Archives for February 2008

Troker » Malecón, 8pm, Friday, Feb 29

Troker on the Malecon Troker is a tapatío project presenting another side of jazz, a fusion of rhythms and hip hop, Funk, break beats, trip hop, lounge, drum and bass, and some Latin beats.

They participated in the Festival of Music in 2004 and 2005, the Puerto Vallarta Jazz Festival in 2004 and 2005, the May Cultural Festival, in the International Book Fair in Guadalajara 2005, and are very important part in the presentations at Paseo Chapultepec, also playing in the Zocalo of Mexico City and in the Auditorio Nacional, sharing the stage with major groups in the republic and important musicians at the international level….

Troker will play here in Puerto Vallarta on February 29 at 8 pm at the Los Arcos Ampitheater on the Malecón in a free concert as part of the Puerto Vallarta Wine Fest.

TROKER WEBSITE

Narcocorrido Music » Biting the Bullet

The Savage Silencing of Mexico’s Musicians
Killings Bear Hallmarks Of Drug Cartel Hitmen

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

MORELIA, Mexico — Sergio Gómez roared into town in a big SUV, entourage in tow, pressed suits, fancy cowboy boots.

Everything about him said superstar. He had an international following, an impish smile that drove the women wild and a star on the walk of fame in Las Vegas. More than 20,000 fans swarmed the parking lot of this colonial city’s soccer stadium to dance and hear him sing romantic “Duranguense grupero” pop songs backed by a driving drumbeat.

After the show, in the small hours of Dec. 2, Sergio Gomez was kidnapped. Police found his body the next day. He’d been strangled and beaten. His face — a face that graced album covers and made teenage girls blush — was disfigured by burn marks.

Sergio Gomez, 34, was the latest of a dozen pop musicians to have been killed in the past year in Mexico. Nearly every one of the slayings bore the hallmarks of the drug cartel hitmen blamed for 4,000 deaths in the country in the past two years.

But the savage murder of Sergio Gomez — one of Mexico’s hottest singers, a headliner whose band, K-Paz de la Sierra, commanded $100,000 a show, twice the rate of other top bands — was different. It has set off an unprecedented chain reaction in which at least half a dozen bands have canceled concert tours. Popular bands, such as the Duranguense act Patrulla 81, which backed out of four major shows, are terrified of coming to Morelia and the surrounding state of Michoacan.

“All this is very dark for us,” José Angel Medina, Patrulla 81’s lead singer, said in an interview. “We’re very worried. Very scared.”

[Read more…]

Puerto Vallarta National Fireworks Competition » May 30, 2008

Concurso Nacional de Castillos de Morillo

Event Poster

It has been officially announced that, as a prelude to the International Fireworks Symposium to be held in Puerto Vallarta in April of 2009, there will be a National Fireworks Competition held here this May 30, 2008. This event is coincides with the 90th Puerto Vallarta Anniversary celebration (of Vallarta officially becoming a city).

Video of this Competition by the Banderas Bay News

For 20 minutes each, eight Fireworks manufacturers from the Regions of DF, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Puerto Vallarta will participate in this competition with prizes totalling $200,000 pesos.

There will be over 3 hours of fireworks competitions starting at 8:30 pm.

CLICK TO ENLARGE THE PROGRAM:

This event will be held at the Augustine Contreras Flowers Sports Stadium and is free of charge. Plans are already underway for fireworks castles 12 meters high. For this event, you will certainly want to arrive earlier than the 8:00 pm start time. Seating will be limited.

City buses will expand their schedules to run until 1 am for those wishing to take buses: Ruta 11 (Ixtapa), Ruta 02 (Ramblases), Ruta 03 (Remance), Ruta 04 (Paso Ancho & Aqua Azul)

This will be the largest fireworks display in Puerto Vallarta history and is a tease for the upcoming International event in 2009. Plans are already in place to make this an annual event.

MORE INFORMATION:
2009 Vallarta International Fireworks Symposium

While this isn’t technically part of the National Fireworks Competition, on Saturday night, May 31, at 11pm, there will be a spectacular aerial fireworks exhibition at the end of the 90th anniversary of Puerto Vallarta’s existence.

Vallarta Wine Fest 2008 » February 26 to March 1

¡Vive Vino!

The Vallarta Wine Fest is announcing its second season with Vallarta Wine Fest 2008, scheduled to take place February 26 to March 1, 2008.

2008 Puerto Vallarta Wine Festival

More than 17 participating hotels and restaurants have signed up for this new edition. “This festival is an alternative for tourists who plan their vacations on those days, offering culture beyond just sun and beach,” said Wine Fest organizer Nacho Cadena.

Vallarta Wine Festival Vallarta Wine Fest 2008 will have a special guest country, this year Italy, which will give the Organizing Committee increased support at the cultural level. The goal is to have more cultural events complementing the wine-related activities. For example, a wine-related film series is being planned in cooperation with Puerto Vallarta’s Department of Culture. Two concerts are also planned. The Vallarta Wine Fest organizers are also working on hosting events throughout the entire year. For more information or reservations call 226-4651 or 29-30900.

As one of the objectives of the Festival is to popularize the culture of wine consumption, at the end there will be a big-band dance with music at 9pm on March 1 in Lázaro Cárdenas Park, along with the sale of glasses of wine at a popular price of 15 pesos. “While we want to offer an event that draws attention abroad and to say that Vallarta offers something interesting and beautiful to visitors to the festival in restaurants and cultural events, we also want to enable our people, vallartenses, to enjoy this festival so we are going to have events like the popular character Pachanga opening with Banda music and selling, not beer, but good wine brands, at very affordable prices.” said Ignacio Chain Hotelier and promoter.

PUBLIC TASTING:
March 1 at 9pm in Lázaro Cárdenas Park. Wine 15 pesos, music, etc

MORE INFORMATION:

Citlaltépetl » Mexico’s Writers’ Safe House

In Mexico City, a refuge for world’s writers
Haven from persecution gives chance at better life

by Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 24, 2008 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY – When the paramilitaries burst through his door, beat him and pointed a Kalashnikov rifle at his chest, poet Xhevdet Bajraj knew it was time to get as far from Kosovo as possible.

It was 1999, NATO bombs were falling on the province, and Yugoslav troops were fighting pitched battles with ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Serbian paramilitaries were torching homes and locking up anyone who might be perceived as a leader – even semifamous poets. Bajraj joined the thousands of refugees streaming into Albania.

Then came an invitation from a most unlikely place. Mexico City had just opened a safe house for persecuted writers, one of several social projects launched by the capital’s new, liberal government. Bajraj and his family were welcome to come, city officials said.

And so, shell-shocked and tired, carrying nothing but two packs of cigarettes, Bajraj, his wife and two sons became the first of a string of writers and their families given shelter in the Citlaltepetl Refuge House, a renovated mansion in a leafy neighborhood of the world’s second-largest city.

“I feel like I was reborn in that house,” Bajraj said. Now a naturalized Mexican citizen, he lives nearby and teaches poetry at a Mexico City university.

Since opening in 1999, the refuge has housed writers under threat in Myanmar, Egypt, Chad, Algeria and Serbia. The refuge has room for one or two families at a time and is now in talks to host a writer from Iraq, director Philippe Olle-Laprune said.

They’re part of a long tradition of writers who have found refuge in Mexico City, from Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez to American Beat writer William S. Burroughs, a fugitive from U.S. drug charges.

“We have a history of taking in these kinds of people, and they have enriched us as a city,” said Isabel Molina, director of cultural relations for Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
» Read the Complete Story from the Arizona Republic

MORE INFORMATION:

EXPRESSION FROM PRISON

“EXPRESSION FROM PRISON”

Puerto Vallarta Jail Artists

From February 27 to March 6, 2008, in the main courtyard of the Presidencia, a group of prisoners from the CEINJURE North Coast prison will exhibit a wide variety of crafts, poetry, paintings and writing that range “from magic to the limits of love and madness.” “This is a revolt against the greyness of their existence” by a large variety of men detained for a wide range of reasons.

This is not a normal art exhibit.

[Read more…]