Category: Uncategorized

Cuba’s MANANA festival: where Afro-Cuban folkloric sounds will mix with electronic sounds

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Photo by me!
Photo by me!

By now, you should all know about MANANA, the music festival happening in Santiago de Cuba in May 2016, right? No! Well, head to Sounds and Colours to learn more.

Basically, it’s a non-profit festival connecting Afro-Cuban Folkloric music with the pioneers of the International Electronic music community. Its organizers are crowdfunding for the three-day event (May 4, 5, 6 2016) via Kickstarter.

If you’re thinking, oh no, the embargo getting lifted means a bunch of molly-popping, daisy crown-wearing millennials overdosing and passing out, fear not. While no one can prevent from those fitting that stereotype from attending if they buy a flight and ticket, that’s not what this festival is aiming to be.

Consider this rumba track by Manenaje Al Benni, which the folks behind Manana shared via their Kickstarter page. I went to Cuba in 2013 and can tell you talented musicians are ALL over that island, playing on the streets, in cafes, and restaurants. (Watch this short clip I shot there.) I am so excited for artists like the ones I saw to perform on a big stage, reach new audiences, and make connections from the electronic dance world for future collaborations.

The following artists have already agreed to play if this Kickstarter is a success. 

  • Dubstep pioneer, Mala (Read an interview with Red Bull here)
  • Puerto Rican electronic rumba act, Grupo ÌFÉ
  • Tropical DJ’s, Sofrito
  • “Godfather” of Cuban drumming, Galis
  • Santiago rumba masters, Obba Tuke
  • The legendary Compañía Ballet Folclórico de Oriente

By the way, I asked for clarification on travel permissions for those traveling from the United States, as the embargo isn’t fully lifted yet. The good news is a tourist card allows you to travel legally from the U.S. The cost of the visa/tourist card is £20 per person and the courier charges by DHL would be around £70. More info on that here.

So, please contribute to the Kickstarter if you can. Every little bit helps. And, if you’re able, make travel plans to attend! Cuba was one of the best places I’ve ever been to so far. The people are lovely and the architecture is beautiful. And the food is delicious.

There is so much culture, dance, music, and film, not to mention the country’s world class education. Don’t miss MANANA!

Photo by me from El Bodeguito del Medio, where I drank wonderful mojitos.
Photo by me from El Bodeguito del Medio, where I drank wonderful mojitos.

Let’s Not Talk About Gun Control

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Written by a GUN OWNER.

Chris Henson's avatarIdleHands Workshop

It’s uniquely terrifying to consider the absurd extent to which many gun people are willing to suspend reason just so they can remain armed and dangerous. It’s like they are all in abusive relationships and every time there’s another shooting, they show up at work the next day with a black eye and a split lip. And they say, “You don’t understand. My guns LOVE me. They’d never do anything to hurt anyone. It’s the rest of the world that’s wrong.”

View original post 3,130 more words

Art in Jersey City! #JCAST2015

On By scenebyginaIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I moved out of Manhattan and into Jersey City two years ago, but in the first year, I only slept here. Since most of my friends live in New York, my social life was there, so I essentially treated Jersey City like a bedroom community.

This year, despite spending lots of time between Fair Lawn and Clifton, visiting my dad in the nursing home and my mom at her home, I decided to make an effort getting to know Jersey City a little better. At first, that meant actually hanging out at my neighborhood bar, something I rarely did when I lived in Washington Heights. (I was always downtown, which was silly.)

Then #JCTwitterDrinks happened (thanks to local artist and instructor at School of Visual Arts, Amy Wilson) and I met a community of cool people! And by following them on Twitter, I learned about The Jersey City Art & Studio Tour (#JCAST)– a citywide showcase of the arts, featuring nearly 1,000 participating artists in hundreds of venues that include private studios, galleries, local businesses, and pop-up and public spaces.

At the last minute, I decided to go for the bike tour (with the super cool folks from BikeJC) on late Saturday (Oct. 3) afternoon. Unfortunately, rain from Hurricane/Storm Joaquin marred those plans, but I decided to venture out on my own (on foot, thanks to all the bike parking in the Grove Street area) and see some art. Here’s a bit of what I saw:

The artist of this piece, BeelZan, is from Israel, and he is also a psychologist, who owns a counseling center for families, couples, children, and adolescents. It’s called Footprint. His show was hosted at Indiegrove, a super cool co-working space in the Grove Street area. If I was a freelancer, I’d rent space there.

I then headed over to LITM (great bar, btw) and caught “Thaw,” by artist Beth Achenbach. She explained the concept came to her when she watched frozen cherries thawing out. Pretty cool stuff.

While on the tour, I kept bumping into the awesome street art murals that are popping up all over the city.

I met these two cutie pies at 150 Bay Street, an awesome work/live loft building, which is many artists call home.

Sadly I lost the above artist’s business card, but she had a very cool apartment, served great sangria, and is a professional lighting designer, so all of her art deals with light. Also, she’s a Las Vegas native. Wish I remembered her name!

Stacy Lund Levy’s art celebrated women’s bodies.

Loved this stuff by New Jersey native, artist Piersanti.

I also met Ashley Pickett, a photographer who showcased some very cool photos she took in New York and Paris (sadly, I deleted the photos by mistake!), and also her late father’s art. Her dad, Paul Jansen, designed album covers for artists such as Jimi Hendrix!

I ended the night (far too late, of course!) by hitting JCAST after party at the super cool 660 Studios, where I met J Hacha de Zola (a musician) and saw Sunnyside Social Club perform. I also drank too much jaeger, but that’s another blog post! 😉

Skateboard decks line a wall at 660 Studios.

The fun didn’t stop there. On Sunday, I popped over to a space in Journal Square to see Amy Wilson’s fiber work!

JCAST is actually celebrating 25 years this month, and the celebration continues through October for Jersey City Art Month.

BABY. PORCUPINE.

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

SQUEEEEEE!!

Julie Larsen Maher_1650_North American Porcupine Porcupette_CZ _BZ_08 07 15
Photos by Julie Larsen Maher © Wildlife Conservation Society

Julie Larsen Maher_1646_North American Porcupine Porcupette_CZ _BZ_08 07 15A baby North American porcupine was born at WCS’s (Wildlife Conservation Society) Bronx Zoo and is on exhibit with its family in the newly renovated Children’s Zoo.

The young male porcupine was born on July 28 to mother, Alice, and father, Patrick. This is the pair’s third offspring.

The porcupine’s most recognizable physical characteristic is its spiky quills. They can have as many as 30,000 quills covering their bodies and use them as a defense against predators. Despite popular belief, porcupines cannot shoot their quills. The quills of the North American porcupine have a tiny barb on the tip that, when hooked in flesh, pull the quill from the porcupine’s skin and painfully imbed it in a predator’s face, paws or body.

At birth, the quills are very soft. They begin to harden a few hours after birth and continue to harden and grow as the baby matures.

Young porcupines begin eating solid food as early as three weeks old, but will continue to nurse for about three months.

For more information or to speak with a WCS expert, contact Max Pulsinelli at 718-220-5182 or mpulsinelli@wcs.org.

All hands on deck, but not really

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Screen shot 2015-06-14 at 11.31.48 PMThis weekend was supposed to have been an all-hands on deck situation.

I surprised my mother with a trip to Miami to visit her mother last month, and the trip was this weekend. I had to surprise her because had I waited for her blessing to buy the airline ticket, it would have never happened. Her mother — my grandmother — is 97, and has suffered from Alzheimer’s for many years, and last month, after a stroke, doctors told my aunt — her caregiver — to start planning for end-of-life.

Somehow my grandmother got better, though she is now living in a nursing home, but I still thought my mom should go see her. It had been two years, because, as I’ve explained before, she is my father’s caretaker (Parkinson’s.)

So, of course, my mom’s main concern is who would be there to visit my dad in the nursing home in her absence. That the man is confined to a bed is bad enough; that the bed is not in his own home is the part that we struggle with on a daily basis. Of course, I imagined it would be me, but asked my brothers to support, which I assumed they’d do. I told them they didn’t need to stay there for hours but just drop in.

They didn’t. I had to beg one to go today, and still went to visit him myself later, of course. I can’t not go, and that part is fine.

I am constantly reading up about how to deal with change, or deal with anger when situations are out of your control. I know I have to just deal with it, but it still sucks.

It wasn’t just about visiting my dad. I noticed my mother was low on basic essentials she needed in the house. It’s not a money thing; it’s a time thing, so I did one massive grocery shop. I did absolutely nothing social this weekend (unlike them) and that part is fine, but it still sucks.

I don’t care if you don’t like me; I love me *wink*

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
'... don’t be too pushy … because you have to be likeable. And I say that is bullshit.' PREACH, Chimamanda. Preach!
‘… don’t be too pushy … because you have to be likeable. And I say that is bullshit.’ PREACH, Chimamanda. Preach!

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who first came to my attention when her novel, Americanah, became a New York Times best-seller, and when audio of a speech of hers ended up in the Beyonce song, “Flawless,” is, as Blavity puts it, *everything.*

I’m such a fan of her feminist views. And, of course, the excerpt in Flawless is the kind of thing that should be required reading in the 5th grade:

“We teach girls to shrink themselves
To make themselves smaller
We say to girls,
“You can have ambition
But not too much
You should aim to be successful
But not too successful
Otherwise you will threaten the man.”
Because I am female
I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that
Marriage is the most important
Now marriage can be a source of
Joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don’t teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors
Not for jobs or for accomplishments
Which I think can be a good thing
But for the attention of men
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings
In the way that boys are
Feminist: the person who believes in the social
Political, and economic equality of the sexes”

I can’t help but think of my five-year-old niece when I read her views. This latest one, which, in a perfect world, is taught to every little girl in the world, is from a speech she gave at the 2015 Girls Write Now Awards in New York City, where she was named the groundbreaker honoree.

Via Blavity:

During her speech, Adichie spoke less about her stellar accomplishments and more about why young girls and women shouldn’t care about being liked when trying to pave their paths as writers and storytellers.

“Forget about likability,” the 37-year-old exclaimed. “I think that what our society teaches young girls — and I think that it’s something that’s quite difficult for even older women, self-confessed feminists, to shrug off — is this idea that likeability is an essential part of the space you occupy in the world. That you’re supposed to twist yourself into shapes to make yourself likeable. That you’re supposed to kind of hold back sometimes, pull back. Don’t quite say, don’t be too pushy … because you have to be likeable. And I say that is bullshit.”

And, with that, I’ll leave you with one of the best little girls to ever grace Vine:

A damn shame FIFA’s Sepp Blatter wasn’t arrested …

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Sepp Blatter is living that 5-star hotel life.
Sepp Blatter is living that 5-star hotel life.

Upon hearing about the arrest of several top FIFA officials this morning, I couldn’t help but think of this profile of Sepp Blatter in the April 30 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, which details some shadiness of the governing body:

The headquarters of FIFA takes up about 11 acres on a wooded hill above Zurich. Two soccer fields abut a main building that’s wrapped in aluminum webbing, allowing light to stream into a welcoming atrium. Blatter oversaw the construction of the compound, which was finished in 2007 and cost about 240 million Swiss francs ($255 million), and has pointed to its transparent design as an expression of FIFA’s values. Maybe, but FIFA’s legal department demands that some visitors sign nondisclosure agreements for otherwise routine meetings, and five of the building’s eight levels are underground. On a recent visit, cell phones were rendered useless in the depths, sheathed as they are in black, Brazilian granite. In a Strangelovian lair on the third subterranean level, Blatter holds executive committee meetings in a conference room with a floor of lapis lazuli. The room is lit by a round, crystal chandelier meant to evoke a soccer stadium.

…

FIFA’s money doesn’t always result in much more than new office space for local soccer officials. The organization has sent more than $2 million to the Caymans since 2002 to build a headquarters and world-class soccer fields as a base for its national teams; ­the men’s team is ranked 191st in the world. Blatter flew in for the groundbreaking ceremony in 2009. “Cayman has not yet qualified for the World Cup,” he told the assembled dignitaries, according to a local press account. “But I’m sure that one day you will make it. We can help.” The headquarters has been built, along with one field, but the land was too salty to grow grass, so the Caymans association is replacing it with artificial turf.

Although the men’s team from the Caymans usually loses—in March, its first international match in more than three years resulted in a goalless tie with Belize (rank: 159)—the Cayman Islands Football Association is one of the biggest powers at FIFA. Webb’s regional confederation nominated the Caymans’ treasurer, Canover Watson, to FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, the panel that’s supposed to be international soccer’s bulwark against corruption. In November, Caymanian authorities charged Watson with money laundering and fraud related to his role as chairman of the Cayman Islands Health Services Authority; he allegedly steered contracts to a business in which he had a financial interest. FIFA has temporarily suspended Watson from the audit committee. Watson declined to comment but has denied the charges.

It’s worth a read. I guess I can’t be surprised Blatter wasn’t arrested. He seems super well-protected.

The Facebook break doesn’t mean sharing silly stories ends!

On By scenebyginaIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Via the New York Post, of course:

Televangelist warns men who masturbate: Your hands will be pregnant in afterlife

Mücahid Cihad Han says don't wank it!
Mücahid Cihad Han says don’t wank it!

A Muslim televangelist has advised male followers to stop masturbating — because it will leave their hands pregnant in the afterlife.

Turkish preacher Mücahid Cihad Han told viewers that masturbation was forbidden in Islam.

Read the rest here.