Reggaeton is an expression of movement, release, sexuality, storytelling, connection, and fashion. It’s taken over the world of pop music, despite the Puerto Rican government’s many attempts to erase it […]
Tag: Puerto Rico
Posted inMusic
A memorial to Alejandro Morales
Alejandro Morales’s death doesn’t just leave a hole in Chicago’s DIY music scene—it’s a loss to community activists, to affordable housing advocates, and to countless friendships.
Posted inMusic
Chicago’s DIY rock scene mourns Alejandro Morales
With his generous spirit and boundless enthusiasm, Running drummer Alejandro Morales was the beating heart of a vibrant community.
Posted inMusic
Puerto Rico’s Ìfé honor the dead with percussive electronic prayers
While sheltering at home in San Juan during Puerto Rico’s lockdown this spring, Ìfé bandleader Otura Mun wrote a new EP, The Living Dead | Ashé Bogbo Egun. The producer, […]
Posted inMusic
Papo Vázquez leads his Mighty Pirate Troubadours through an uplifting blend of jazz and Caribbean rhythms
Trombonist Papo Vázquez had plenty of reasons to feel reflective this past spring. He was about to record Breaking Cover, his tenth album under his own name, and he’d spent […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Puerto Rican flags fly high in June
On returning home and finding joy at the 42nd annual Puerto Rican People’s Day Parade
Posted inMusic
Buscabulla’s tropical soul vignettes distill the mixed blessings of returning home
In the wake of Hurricane Maria, at least 130,000 people left Puerto Rico to live elsewhere. Yet in February 2018, Puerto Rican musicians Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo del Valle, […]
Posted inMusic
La Armada transform adversity into community
Anticolonialist hardcore band La Armada discuss their journey from the Dominican Republic to Chicago and the inspiration behind their new EP series, Songs of the Exiled.
Posted inMusic
iLe creates new old school sounds from the island of enchantment
As a member of Calle 13—the politically conscious Puerto Rican hip-hop band formed by her brothers René Pérez Joglar and Eduardo Cabra Martínez—Ileana Mercedes Cabra Joglar began performing onstage when […]
Posted inArts & Culture
There’s a Coqui In My Shoe! is unworthy of Puerto Rico’s greatest amphibian
A young frog learns it’s not easy being green as he ventures on a journey of self-discovery.
Posted inNews & Politics
Once a street gang, then a political collective, the Young Lords celebrate 50 years with a symposium at DePaul
“We’re not from Humboldt Park or Lincoln Park, we’re Puerto Ricans.”
Posted inNews & Politics
Is a Puerto Rican native running for Chicago alderman the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, who is taking on Deb Mell, closely resembles the 28-year-old socialist from the Bronx who upset a powerful congressman in New York.
Posted inBlogs
Y No Había Luz brings the voices of post-Maria Puerto Rico to Chicago
“People keep sewing their eyes together to stop seeing things. . . . If we don’t open our eyes we are blind, and we can’t do anything to help Puerto Rico.”
Posted inColumns & Opinion
After city accidentally whitewashes landmark mural, artists and activists demand change
Sandra Antongiorgi and Marcus Akinlana’s Es Tiempo de Recordar had been in Hermosa for 26 years.