Presented annually since 2003, the Rhythm Foundation’s TransAtlantic Festival is going big this year with four days of live modern world music. Starting Thursday with a performance by Miami’s own Psychic Mirrors at downtown venue Blackbird Ordinary and ending Sunday with a BBQ at Wynwood watering hole Gramps, the fest will feature performances at the North Beach Bandshell on Friday and Saturday by Argentine/Uruguayan electrotango collective Bajofondo, Bogota-based Bomba Estereo, the duo of Brazilian emcee Zuzuka Poderosa and San Francisco-based beatmaker Kush Arora, and Miami-based electro-indie-dance group Krisp (visit transatlanticfestival.com for full details).
To enter to win a pair of passes to both nights at the bandshell, simply shout PA’ BAILAR! on the Beached Miami Facebook pagewith a link to this post. We will announce the winner via Facebook on Wednesday afternoon. Until then, here’s Bajofondo to give you a sultry sense of the scene you can expect this weekend.
“In my era, soldiers would have been pissed if we had been lied to about WMDs,” says O’Brien. — photo by Pfc. L. Paul Epley via archives.gov
Sponsored by the Miami Writers Institute, this post features an interview between Andrew Slater and Tim O’Brien. Slater is a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a lecturer of English composition at the American University of Iraq- Sulaimani, and a fiction writer whose work has appeared in the literary journal Epiphany and the anthology ‘Fire and Forget’. O’Brien, an American novelist who has written extensively about the Vietnam War, is best known for the short-story collection ‘The Things They Carried’ and the novel ‘Going After Cacciato,’ for which he won a National Book Award in 1979. On Tuesday, April 9, O’Brien will deliver an address at Coral Gables Congregational Church as part of a month-long series of events inspired by his work. For full details, visit thecenteratmdc.org.
Quietly, Miami-based New Wave-Post Punk quartet ModernAge, who have a gig at The Garret on Saturday, have been releasing new material over the last several months as they work on a new album. Here’s a teaser video for “It’s Never Easy”, the band’s first single in four years, which you can hear in full after the jump.
Afrobeat godfather Fela Kuti’s musical, political, and sexual exploits fuel this continent-hopping production, which runs at the Arsht Center until the end of the week. To enter to win a free pair of tickets to the Thursday night performance, simply shout FELA! on the Beached Miami Facebook pagewith a link to this post. We will announce the winner via Facebook on Wednesday afternoon. Until then, here’s The Roots drummer Questlove (who, along with Jay-Z and others, produced the Broadway show) discussing Kuti’s impact on American hip-hop.
Just when you thought the beast couldn’t get bigger… — photo via Ultra’s Facebook page
Notice a huge firework display over Downtown Miami? Can you hear the uhntz uhntz uhntz? No? You will — and soon. And you will hear it again and again this year, for two weekends, especially if you live or work anywhere near Downtown Miami.
As Vatican cardinals deliberate on whom to name as Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, it may be interesting to visit a little-known collection of paintings by the 19th Century French artist Jehan Georges Vibert at St. John Vianney College Seminary, a few miles west of Coral Gables.
Today, on its eighth birthday, Sweat Records announced the lineup for Sweatstock, its annual all-day, multi-stage music fest. Set for Record Store Day on April 20, Sweatstock will feature performances by more than 30 acts, including Otto Von Schirach, who will headline the main stage outside, ANR, Holly Hunt, This Heart Electric, and many other bands we’ve spotlighted on Beached Miami in the past. There will also be several food trucks and and cheap beer courtesy of Grolsch. To learn more about Sweatstock 2013, including how you can help fund the free event, visit the official event page after checking out this sweet flyer illustration by Beached Miami budBrian Butler.
Rosecrans Baldwin is the author of Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, a travel memoir that GQ named one of its Favorite Things of 2012. The book chronicles Baldwin’s experience living and working in Paris, a city to which he, like so many Americans, felt a powerful romantic attraction since adolescence and which he, unlike so many Americans, came to know in all of its inglorious modern glory as a copy writer at a Paris ad agency. (You can read a very entertaining excerpt at GQ.com.) Baldwin is also the author of the acclaimed debut novel You Lost Me There, a co-founder of the online magazine The Morning News, and a book reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered.
