Gente de Zona teams up with Miss Universe Cuba for their latest video
Cuban duo Gente de Zona jumped on the bandwagon of the most successful genre in Cuba right now — a popular urban fusion called reparto— for their latest album. They recently released the video for the song 'La guagua,' which stars Marianela Ancheta, who last year became Miss Universe Cuba as the first representative from Cuba at the Miss Universe pageant in 57 years.
Dressed in a black shorts and and a top, in a sensual pose next to a green Mercedes jeep, Ancheta creates a dynamic trio with Randy Malcolm and Alexander Delgado in the video filmed in Miami.
'La guagua' features Wow Popy, the stage name of Yerson Isbel, and Zurdo MC, both reparto artists. The music video, which takes the artists and Ancheta on a nighttime stroll through the streets of Miami, was directed by Guillermo Figueredo, who has helmed other Gente de Zona videos such as 'Q'lona' and 'Lágrimas de Champaña.'
The duo, which released their album Reparto by Gente de Zona on May 15, will celebrate their 25th anniversary with a mega concert in Miami at the Kaseya Center, on June 7.
Sharing the spotlight with up-and-coming artists
Those who have known the Cuban duo since their beginnings in the Alamar neighborhood east of Havana know that they have always been at the forefront of cubatón, the Cuban version of reggaeton.
Then they came to Miami, where they made one of the most emblematic tribute songs to the city, 'Háblame de Miami,' with Maffio. They already had the success of 'Bailando' with Enrique Iglesias and Descemer Bueno, and 'La gozadera,' with Marc Anthony, which brought them millions of views on YouTube. Last year they were even the kings of the Calle Ocho carnival.
For their latest project, Gente de Zona decided to team up with popular musicians on the island, giving local Cuban musicians a chance at the exposure Gente de Zona got when they collaborated with stars like Pitbull ('Piensas,' 2015) and March Anthony and Iglesias.
'Reparto is a genre that encompasses all the roots of Cuban timba, guaracha, guaguancó, rumba, and with this album we fuse reparto with the tropical and urban rhythms characteristic of Gente de Zona,' said Delgado, explaining that they interpreted the urban genre preferred by Cuban youth in their own style.
The album contains 12 tracks with artists such as El Metaliko (with whom they perform 'Almohada'); El Dukesito ('El envidioso'); Dany Ome and Kevincito El 13 ('Se trata'); El Dray and DJ Conds ('Amor y dinero'). There is also a song with Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, masters of rumba and guaguancó, with whom they collaborate on 'Cosas bonitas,' which also features L Kimii and El Kamel.
'With 'El Reparto,' we show the world an evolution of Cuban reggaeton that defines our culture, taking it to new frontiers so they can enjoy and recognize it. Likewise, we want to give visibility to these artists who are mastering the authentic reparto of our country,' said Malcom.
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New York Times
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- New York Times
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Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
Mystical painter highlights MOCA North Miami's spring season
There's plenty going on in the mind of Philip Smith, and it shows in his art. The Miami-born painter's canvases are full of esoteric symbols and mystical imagery gleaned from years of studying ancient cultures, world religions, and the work of historical magicians. Spirals, DNA strands, minerals, magic circles, foliage, human hands – all coexist in a ghostly mélange of images and ideograms. 'These images are meant to basically provoke your imagination,' says Smith, who is currently the subject of a career-spanning retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, which opened Wednesday, April 30 and is on view through Sunday, Oct. 5. 'The idea of looking at my paintings is a bit akin to sitting in a planetarium, where you're looking up at the stars and they project all these patterns. And you're told to see those patterns, that this is the Milky Way, but then your mind wanders and you start to see other things. And that's the idea with my work, really. It's a portal for the imagination.' Smith's encounters with the supernatural began during his childhood in Miami. His father Lew Smith, who had been an interior decorator for famous and powerful people such as Walt Disney and Cuban president Carlos Prio Socarras, one day discovered he could speak to the dead and heal the sick. He became a faith healer, and the difficulties this placed on then-teenage Philip, who eventually wrote about the experience in his memoir 'Walking Through Walls,' put him on his own spiritual quest. He tried drugs. He joined, and later left, the Church of Scientology. And finally, he moved to New York to become an artist, and from there he developed the image-dense visual language in his paintings. 'As a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist, so I was looking at, obviously, Sumerian and Egyptian and Indian temples,' he says. 'I wanted to sort of create a pictographic language, also a slightly cinematic language. Because I think we respond to that experientially and also cerebrally more than words,' he says. Smith explains that words have to be learned, whereas images are immediate. 'When you speak to mediums or psychics, they get their information visually. It's imprinted. They see things as they're talking to you. And so all those components go into making up this visual language,' he says. Smith's work managed to get noticed by the critic Douglas Crimp, who put him in a soon-to-be-influential show at Artists Space in downtown Manhattan called 'Pictures.' It included several artists, including Robert Longo and Sherrie Levine, who would later be part of the so-called 'the Pictures Generation,' a group of artists who were deeply influenced by the culture of mass media that was present at the time. 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Still, he always wanted to come back to Miami, the place he considers his true home. After nearly three decades in New York, in 2019, he returned to South Florida and has staged several shows since then, mostly with the Little River-based gallery PRIMARY. The MoCA show, his first solo museum exhibition in Miami for several decades and one that incorporates work from 'Pictures' to now, is something of a culmination for him. 'I've always wanted to do a major show in Miami, because it's the city that I really love,' he says. 'I had to leave Miami as a young artist, because there was no opportunity. There were no real museums, no galleries, no collectors. There was nothing here. So that's why I went to New York.' Smith mentions the progression of Miami's art museums. 'Whether it's the Rubell Museum, or Marty Margulies, or Art Basel – it's an extraordinary transformation that I don't know, that people appreciate, how it went from the desert to Tribeca in a generation or two.' For the artist, the retrospective at MoCA is important on many levels. 'It's a very meaningful show to me, because I feel it's giving back to Miami as a Miami person, and I'm not coming in as a New Yorker saying 'see how great I am.' I'm coming in and saying, 'I want to share with you what my life's been about.'' Smith's status as a Miami-born artist who spent much of his career in New York complements that of MoCA's other spring show, a New York-born artist who spent much of her life in South Florida. Vickie Pierre worked for Miami art institutions, including at the former Miami Art Museum (now PAMM) and as registrar at MoCA NoMi. But alongside that career, she also made art herself, and now her work is on view in the show 'The Maiden is the Warrior.' The exhibition zeros in on the artist's 'Poupées in the Bush' series, featuring amorphous black blobs with clearly defined feminine features, somewhere between figures and abstract forms. Some have fingers, horns, and other protrusions appended to their bodies. Others wear rings or are surrounded by floral assemblages. Reflecting the duality of womanhood as in the title of the show, the Poupées are meant to have a bit of softness as well as ferocity, according to curator Adeze Wilford. 'The thrust of our show is really about the duality of their forms. Like they can equally be these, very soft, reclining figures, kind of droopy and globular but also very, almost Rubenesque in how they're conceived of. But then there are some that have these very fierce bearings,' says Wilford. Though the two shows are quite distinct, Wilford, who is curating her final show for MoCA after moving to the Memphis Art Museum in January, hopes viewers will be able to envelop themselves in each. 'The way that I conceive of solo presentations is really that the artists are inviting you into their world, into how their brain is working, and so they're very different people, and we can see how things are unfolding for them both.' WHAT: 'Philip Smith: Magnetic Fields' and 'Vickie Pierre: The Maiden is the Warrior' WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 770 NE 125th St., North Miami WHEN: Noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Through Sunday, Oct. 5. COST: $10 for general admission; $5 for seniors, students with ID, ages 12 to 17, and disabled visitors; free for museum members, children under 12 years old, North Miami residents and city employees, veterans, and caregivers of disabled visitors. INFORMATION: 305-893-6211 and is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don't miss a story at
