written by
Friday has come at last! ¡Olé y olé! And with it my last blog post in this series, 'Girl Got Duende'. What fun this gig this has been! It is appropriate that we end the week in Spain. I would not want to be the guy who tells Magdalena Montañéz Salazar, 'La Marelu',...
It is hard for me to think of a performer whose life and art covered more ground in a shorter time than Lupe Victoria Yolí Raymond, La yiyiyí, La Lupe, the Queen of Latin Soul. Let's put it this way: when they retire a fairly common Hispanic name like Lupe in the...
Chavela Vargas died in 2012, leaving the world without that voice that Pedro Almodóvar, who featured her in his film La flor de mi secreto (My secret's flower), called la voz áspera de la ternura (the rough voice of tenderness). She was born in Costa Rica, where she...
Fado is a sort of Portuguese blues that contains elements from traditional Cape Verdean music, and the songs nearly always mournfully contemplate lost love, death and the full range of dark emotions. The elegant Ana Moura is one of its primary exponents in the world...
After hearing from mi querido guapo Steven Blier last week about his plan to create an entire NYFOS program around García Lorca, I decided to devote my week as NYFOS guest blogger to five of my favorite Hispanic women vocalists so that I might demonstrate duende by...