Humanities and the Liberal Arts is the personal website of former Middlebury classics professor William Harris who passed away in 2009. In his retirement he crafted a wonderful site full of essays, music, sculpture, poetry and his thoughts on anything from education to technology. But the heart of the website for me is, unsurprisingly, his essays on ancient Latin and Greek literature some of whom are book-length works. Here are a few examples: Purple color in Homer, complete fragments of Heraclitus, how to read Homer and Vergil, a discussion of a recently unearthed poem by Sappho, Plato and mathematics, Propertius' war poems, and finally, especially close to my heart, his commentaries on the poetry of Catullus, for example on Ipsithilla, Odi et amo, Attis poem as dramatic dance performance and a couple of very dirty poems (even by Catullus' standard). That's just a taste of the riches found on Harris' site, which has been around nearly as long as the world wide web has existed.
posted by Kattullus on Sep 30, 2011 - 18 comments

Scene and heard: Electro champeta | Champeta.net | I came across this dream collection of picós pictures on Africolombia's blog. Picós are these huge, powerful, customized, hand painted, highly fetishized sound systems from the Colombian Carribean Coast (Barranquilla, Cartagena, Palenque de San Basilio...). | Sound Systems, World Beat, and Diasporan Identity in Cartagena, Colombia [pdf] | Techno Tribal guarachero | Bonus cool link: Brazilian Dual Mix Dance Free Step. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jun 19, 2011 - 3 comments

In 1980s New York, two songs - Planet Rock and Let The Music Play - hit the Latino club scene like an earthquake and the aftershocks created a new genre of dance music - Freestyle. Characterized by funky electro-style breaks made on a Roland 808, with Latin rhythms and uplifting vocals about love and loss, often sung by unknown and untrained singers, the sound has remained a force in pop music and has influenced house and breaks music to this day. [more inside]
posted by empath on Apr 30, 2010 - 36 comments

Festejo? ... Festejo! [more inside]
posted by Rubbstone on Jul 19, 2008 - 12 comments

While the first pioneering forays into atonality and free chromaticism were starting to occur in Western European music, the talents of Latin and South America were discovering the Romantic beauty of re-interpreting the past. [much, much more inside!]
posted by invitapriore on Jun 3, 2007 - 6 comments

Nihongo Bongo! - Latin music by Japanese artists from the 40s, 50s and 60s. "Mambo, rumba, cha cha cha, bossa nova, calypso, you name it... it was big in Japan. The exodus of Japanese migrants to Brazil ensured a lasting connection with South American culture as many Japanese artists toured Brazil."
posted by carter on Oct 9, 2006 - 14 comments

Music from Morrisania: Dr. Mark Naison, urban historian at Fordham University and principal investigator of the Bronx African-American history project, leads a musical tour of one South Bronx neighborhood from the 1950s to the present, describing how hot summers, open windows and a fertile mixing of ethnic groups influenced landmarks in American musical history -- from Tito Puente to "Watermelon Man" to KRS-One.
posted by Miko on May 18, 2006 - 8 comments

Doctor Ammondt. When Jukka Ammondt is not too busy teaching European Romantic Literature at Finland's Jyväskylä University, he enjoys recording rock'n'roll covers in Latin. For Dr. Ammondt's 1997 CD, "Rocking in Latin", he has covered, among others, Shake, Rattle and Roll (Quate, Crepa, Rota) and All Shook Up (Nunc Distrahor). More recently, Dr. Ammondt has released an EP in which he sings Sumerian, featuring a cover of the Elvis hit "Blue Suede Shoes" ("E-sír kusv-za-gìn-g-á", which roughly translates to "On my sandals of sky-blue leather do not step!"). Live, he wears a leather kilt, blue sandals and is "backed up by musicians dressed as Sumerian governors". He has received the Pope's Medal in 1994. Ammondt will release a single, Codex Fluitans, and dedicate it to the Pope on the day of his funeral. (Previous Metafilter mention here.)
posted by ori on Apr 7, 2005 - 1 comment

Los Zafiros. A Cuban pop group that could rival the Beatles for song-craft, if not in popularity. Don't take my word for it though. Read Ry Cooder's interview, see the movie, read the movie review, or listen yourself [real|wmp].
posted by Fezboy! on Sep 21, 2004 - 13 comments

But why would I shoot Mister Burns when I can set his soul afire with a slanderous mambo? Alas, poor Tito, I knew him not well at all, but a lot of my friends swore up and down that he was a talented musician, and he was in the running to have shot Mister Burns. Sad that that is what I know him from.
posted by Ezrael on Jun 1, 2000 - 3 comments