Michael Brun delivers a message from Haiti — one summer block party at a time
Michael Brun’s Bayo Block Party takes a celebration of Haiti’s spirit on the road, and he is bringing his friends with him too. By Maria…
Forever CELIA, Fifteen Years After Her Death
By: Maria Bakkalapulo for Songlines Magazine Visiting the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in 1990, Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso walked down the…
The American Dream Miami mall could be an urban planning nightmare for residents
by Maria Bakkalapulo for Marketplace. Click here to hear the Marketplace story American Dream Miami, a $4 billion retail and entertainment complex, won final zoning approval…
Miami’s Little Haiti Fights to Survive
Michael Brun holds his microphone out to the crowd that fills the courtyard of Miami’s Little Haiti Cultural Complex for the Bayo Block Party. The New…
The Florida Everglades: Nature’s Shock Absorber
By Maria Bakkalapulo for Sierra Club Everyone knows the Everglades as a wet place, but there can be too much of a good thing, and excess…
ÌFÉ Communes with the Orishas for Musical Inspiration
ÌFÉ’s song “Umbo (Come Down)” has deep lyrics – a cry out to Olokun, the Orisha that lives at the bottom of the sea. “The song…
Legendary Cuban Jazz Percussionist Igancio Berroa
Ignacio Berroa is living the dream. “I don’t know if you can imagine, being from an island in the Caribbean where the political system wouldn’t even…
iLe Brings Her Classic Puerto Rican Sounds to Miami
By Maria Bakkalapulo for the Miami Herald Ileana Mercedes Cabra Joglar, known as iLe, was in Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria hit. The singer and composer…
Tony Allen puts “the Beat in Afro-beat.”
From the Archive English composer and producer Brian Eno once said that Nigerian-born master Afro-beat drummer, Tony Allen is “perhaps the greatest drummer ever.” Allen, also…
Musicians Who Survived the Khmer Rouge
Words by Maria Bakkalapulo from the archive – first published in 2007. Sitting on a veranda overlooking the Mekong River, Arn Chorn-Pond need only close his…
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