Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

• Miami, Calle Ocho, Dominos

  Monday, July 12th, 2010

  The diverse cultural mix in Miami has attracted visitors for decades, and has been a magnet for people on the search for a great city in which to live. This is perhaps no better demonstrated than at the annual Calle Ocho Festival held every March in Little Havana. It began in the late 70s, sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club, in order to celebrate and highlight the rich Latin heritage of the city and its inhabitants. There are plenty of things to see here for guests at the best Miami spas , looking to add some culture to their luxury experience.

  There’s plenty to see here, but it’s also true that the great things about the festival are here in the city every day and night. Live music and dancing are just part of it, but those who’ve been in Miami at night understand that these activities are an endless source of fun and inspiration. The festival has also featured another traditional element of Latin culture that can be seen every day. Dominos is one of the oldest games in the world, and seeing old men at tables in the park is a very familiar sight. The festival did set the record for the most people playing dominos simultaneously, with 278 players, in 2008.

• Cape Town Supernature

  Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

  There are always so many spectacular attractions in South Africa, any time of year, and you can see some of the liveliest festivals and street fairs anywhere.  There’s also fantastic shopping opportunities, where elegant and intriguing new items of great personal interest can draw your attention, and you might find yourself suddenly charmed by the objects you’re seeing, and the place begins to speak to you in a way you don’t even recognize.  But it’s still lovely, and somehow feels more profound than it did a moment ago.  And even though you’re shopping, even though it’s only shopping, there’s something else coming through, and it’s making you feel simultaneously fascinated and fascinating, and you’re part of the scene you’ve been observing. It can be a very heady experience, and Cape Town is one of the most appealing cities in the country, with beaches that are probably ranked on nearly everyone’s list at the top.  Cape Town hotels can offer a splendid sense of luxury here, a place away from the place, as it were.  There’s a spectacular effort to make things perfect for your relaxation, so that you can unwind and really enjoy the rhythms of another place.  The rhythms of this place are old and new all at once, drawing from some of the original rhythms that turned the human heartbeat into the sound of a drum. These rhythms have evolved over the centuries into something entirely other, with multiple rhythms playing simultaneously in some of the most advanced musical forms.  Interestingly enough, the polyrhythm is still as complex and sophisticated as it was 300 years ago, suggesting that culture reached a certain peak, and is still waiting for the next movement forward into the next beyond.  It’s still connected to the heartbeat, however, and some of the most sacred rhythms connect the heart to the rhythms of nature, and in the liveliest of festivals, the line between human energies and rhythm becomes inseparable from natural rhythm, and these moments are utterly transcendent, and though they come from nature, are given the word supernatural, although no one can remember exactly why.

• Zappa Ibiza

  Thursday, November 12th, 2009

  There are enough attractions in Ibiza to keep visitors of all ages very content for many weeks, and one visit here is invariably too short, but it will demonstrate to you that the hype about the island is true.  It’s one of the most exciting places in the world at night time, and there are many opportunities during the day to find new adventures that can be both educational and fun.  The history of Ibiza is amazingly vast, with prehistories, invasions, and even Visigoths in the whole mix.  For pure beach heaven, this is it.  When you’re looking for any excuse to relax in the sun, you can find many people here who are having the same idea as you, and you can confer about whether or not it’s a good idea while you’re soaking in the rays on some of the world’s most magnificent coastlines.

  There are, as you expect in a city with so many tourists, a lot of choices for accommodation in Ibiza.  Town hotel lodgings are a great choice if you’re looking for luxury with difference.  These are splendid locations to set up your base here, and consider your own legacy in Ibiza.  There have been many famous people here who have passed through here enough times that they started to become a little famous to the locals as well.  You might want to join this club, because chances are very high that once here, you’ll be coming back.  You might decide to hang out at the Cafe Del Mar as often as Frank Zappa did.

  He was one of the most influential people of his day, and continues to inspire generations of people with creative minds and urges.  He was one of the famous celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s that gave Ibiza its reputation as a pre-eminent place for the glamorous to have an escape.  Given Frank Zappa‘s consistently ironic presence, it’s either mildly humorous or close to hysterically funny that he would be in the same league as Kate Moss, but it’s somehow perfectly fitting as well.

• Damrong Wong-Uparaj: Thai Artist-Philosopher

  Thursday, October 29th, 2009

  Thailand is a wonderful country, and has so many spectacular things to offer visitors.  There are, of course, outrageously gorgeous beaches, and all the appeal of tropical paradise.  It is the country where a lot of the myths of paradise on earth are born, and it has an enormously rich cultural fabric with a spectacular array of myths from deep in the past.  It’s a mix of different languages and religions, but the majority speak Thai and practice a form of Buddhism.  It is this rich milieu that the world traveler enters when visiting Thailand.  It’s a great place to explore urban culture, as some of the larger cities have an enormous artistic scene, and there are splendid things to see and do in the cities.  But if you’re looking for a perfect beach resort, Thailand can offer plenty for even the choosiest guest.

  We’ve selected some of the best of Thailand’s resorts to offer a sumptuous accommodation experience right in the center of the most beautiful areas in the country.  They are selected based on their excellence in hospitality and style.  Hospitality is a rich tradition here, coming from centuries of contact with visitors from all over the world, and style is simply exquisite.  It’s a mix of the latest trends coming from Asia’s largest metropolitan areas with the local island mystique, forming something that is simultaneously urban and also very local.  This is certainly reflected in a lot of the visual art that’s been coming out of Thailand for a few decades now.  A particularly apt case in point here is the work of Damrong Wong-Uparaj.

  Born in Chiengrai in 1936, and dying in 2002, he studied in Bangkok, London, Philadelphia, and New York, and his entire life suggests an intense curiosity with the international scene.  He travelled extensively, studying work in various countries, and also giving lectures and workshops around the world.  His work is a fantastic and curious mix of avant-garde formal techniques influenced by a deep respect for Buddhism, and aiming to bring disparate elements together in a kind of harmony that would speak and extend to the viewer.  Damrong Wong-Uparaj has a number of works that are entirely abstract, devoted to find a purity of form, and even the representational works suggest a fantastic tension between daring to reveal many worlds beneath the waking one, and also the presence of something that is so elegantly simple.