Tagged: music

This Sunday, Nigerian Afro-beat artist Femi Kuti will be performing in Miami. Femi is known for using music to protest against the Nigerian government -- a legacy he inherited from his father, the legendary Afro-beat pioneer Fela Kuti.

The stands in front of the teenagers’ chairs hold the same sheet music – the theme to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”  But each of the young musicians has a different story to tell about anti-gay bullying.

Like the bi-sexual flutist, who says she’s pretty much been bullied all her life.

And the gay saxophonist, who describes how it “really gets to you inside and sometimes you start believing what people are saying.”

Even the heterosexual clarinetist is not immune.  She feels too many of her classmates use the word “gay” to describe something bad.

LISTEN TO THE STREAMING JINGLE JAMS MIX HERE

For the last 14 years, WXPN host and producer Robert Drake has programmed and hosted a 24-hour holiday-music marathon called The Night Before, aired from midnight to midnight on Dec. 24. We decided this year to put more jingle in the jangle and create Jingle Jams on XPN2, a 24/7 stream of holiday music.

The Cuban government officially doesn't like reggaeton. As some of you know, reggaeton is that mix of Jamaican dancehall music and Spanish hip hop that you hear blasted through car speakers all over Miami and in almost any club you go to in the city.

I would say reggaeton is an acquired taste, but the Cuban government was some pretty serious feelings about this.

Just two blocks west of Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, progressive metal band Neolythyc is rehearsing in a cramped, dark, converted garage.  The rehearsal space is just a stone's-throw from Holiday Park, the last known address of jazz legend Jaco Pastorius.

The four members of Neolythyc are all 17 years old, born nearly a decade after Pastorius's death in 1987.  But bass player Jerry Caceres refers to Jaco as "one of the old homies from down the block."

Forty-five-year-old Tammy Goss is sitting on a park bench in a small patch of green wedged between Dixie Highway and the FEC railroad tracks. Staring down from the southeast wall of the corner community center is a huge blue-toned mural of a man's face, his fingers curled around an electric bass guitar.  She knows his name.

“Jaco Pastorius, I think,” says Goss.

But that's all she really knows about John Francis Pastorius III.

The legendary salsa label hosts a free music and art event at PAX in Little Havana during Art Basel Wednesday, Dec.5 through Saturday, Dec. 8.