The
author will be responsible for arranging the corresponding permits for
publication.

The Otto Mayer-Serra Prize for Music Research was sponsored in 2008 by
Instrumenta Oaxaca, Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca, Fundación para las Letras
Mexicanas, Coordinación de Difusión Cultural UNAM, Instituto Nacional de
Bellas Artes and Pauta.

CONVOCATORIA

PREMIO OTTO MAYER-SERRA DE INVESTIGACIÓN MUSICAL

La Universidad de California Riverside y el Centro para la Música Ibérica y
Latinoamericana (CILAM) convocan a la presentación de artículos para el Premio
Internacional de Investigación Musical Otto Mayer-Serra, otorgado al mejor
artículo sobre música latinoamericana.

Premio

El premio, único e indivisible, consiste en un monto de 1,500 Dólares y la
publicación del texto en la Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música
Latinoamericana.

Bases

El concurso tiene carácter internacional. Podrán participar todos los autores, sin
importar su edad, lugar de residencia o nacionalidad, que en forma individual
presenten un ensayo sobre la música de América Latina.

El ensayo deberá ser inédito y no premiado con anterioridad.

El jurado será nombrado por CILAM y estará integrado por investigadores de
reconocido prestigio internacional. La composición del jurado se hará pública
hasta la emisión del fallo y su decisión será inapelable. Es facultad del jurado
descalificar cualquier trabajo que no cumpla con alguno de los requisitos
marcados por esta convocatoria. El premio podrá ser declarado desierto.

Procedimiento

1. Los trabajos deberán ser enviados en formato Word o pdf, anexos a un correo
electrónico dirigido a Benicia Jacob (benicia.jacob@ucr.edu). El texto deberá
tener una extensión máxima de 40 cuartillas a doble espacio, Times New
Roman, 12 Pts., márgenes no menores de 2.5 cm, incluyendo ejemplos
musicales, gráficos, tablas, referencias y apéndices.

2. Para permitir la revisión anónima de los textos el nombre del autor aparecerá
solamente en el mensaje de correo electrónico, el cual deberá contener también
el título del artículo y todos los datos necesarios para establecer contacto con el
autor. Los autores deberán evitar identificarse tanto en el texto del artículo
como en el documento en general (encabezado, notas, etc.).

3. El texto será enviado en español o en portugués y, de ganar, será publicado
como tal.

La fecha límite de recepción de trabajos es el 15 de abril de 2011. El resultado
del concurso se dará a conocer durante el mes de junio de 2011.

En caso de ser declarado ganador, los gráficos y ejemplos musicales
correspondientes al trabajo deberán ser entregados en formato TIFF (300 dpi) y
los archivos de texto en formato Word. El autor será responsable de tramitar los
permisos de reproducción de música y de gráficos.

El Premio Internacional de Investigación Musical Otto Mayer-Serra fue
patrocinado en 2008 por Instrumenta Oaxaca, Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca,
Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas, Coordinación de Difusión Cultural UNAM,
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y la revista Pauta.

CONVOCATÓRIA

PRÊMIO OTTO MAYER-SERRA DE PESQUISA EM MÚSICA

A Universidade da Califórnia em Riverside e o Centro para a Música Ibérica e
Latino-Americana (CILAM) abrem uma chamada para a apresentação de artigos
para o Prêmio Internacional de Pesquisa em Música Otto Mayer-Serra, outorgado
ao melhor artigo sobre música latino-americana.

Prêmio

O prêmio, único e indivisível, consiste em uma quantia de 1.500 Dólares e a
publicação do texto na Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música
Latinoamericana.

Bases

O concurso tem caráter internacional. Poderão participar todos os autores, sem
importar idade, residência ou nacionalidade, que de maneira individual
apresentem um ensaio sobre a música da América Latina.

O ensaio deverá ser inédito e não premiado anteriormente.

A comissão julgadora será nomeada pelo CILAM e será integrada por
investigadores de reconhecido prestígio internacional. A decisão da comissão
julgadora será inapelável. Cabe à comissão julgadora desqualificar qualquer
trabalho que não cumpra com os requisitos delineados nesta convocatória. O
prêmio poderá não ser atribuído.

Procedimentos

1. Os trabalhos deverão ser enviados em formato Word ou pdf, anexos a um e-
mail dirigido a Benicia Jacob (benicia.jacob@ucr.edu). O texto deverá ter uma
extensão máxima de 40 pautas em espaçamento duplo, fonte Times New
Roman, 12 Pts., margens não menores do que 2.5 cm, incluindo exemplos
musicais, imagens, tabelas, referências e apêndices.

2. Para permitir a revisão anônima dos textos, o nome do autor aparecerá
somente no corpo do e-mail, o qual deverá conter também o título do artigo e
todos os dados necessários para estabelecer contato com o autor. Os autores
deverão evitar identificar-se tanto no texto do artigo como no documento em
geral (cabeçalho, notas, etc.).

3. O texto será enviado em espanhol ou em português e, caso seja o vencedor,
será publicado como tal.

A data-limite de recepção dos trabalhos é 15 de abril de 2011. O resultado do
concurso será dado a conhecer durante o mês de junho de 2011.

Caso seja declarado vencedor, o candidato deverá enviar as imagens e exemplos
musicais correspondentes ao trabalho em formato TIFF (300 dpi) e os arquivos
de texto em formato Word. O autor será responsável por obter as autorizações
de reprodução de música e imagens.

O Prêmio Internacional de Pesquisa em Música Otto Mayer-Serra foi patrocinado
em 2008 por Instrumenta Oaxaca, Governo do Estado de Oaxaca, Fundação para
as Letras Mexicanas, Coordenação de Difusão Cultural UNAM, Instituto Nacional
de Belas Artes e a revista Pauta.

2011-01-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

The Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO and the Washington Office on Latin America cordially invite you to a brown-bag lunch on:

Colombia’s Port Workers:
Dangerous Work without Protection of Labor Rights

Featuring

Javier Marrugo
President of the Port Union

Javier Marrugo is the president of the Unión Portuaria (UP, Port Union). The UP is a Colombian union established in 2009 that represents workers of the four major seaports in the country as well as workers in non-maritime ports operations. The UP established locales in the four ports last year and continues to grow. Under Mr. Marrugo’s leadership, the new union has worked with retired port workers from the UP’s predecessor unions to organize subcontracted ports workers. Roughly 75 percent of the workforce in Colombia’s ports is employed under flexible non-labor contracts, meaning that workers are unable to legally join unions. For more than a year, the union has been undertaking an intensive campaign to formalize employment in the ports, where a largely Afro-Colombian workforce labors and receives no social protection benefits. The workers have limited, if any, workplace safety protection and frequently earn less than minimum wage. Since the late spring of 2010, the UP has been meeting with the Government of Colombia in an effort to persuade officials to take action on the labor conditions of the ports. During his visit to the US, Mr. Marrugo will be speaking about labor conditions in the ports sector and the abuse of third-party contracting to circumvent workers’ right to unionize in Colombia.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011
12:30-1:30pm
WashingtonOffice on Latin America
1666 Connecticut Ave NW, 4^th Floor conference room
Washington, DC

Simultaneous translation from Spanish to English will be provided

conference/conferencia sobre movimientos afro-latinos

2011-01-11T21:34:00.002-05:00

Afro Latino Social Movements From “Monocultural Mestizaje” and “Invisibility” to Multiculturalism and State Corporatism/Cooptation

Movimientos Sociales Afro Latinos Desde "Mestizaje Mono-cultural" e "Invisibilidad" al Multiculturalismo y Corporativismo/Cooptación de Estado

February 24 -25, 2010 - Florida International University

http://casgroup.fiu.edu/events/docs/439/1287520981_.pdf

NY Times: 104 years in mash-ups

2011-01-09T11:01:00.002-05:00

From Charles Ives and Pierre Scaeffer to Remix.vg, DJ Hero, and Girl Talk.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/09/magazine/mashup-timeline.html?ref=magazine

also: a history (and brief manifesto) on the headphone:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09FOB-medium-t.html?ref=magazine

Revista Shock - Historia del picó champetero cartagenero (c/ música)

2011-01-09T10:28:00.004-05:00

El nuevo evangelio picotero. Guía Shock de la Champeta y el Picó

Se trata de un ritmo muy joven, un niño genio que está creciendo, adquiriendo nuevos poderes, y que nos dará muchas más sorpresas en el futuro. Una guía poderosa pa’ poner la música a tronar y a la pareja a afinar paso. ¡Suénalo!

Nació en un lugar inesperado, en un momento inesperado y de la manera más inesperada. Hace unos 30 años, en lo más profundo de la Africolombia y de nuestra costa Caribe, nació un bebe musical, punketo de corazón: la champeta criolla, uno de los ritmos más originales, censurados e incomprendidos que haya parido nuestra tierra, y el único nuevo ritmo que ha dado nuestra nación cumbiera en las últimas décadas del siglo XX.

[Artículo sigue aquí: http://shock.com.co/actualidad/musica/articuloshock-el-nuevo-evangelio-picotero-guia-shock-de-champeta-y-el-pico ]

Música:
Picó El Timbalero: "La Escopeta"

El Guajiro El Tiraflechas: "Lawose Oh Yeye"

El Indio Mayeye El Cucu El Sibanicu
(Con el supuesto primer tema africano escuchado en Colombia en el movimiento picotero)

Afro-Colombin fusion music in Montreal

2011-01-09T10:16:00.001-05:00

Says (Bogotano) Roberto López: "This year, when I attended WOMEX in Copenhagen, the word around was that Colombian music is the next great wave in world music.”

http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2011/01/06/music/the-most-from-the-coast/

Afro-Colombians: "The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is One More Threat against Afro-Colombian Communities"

2011-01-09T10:13:00.000-05:00

http://news.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/PCNonFTA-eng-12-2010.pdf

BOSTON COLLEGE, AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES PROGRAM (AADS) DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP

2011-01-09T10:09:00.000-05:00

BOSTON COLLEGE, AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES PROGRAM (AADS) DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP

Targeted Fields
Humanities. Social Sciences.

Open To
Students Working on Doctoral Dissertation.

Citizenship
No citizenship requirements.

Eligibility Requirements
Applicants must complete all requirements for the PhD, aside from the dissertation, by the start of the fellowship year. The fellow must remain in residence for the 9-month academic year, deliver one public lecture, and teach one seminar course.

Stipend
Stipend of $30,000 plus health insurance, a $1,500 research budget, and a fully equipped office.

Deadline
1/21/2011

Program Description
One award offered for dissertation research on any topic within African and/or African Diaspora studies. The successful applicant will have full access to Boston College's seven libraries as well as several rare books and manuscripts collections. Awards support one year of research.

For More Information
Chair

AADS Fellowship Committee
Boston College
301 Lyons Hall
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3806

(617) 552-8000
aads@bc.edu
www.bc.edu/schools/cas/aads/resources/dissfellowship.html

Dr. Bettina Ng'weno: Afro Colombian Citizenship Struggles: Separate or Equal Legal Standing?

2010-12-20T13:42:00.000-05:00

Mis discos de diciembre: Vos me debés y La fuga

2010-12-15T16:25:00.003-05:00

Siempre diciembre es la época cuando se prenden los equipos en Colombia, sobre todo en el litoral Pacífico. Algunos discos que ojalá sonarán en cualquier equipo donde yo esté en este diciembre.

Chévere que el currulao está empezando a tener sentido de pertenencia en Cali, tanto así que los salseros de Son de Cali han sacado un currulao:

También para tirar risa, el nerdo sabroso Jiggy Drama ha sacado un disco que una enciclopedia del soble sentido - La fuga. ("Quieres ver gas o ver gotas?")

De ñapa, aunque sea más viejo. Ya que estamos riendo, el payaso príncipe del rock colombiano, Velandia y La Tigra:

2010-12-06T23:41:00.000-05:00

“SEXUALIDADES Y FEMINIDADES DE MUJERES NEGRAS, INDÍGENAS, BLANCAS-MESTIZAS Y TRANSGENERISTAS NEGRAS EN EL SUROCCIDENTE COLOMBIANO”

2010-12-05T02:26:00.002-05:00

TALLER FEMINIDADES Y SEXUALIDADES

Taller final de presentación de los resultados de la investigación

“SEXUALIDADES Y FEMINIDADES DE MUJERES NEGRAS, INDÍGENAS, BLANCAS-MESTIZAS Y TRANSGENERISTAS NEGRAS EN EL SUROCCIDENTE COLOMBIANO”[1]
Auditorio Germán Colmenares, Facultad de Humanidades de la Universidad del Valle
(Cali, diciembre 13 de 2010)

Este taller recoge los principales resultados del proyecto de investigación Colciencias-Cidse/Universidad del Valle, “Sexualidades y feminidades contemporáneas de mujeres negras e indígenas: un análisis de cohorte generacional y étnico – racial”. En él se analizan los cambios y continuidades que se presentan en las construcciones identitarias femeninas contemporáneas, desde el ámbito de las sexualidades, de mujeres negras e indígenas y mestizas-blancas, pertenecientes a clases medias, clases populares y clase obrera; de sectores campesinos indígenas de resguardo y migrantes indígenas urbanos, en Cali, Buenaventura, norte del Cauca (Villarica y Puerto Tejada) y los municipios de Toribío y Silvia; y de feminidades transgeneristas negras de clases populares en el contexto urbano de Cali y Jamundí. Estos cambios se abordaron desde una perspectiva socioantropológica y sociodemográfica, a través de un estudio de casos en las zonas urbanas y rurales ya mencionadas, en los que las variables étnico/racial, la clase social vía el nivel educativo y la cohorte generacional, marcan diferentes formas de construcción y manifestación de las diversas feminidades y sexualidades de los grupos de mujeres y feminidades tranSgeneristas arriba mencionados. Igualmente, se incluyó el análisis de las percepciones de los hombres sobre las mujeres y las feminidades transgeneristas respecto a estos cambios, controlando las mismas variables anteriores.

Los resultados se inscriben en los estudios que trabajan la interseccionalidad de las categorías de las ciencias sociales tales como raza, etnicidad, sexualidad, género, clase social y generación y por lo mismo articula perspectivas disciplinarias entre la sociología, la antropología, la historia y la demografía. El principal objetivo del estudio apuntó a registrar procesos de subjetivación en la transformación de las distintas feminidades contemporáneas en la región antes descrita, focalizando la observación en las sexualidades femeninas de las clases subalternas, producidas y articuladas alrededor de los componentes de clase social, sexos/géneros, raza-etnicidad y generación.

El equipo del proyecto de investigación agradece a todas las mujeres negras (heterosexuales y no heterosexuales), indígenas (Nasa y Misak) y mestizas-blancas, a los hombres (negros, mestizos-blancos e indígenas), y las transgeneristas negras que aceptaron hablar de sus biografías sexuales y demás trayectorias de sus vidas.

PROGRAMACIÓN

8:00 a.m. INSTALACIÓN
Palabras de los decanos de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas,
Carlos Humberto Ortiz, y de la Facultad de Humanidades, Darío Henao.
Palabras de María Eugenia Ibarra, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad del Valle, en representación del Centro de Estudios de Género, Mujer y Sociedad.

Jornada de la mañana
PRESENTACIÓN DE LOS RESULTADOS EMPÍRICOS DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN (cinco intervenciones)
8:30 a.m. Fernando Urrea Giraldo (Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad del Valle)
Enfoque teórico y metodológico utilizado en la investigación y presentación de los hallazgos sobre las feminidades transgeneristas negras.
9:00 a.m. Nancy Motta González (Departamento de Historia, Universidad del Valle)
Sexualidades y feminidades de mujeres indígenas en dos áreas de resguardo (Nasa y Guambiano).
9:30 a.m. Jeanny Posso Quiceno (Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad del Valle)
Sexualidades y feminidades de mujeres blancas-mestizas en Cali.
10:00 a.m. Receso para refrigerio.
10:30 a.m. Espacio para preguntas y discusión.
11:30 a.m. Astrid Yulieth Cuero Montenegro (Programa de Sociología, Universidad del Valle)
Feminidades y sexualidades de mujeres negras heterosexuales en Cali, Buenaventura y norte del Cauca.
12:00 a.m. Consuelo Malatesta Morera (Colectivos LGTB, Cali).
Sexualidades de mujeres negras no heterosexuales en Cali.
12:30 m. – 1:00 p.m. Espacio para preguntas y discusión.

Jornada de la tarde:
TERMINACIÓN DE LAS PRESENTACIONES Y COMENTARIOS AL CONJUNTO DE LOS RESULTADOS EMPÍRICOS DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN
2:30 p.m. Waldor Arias Botero (Programa de Sociología, Universidad del Valle)
Sexualidades y feminidades de mujeres indígenas en Cali.
3:00 p.m. Mara Viveros Vigoya (directora de la Escuela de Estudios de Género de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá).
3:45 p.m. Gabriela Castellanos (coordinadora del programa de Doctorado de Estudios de Género de la Universidad del Valle, Facultad de Humanidades).
4:30 p.m. Receso para refrigerio.
4:45 p.m. Andrea García Becerra (profesora del Departamento de Antropología de la Universidad Javeriana, en Bogotá).
5:30 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Espacio para preguntas y discusión.
6:30 p.m. Fin del taller.

Unidades académicas, entidades y organizaciones que apoyan este taller:
- Facultades de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas y de Humanidades de la Universidad del Valle.
- CIDSE (Centro de Investigaciones y Documentación Socioeconómica) de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Económicas.
- Grupos UNIVALLE-COLCIENCIAS: Estudios étnico-raciales y del trabajo en sus diferentes componentes sociales y grupo REGIÓN de la Facultad de Humanidades.
- Centro de Estudios de Género, Mujer y Sociedad de la Facultad de Humanidades.
- Programa de Doctorado de Estudios de Género de la Facultad de Humanidades.
- Escuela de Estudios de Género de la Facultad de Ciencias Humanas de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá).
PROFAMILIA (regional de Cali).
Programa de Inclusión Social de la Alcaldía de Santiago de Cali.
Somos Identidad (Universidad del Valle).

Hip hop producer Young Guru on how corporate restructuring in the music industry enslaves artists

2010-12-03T16:13:00.007-05:00

A little realness that's actually real...
More from Young Guru on Jay-Z, his respectful disagreement with Prof. Cornell West's methdology, why conspiracy theories keep us from putting faces on corporate power (a riff on structure vs. agency), Dipset/Beenie Siegel drama, why stupid hip hop beefs ("corny and over") pale in comparison with real street violence, and more here.

Foros sobre movimiento juvenil y festival de música urbana, Buenaventura, Dec. 4-5

2010-12-03T08:28:00.001-05:00

Foros sobre movimiento juvenil y festival de música urbana, Buenaventura, Dec. 4-5

"The Afro-Latin@ Reader": Book Presentation & Signing

2010-12-01T16:08:00.001-05:00

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States is the
first of its kind, detailing the contributions of Latinos of African descent in
the United States.

Thursday December 2nd, 2010
5:00pm
NAC Room 6/141
The City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031

Join us in a presentation of the Afro-Latin@ Reader featuring Professors
Miriam Jiménez-Román and Juan Flores

The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly
invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from
Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United
States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and
Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Sponsored by the Department
of Modern Languages, Department of Sociology and the Department of Black
Studies at The City College of New York.

For more info, visit the CCNY event webpage

Ballet on the Mirabal sisters/Ballet sobre las Mirabal

2010-11-26T22:34:00.002-05:00

http://www.dr1.com/news.php#1
Mirabal Sisters - fifty years on

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Patria, Minerva and
Maria Teresa Mirabal, a ballet called "Tres" (Three) will be staged at the
Mirabal Sisters Monument in Salcedo at 7pm this evening. With choreography
by Carlos Veitia and music by Philip Glass, the ballet was inspired by the
three national heroines and their struggle against the Trujillo
dictatorship, leading to their murder on 25 November 1960. The Ministry of
Culture is sponsoring the performance, which is open to the public free of
charge. Dancers include Cuban National Ballet's premier danseur Romel
Frometa, and premier danseur Maykel Acosta from the Dominican National
Ballet. The sisters will be portrayed by ballerinas Maria Valeria Melogno,
Stephanie Bauger, Alihayde Carreno and Lisbell Piedra.
* * *
http://www.hoy.com.do/alegria/2010/11/14/350106/Tres-poetica-de-danza-en-ballet-memorable

“Tres”, poética de danza en ballet memorable

El Ballet Nacional Dominicano, bajo la dirección de Marinella Sallent, se
une a la conmemoración del 50 aniversario del asesinato de las Hermanas
Mirabal, con la presentación del ballet “Tres”, del maestro Carlos Veitía.
Artísticamente, es a través de la danza como se evoca por primera vez este
hecho histórico. A propósito del estreno en 1980 del ballet “Las Hermanas
Mirabal”, escribimos en el “Listín Diario”: “Ha sido necesario que
transcurrieran veinte años de aquella tragedia que estremeció a todo un
pueblo, para que surgiera un artista con suficiente sensibilidad, capaz de
conmoverse e inspirarse en un acontecimiento histórico profundamente
dramático.

Unesco: Marimba y cantos del Pacífico Sur colombiano patrimonio intangible/Southern Pacific music UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage

2010-11-17T00:28:00.004-05:00

Today, Unesco announced the inclusion of the music of the southern Pacific on the list of intangible cultural heritage. Link (with media)

Hoy día, la UNESCO declaró la inclusión de la marimba y los cantos tradicionales del Pacífico Sur en su lista de patrimonio cultural intangible. Enlace

Felicidades a todo hijo e hija del Pacífico. Ahora surgen las preguntas: cómo afectará la vida de los cultores (muchos de los cuales viven en precarias condiciones económicas), las posibilidades de reinvindicaciones políticas (ya que están asesinando y amenazando los que levantan la voz para hacer reclamos a un ritmo muy acelerado en estos días) y la vida cotidiana de la población de la zona (que sigue aguantando una pésima falta de servicios y de educación, el desplazamiento, una intractable violencia, la pobreza y la presión de los grupos armados)? Ah, y otra: que piensan los chocoanos?

Será que la nueva denominación pueda prevenir que las tradicionales balsadas y procesiones de la Vírgen del Carmen en Guapi - capturadas en el video de la Unesco abajo - serán interrumpidas por el estallido de una granada como en el año antepasado? Podría ser un arma para la reinvindicación de los derechos culturales así garantizando el respecto al territorio? Dará impulso a que se valorice y se preserve las prácticas tradicionales, no como objeto de espectacularización en los festivales sino como una vivencia que enriquece la vida - social, cultral, económica y espiritual - de los hombres, mujeres y niños del Pacífico?

Ojalá sí.

Video (en inglés)

Colombia: #1 in displaced refugees/en desplazados

2010-11-10T10:03:00.003-05:00

According to the UN, Colombia has more displaced people than any other country in the world, including the Sudan Iraq, and Afghanistan: Link

Eso según la ONU y CODHES: enlace. El gobierno colombiano lo niega, pero aparentemente está maquillando las cifras. De todos modos, el asesinato de líderes desplazados sigue en marcha.

Exposición de fotografía de mujeres afrocolombianas en Brasil

2010-11-10T09:54:00.000-05:00

Ambience in the Humanities: Translating New Surroundings into New Poetics

2010-11-09T16:21:00.001-05:00

Full disclosure: I will be reading a paper for this one (via Skype, which I've never done before...)

Ambience in the Humanities: Translating New Surroundings into New Poetics

November 19-20, 2010
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor

The Humanities Initiative conference, organized by former Graduate Student Fellows Elena Bellinaand John Melillo

Sounds, voices, musics, images, written codes of all sorts – in today’s media-saturated environment, humans lend their ears and eyes to an abundant and seemingly free-floating worlds of social and sensory information. The intensity of this information calls for different models of poetics that figure the artist not as a lone fabricator constructing and reconstructing a singular tradition but rather as an antenna, receiving and rebroadcasting atmospheres of experience. The affects, concepts, and materials that create particular ambiences do not merely condition the work, as in the classic divide of text and context, but literally inform it, giving both material and shape to the poetic process. From everyday life to extreme conditions of constraint, from suburbia to the warzone, how does the sensing self record—consciously or unconsciously—the ambience of these zones and spaces?

In this conference, we propose to organize a series of roundtable discussions with writers, composers, performers, and critics that will consider not the influence of a particular tradition or canon but rather the influence of particular material surroundings. What does New York—as a crowded, built-up urban environment—mean for punk rock musicians in the early 1970s? How do the sounds of warfare affect soldiers and civilians in past and contemporary war zones? How do the symbols and images of pop culture get rearranged as signs of political allegiance? How do all the arts reflect the conditions of their production—not only in a political economic sense but also in the sense of sensing itself—the social materiality of exterior information?

For more information, including a conference program, please visit

ambienceconference.wordpress.com.