By: Estefanía Romero Photo: R. Román Romero Tapia After Tootie took a few minutes making fun of the impossibility of pronouncing my name in English, we started one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever had the opportunity to guide. Tootie and his brothers, Jimmy y Percy, created a band […]
Keeping Ancestors Alive through Music: Steve Turre
By: Estefanía Romero Photo by: Mónica García This is the wonderful interview I had with the amazing composer, arranger, trombone and shells player: Steve Turre. We spoke about the way he discovered the sound of the shells, his Mexican ancestors, Ray Charles, Dizzy, and all those jazz idols he worked […]
Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra is Celebrating 30 Years of Music! |#Interview
By: Estefanía Romero The band is celebrating its 30th anniversary in México. Their characteristic sound is known as a product deeply influenced by the underground 80’s Tokyo’s musical scene, which was filled with Jazz and Ska. Although the band has changed through time and it has added some other characteristics […]
Magos Herrera: Poetry in Music and Spanish Language as a Peaceful Weapon
By: Estefanía Romero Magos Herrera is a Mexican composer and singer, who was recently nominated to the international Grammy. Today she lives in New York but she’s visiting Mexico to present her latest project in some of the greatest auditoriums of our country. I spoke with her about the highlights […]
Bebop’s Groundbreaking: Jerome Jennings Quartet
By: Estefanía RomeroPhoto: Mónica García Jennings and Evans: The Key Points Jerome Jennings Quartet is one of the best projects I’ve heard in Mexico, especially considering that bebop is a very difficult genre to handle. Let me tell you why. In bebop, the tempo changes are very common, but Jennings […]
Harmolodics: Equality Seen From the Free Jazz Perspective
Article dedicated to the victims of El Paso and Dayton shootings By: Estefanía Romero This is 2019 and another unjustified violent attack was directed to Mexicans. This is a xenophobic act, another pinnacle of Donald Trump’s hate speech, which is not only terrifying because it goes against the life and […]
After Centuries of Music Evolution… Why Would I Listen to You?
By: Estefanía Romero Photo: Mónica García The job of a critic is not to be “right” – that would make them into jumped-up authority figures, high-court judges of art. What pompous nonsense. The memorable critics – including the greatest of all, John Ruskin – were often wrong, even absurd, but they made […]
RIP for the Cultural Radio in México: Government Lets it Die
By: Estefanía Romero The belief that knowledge is elitist is the biggest mistake inside Mexican culture. We can add to that today that only authoritarian governments are those who take over the public radio, thus censuring the voices of the artists and intellectuals. The Fact: Cultural Radio is Dying in […]
Ode to the Artistic Truth: Chick Corea and Béla Fleck
By: Estefanía Romero Photo: Salvador Bonilla Knowledge shows the artist’s possibility to move forward, even when he’s looking to the past all the time. Last night, the Teatro Metropólitan didn’t just gave us an extraordinary concert, but also gave us a lesson about the meaning of being a real musician […]