Category: People

SXSW: Zuzuka Poderosa and Los Rakas in Austin

On By scenebyginaIn music, New York, People, placesLeave a comment

Los Rakas and Zuzuka Poderosa — artists that I’ve worked with and am a HUGE fan of, will be in Austin, Texas, next week for South By Southwest (SXSW)! Here are the details:

SHOWCASE: Listen Global. Act Local

FRIDAY || 3/15/13 || 1 PM – 8 PM

Free. All ages. No wristbands/badges required.


Kenny Dorhman’s Backyard
1106 East 11th St, Austin, Texas 78702

More than just another party, the Listen Global. Act Local. showcase is Sol Collective’s second annual meet-up for musicians, artists, activists and creatives. Listen Global. Act Local. unites premiere acts from all corners of the globe to give something back to the Austin community. “With over a million people coming into Austin for South by Southwest, we really wanted to connect with local community and support the city’s creative projects” explains Estella Sanchez, Director of the Sol Collective Arts and Cultural Center in Sacramento.

Listening global means a lineup of some of the heaviest hitters in the global music movement including A Tribe Called Red, Los Rakas, Mandeep Sethi, Sonora, World Hood, Zuzuka Poderosa, Las Cafeteras, Chorizo Funk, Sapient, El Indio, and DLRN.

All info: http://on.fb.me/Xkdt5u

More about the artists >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LOS RAKAS
“Already known as mixtape wizards before they started recording their own songs, Los Rakas concocts a bilingual gumbo from the Caribbean musical diaspora of Jamaican dance hall, reggaeton and reggae, stiffened with straight short of hip-hop and R&B.” –LA Times
“Their politics are refreshingly evident but subterranean to pop dazzle.  Hide your teenage daughters from their energetic live show. –Village Voice

Los Rakas website: http://www.losrakas.com
Latest video “Bien Ribetiao“: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDQIBZixZVI

ZUZUKA PODEROSA
“Baile funk flipped inside-out.” – SPIN
“Not only is she bringing her own brand of the hot Brazilian underground sound to the rest of the world, but from her international vantage point she operates like a provocatively rhyming hurricane, sucking up global riddims from ghettotech to dancehall and flinging them back out at gale-force speeds.” – MTV 

Zuzuka’s new “Carioca Bass” EP in Fact Magazine: http://bit.ly/UAbFnk
Zuzuka’s new video, “Seda” in Spin Magazine: http://bit.ly/Wiwxix

Another immigration success story #WaHI #Dominican

On By scenebyginaIn family, New York, PeopleLeave a comment

wander2aWander Cedeño is first generation Dominican American and Washington Heights-native whose family came to the United States 30 years ago. Now he’s bound for a position with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C., where he will be an economist covering energy and chemicals.

The 25-year-old Fordham University double alumnus spent most of the past year as a New York City Urban Fellow in the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, where, among other things, he helped assess and catalog the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in Manhattan parks.

Read more here.

The gun debate: Out of the mouths of teens

On By scenebyginaIn Education, PeopleLeave a comment

teenagersPBS Newshour asked high school teenagers for their thoughts on the gun debate. Their comments are enlightening. Are lawmakers listening to this generation?

I found it interesting that the African American teens seemed to lean towards gun regulation, gun control and high security measures, such as metal detectors. Meanwhile, one young man from West Virginia, where hunting is popular, hinted that guns are a way of life and therefore, all that can be done is “raising awareness and keeping hope.” If that doesn’t say something about what ones concerns and fears are when growing up in different surroundings/neighborhoods, I don’t know what does.

Budding inventors should look out for the girl who suggests a “non-lethal defense system.” She may be onto something.

Watch Students Across the U.S. Reflect on Gun Control on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Baby boomers: Documenting a Generation’s Fall

On By scenebyginaIn family, New York, New York Times, People, senior citizensLeave a comment
(Photo by Sam Newman/NYT) George Ross, a former IT project manager in Livermore, Calif., and his wife, Linda, as seen in the documentary "Set for Life,'' by Susan Sipprelle and Sam Newman.
(Photo by Sam Newman)
George Ross, a former IT project manager in Livermore, Calif., and his wife, Linda, as seen in the documentary “Set for Life,” by Susan Sipprelle and Sam Newman.

By Michael Winerip
New York Times, Jan. 17, 2013

One of the lasting effects of the Great Recession has been the economic spiral downward of the American middle class, and no group has been harder hit than the boomer generation, men and women in the prime of their working lives.

From 2007 to 2009, workers 55 to 64 year old who lost jobs had been making an average of $850 a week; those lucky enough to be re-employed by January 2010 were earning $647 a week, a 23.9 percent drop in income.

Younger boomers, ages 45 to 54, had been averaging $916 a week; the jobs they were able to find after the recession paid $755, a 17.6 percent decline.

That is the story Susan Sipprelle tells in her new documentary, “Set for Life,” about the generation that was so sure that they were — until their lives came undone during the Great Recession.

Read more here.

NY Times: That Loving Feeling Takes Lots of Work

On By scenebyginaIn Loneliness, New York Times, PeopleLeave a comment

imagesBy Jane Brody
New York Times Jan. 14, 2013

When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”

But the divorce rate in the United States is exactly half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well for this cherished institution.

…

In her new book, “The Myths of Happiness,” Dr. Lyubomirsky describes a slew of research-tested actions and words that can do wonders to keep love alive.

She points out that the natural human tendency to become “habituated” to positive circumstances — to get so used to things that make us feel good that they no longer do — can be the death knell of marital happiness. Psychologists call it “hedonic adaptation”: things that thrill us tend to be short-lived.

Read more of Jane Brody’s piece in the New York Times’ WELL blog here.

Opening Night: Water by the Spoonful

On By scenebyginaIn New York, PeopleLeave a comment
(Photo via NPR) Armando Riesco's character Elliot was inspired by Hudes' cousin, also named Elliot. Riesco has played Elliot throughout the trilogy. He's pictured above in Water by the Spoonful with Zabryna Guevara, who plays Yazmin Ortiz.
(Photo via NPR) Armando Riesco’s character Elliot was inspired by Hudes’ cousin, also named Elliot. Riesco has played Elliot throughout the trilogy. He’s pictured above in Water by the Spoonful with Zabryna Guevara, who plays Yazmin Ortiz.

I’m really excited to be attending the opening night of Water by the Spoonful, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Quiara Alegria Hudes, tonight. Hudes is a Philadelphia native of Jewish and Puerto Rican descent.

As reported on NPR’s Morning Edition:

Water by the Spoonful is the second play in a trilogy featuring a character named Elliot, an injured Iraq war veteran who has returned to his home in North Philadelphia. Elliot is based on Hudes’ cousin, also named Elliot. She says she went to visit him on a military base shortly after he returned from Iraq.

“I just remember the instant I saw him, there was just something changed in his eye,” Hudes says. “You know, he was still absolutely the same young clown of a cousin I had always known and had grown up with, loving, but there was something different. And I felt that I might never understand it. And that’s the simple spark that it came from.”

As Hudes began writing about Elliot’s experiences, she says she noticed there were more and more young people in uniform showing up in Elliot’s Latino neighborhood in North Philadelphia. She thought to herself: “It’s not just Elliot’s story. This is going to be the story of a generation.”

Read the rest of Morning Edition’s report, or listen to the audio segment, here.

Buy tickets to Water by the Spoonful here.

Rick Perlstein in ‘The Nation:’ Why I Am A Liberal

On By scenebyginaIn People2 Comments

Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

Liberals, in fact, make you freer everywhere. Look at liberty’s greatest historic advances: ending slavery. Giving women the vote. Outlawing legal segregation.

Each and every time, the people at the forefront of advancing those reforms—often putting their lives on the line—called themselves liberals.

Each and every time, people who called themselves conservatives announced that those reforms would unravel civilization.

Then—each and every time—once the reform was achieved and taken for granted, and civilization didn’t collapse, conservatives claimed to have always been for it, even holding themselves up as the best people to preserve it.

Read more here.

WSJ: How a Night Out in Delhi Turned Tragic

On By scenebyginaIn PeopleLeave a comment
Protesters in India. (Image via National Post)
Protesters in India. (Image via National Post)

A Woman Determined to Improve Her Position in Life Became a Victim of a Brutal Attack; Alleged Culprits on ‘Joy Ride’

By AMOL SHARMA, KRISHNA POKHAREL and VIBHUTI AGARWAL
Wall Street Journal

NEW DELHI—On the evening of Dec. 16, a young female physiotherapy student went to a movie with a male friend. After, they waited at a bus stop on a busy road in a south Delhi neighborhood called Munirka.

They were, in many ways, the face of a youthful, up-and-coming India. She was 23 years old, from a lower-caste rural family, according to news reports. She was a role model in her neighborhood, reports said, engrossed in her studies in the northern city of Dehradun, paying tuition with money raised when her parents sold their land.

“She wanted to ensure that she studied well, stood on her own feet and made it big in life so she could ensure a better future for her family,” a friend told the Sunday Express.

Her companion on Dec. 16 was a 28-year-old software engineer at a local technology company. The two victims’ names haven’t been disclosed by authorities.

The same evening, not far away, a much different side of youthful India was on display. Two brothers—Ram and Mukesh Singh—cooked some chicken at their home in a slum called Ravi Dass Camp, a maze of narrow lanes and open drains. Neighbors describe the brothers as rowdy, heavy drinkers.

The brothers decided, with four friends, to take a “joy ride” in the bus that Ram Singh drove for a living, according to police statements. None of the six, who are all in custody, nor their lawyers could be reached for comment.

A little after 9 p.m., the bus pulled in at the stop where the couple waited, police say. They were the only ones to board, paying a fare of about 20 rupees, or 35 cents, according to police. Thus began an encounter so gruesome that it shocked the nation and, ultimately, took a life.

As the bus set off, three of the men who were seated in the driver’s cabin started harassing the two passengers, police say. When the software engineer tried to resist, the men started beating him on his legs, arms and head, according to police.

The woman tried to intervene to protect her friend. The men dragged her to the rear of the bus and raped her as they drove around south Delhi for an hour, police say.

Read more in this Dec. 3- story in Wall Street Journal.