If this nation is supposed to be a hap-hap happy place where we can all just get along, then Cafe Americana, Thursday nights at Mama Java's Coffeehouse in Phoenix, is where you can bring your date and let her roam with having her accosted by tattooed bikers named Bjork or drunk yuppie-pup studs trying to woo her away for a took-n-stoke is his purple Porsche. Cafe Americana is just one night for an eclectic mix of programmes at the congenial, everybody knows your name venue on the fringes of the Arcadia district in Phoenix.
For Americana night host Doug Fletcher, a cabbie obviously bruised by what he listens to on driving the late-night streets of Phoenix, "Americana" means anti-format. One night will be bluegrass and celtic, the next week, biker blues with Jack Straw and then, bring in the madrigal for some medieval folk classics! "I'm calling it rootsy, which is anything based on some kind of ethnic or regional tradition," says Fletcher, who claims no affinity for so-called "original singer-songwriters." For the Fletch, Americana is "just about everything but the crap they play on the radio."
Monday, September 18, 2006
Monday, September 11, 2006
Sari is the Hardest World
Leandro Soto is back from India and, this just in: He's discovered America. The performance-slash-installation artist's new collaborative event at ASU West's IAP Art Gallery illustrates the irony of the mythological construct of Columbus discovering the New World by accident. The collaborative world art jam does this by rescuscitating Marshall McLuhan's maxim, "the medium is the message," by choosing silk cloth saris chiefly worn by women in India and Pakistan to display Cuban-American, Mayan and, therefore, "Indian" mythological narratives.
The exhibit also includes found art codices by cross-polinating writers and painters from India, Mexcio, and, in Soto's case, Cuba. Only one drama remains for the interdisciplinary, em, multi-media, art show opening with a reception Sept. 26: How will the show's curator, Soto, get the damn thing to fit within the available space inside the venue? As the name of the 2D visual art exhibition implies, "Shared Vision: India, Mexico & Cuba" cuts a broad swathe, culturally speaking. But if you do the math, you can see Soto's problem.
"The gallery is 30 by 30 feet, and I'm not sure how this is going to fit, because some of these saris are 24 feet long," Soto tells New Times as the show's curator and its collaborative creative stretches one of seven brightly colored silk sari's, painted with Indian ink, across the floor.
Gee ... these melting pot experiments are really all about territory, aren't they?
"It's a real integration, a mixing of people and cultures," Soto says.
The exhibit also includes found art codices by cross-polinating writers and painters from India, Mexcio, and, in Soto's case, Cuba. Only one drama remains for the interdisciplinary, em, multi-media, art show opening with a reception Sept. 26: How will the show's curator, Soto, get the damn thing to fit within the available space inside the venue? As the name of the 2D visual art exhibition implies, "Shared Vision: India, Mexico & Cuba" cuts a broad swathe, culturally speaking. But if you do the math, you can see Soto's problem.
"The gallery is 30 by 30 feet, and I'm not sure how this is going to fit, because some of these saris are 24 feet long," Soto tells New Times as the show's curator and its collaborative creative stretches one of seven brightly colored silk sari's, painted with Indian ink, across the floor.
Gee ... these melting pot experiments are really all about territory, aren't they?
"It's a real integration, a mixing of people and cultures," Soto says.
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