Root Magazine

Brazilian Music Beyond the Clichés

Root Magazine is a long time friend of the Caipirinha Appreciation Society and its payback time!

They need *your* help to keep going and take Brazilian music to the next level. This is the only place to discover the wonders of Brazilian sounds that go beyond samba, beyond bossa nova, just.... beyond...

Listen here and click the PayPal button:

http://cas.podomatic.com/

Kika Serra just might give a shout out to you on the air!

How to Samba: Time for Carnaval 2010

Hottest how-to sent to yours truly from Kika Sera of the CAS:
Its time for Carnaval in Brazil... get ready people!

Get your groove on to the Caipirinha Appreciation Society: http://cas.podomatic.com/

New Fusion for 2010

Elements of Classical Indian, Bellydance, Modern, Hip-hop and more... watch it all the way through.  Absolutely incredible ... Happy New Year everyone!

Choreography by Cera Byer

Performed by Damage Control Dance Theater

www.damage-control.org

*soundtrack: Vishnu's Eastern Block by artist Enduser*

Fela Kuti's story on Broadway and the perspective of his Queens

Three of the nine women who play Fela’s co-wives, from left, Aimee Graham Wodobode, Nicole Chantal de Weever and Iris Wilson

Actresses find depth in Fela's women:

link above and an excerpt:

“The relationship is more intricate than just a bunch of passive women who let a man do whatever he wanted,” Aimee Graham Wodobode, a dancer who plays a wife named Sewaa, said during a recent interview with five of the wives, called queens, at a Midtown restaurant. “They believed in his mission and were ready to die for him.”

Iris Wilson, whose character, Najite, met Fela when she 14 and described him as a combination father, mother and comrade in the fight for African democracy, said, “These were women who stood for something, who spoke out with Fela against the corrupt African government.”

Abena Koomson, whose character, Funmi, a former dancer, is pregnant in the musical and hangs back with the band, said: “Fela could not have done what he did by himself. Afrobeat music really takes a community. What it requires is polyrhythm, many different sounds. In many ways that’s a metaphor for community, for the call and response of African music. The queens are that sound, that affirmation.”

You want salsa? We got salsa:

SalsaValeTodo.com

Brazil in London

Snippets (grainy) from Guanabara, Brazilian nightclub in the heart of London:

"Dancing is understood by Postmamboists to be a deep listening state inseparable from the associated musical experience."

From the article below on Postmamboism: are you a Postmamboist?

Principles of Postmamboism:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/15/principles-of-postma.html#more

Postmamboism is a portable theory that places music at the center of understanding and uses music to interrogate other fields of study.

While the premises and methods of Postmamboism are applicable across a wide variety of musics, the discipline begins with the study of African and African diaspora musics, given their historical centrality to the music of the world and their deep connection through slavery, neoslavery, and liberation struggles to fundamental questions of colonialism, capitalism, and civilization. Postmamboism calls for a thorough knowledge of music of the black Atlantic, and implicitly has much to do with the emergent field of Atlantic studies, but its techniques and perspective can work with any musical culture.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all our readers.... 2008 is gonna be B*I*G

Root is still morphing.... stay tuned! 

San Francisco Historic Dance Landmark Burns

Fire destroys former S.F. home of Irish fraternal organization

Rhythm & Motion dance studios used call their home here in San Francisco.  I did work exchange here on and off, checking students into classes.  I got my inspiration for starting Root Magazine from the mess of flyers all over the building, each colorful xerox competing with the next for attention.  I bitched and moaned with the rest of the woman at the lack of changing rooms and old toilets.  I got completely creeped out when venturing into the basement for some chairs and spotted the old dusty bar that seemed to be evidence of speakeasy days.

Before the studio moved into their new location in conjunction with the ODC Dance Theatre, this was a place many people considered home.  The main dance studio, with its wooden vaulted ceiling and old stage had the space for upwards of 20 live musicians playing for a huge dance class.  It had leftover room for those who snuck in as an impromtu audience.  You can see the windows of the main studio ingulfed in flame in the picture above.  Those windows would steam up like crazy and we'd crack them open breathing the cool air outside unless our teachers wanted them shut to keep extra warm!

The classes go on somewhere else in the city, but this building was a special place and it will be missed.