Gorki Is FREE!!!!!

In a trial held today in Havana Gorki Aguila's charge was dropped from "dangerousness" to "disobedience," he was slapped with a fine of 600 Cuban pesos, and then released. Last night during an outdoor concert headlined by Pablo Milanes near the Havana seawall, right across from the U.S. Interest Section, the remaining members of the band and friends of the detained singer began chanting his name and waiving a sign that called for his release. As reported by Generation Y blogger Yoani Sanchez, who was also protesting at the show, police immediately swooped in, began beating them, detained several concert goers, and held them overnight, including at least one of the band's members. Sanchez noticed a camera crew from the BBC and TV Española at the concert and has stated that she believes Gorki's release is in large part due to mounting international pressure.

Punk Rocker Gorki Aguila Arrested In Cuba

Cuba Underground and CNN report that Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco, lead singer of Cuba's most defiantly outspoken punk outfit Porno Para Ricardo was detained in his home Monday morning. According to his father, he is being held by the Cuban government until Thursday when he faces a sentence of one to four years for an obscure charge in Cuba known as "dangerousness" which supposes the possibility of a criminal act that has yet to be committed. Under Cuba's penal code, habitual drunkenness and anti-social behavior are signs of a "state of dangerousness." The arrest came as Aguila was about to record the final songs of the band's next record, according to a statement on the band's Web site.

"This new episode of harassment and persecution is occurring just as Porno para Ricardo is in the middle of recording its new record, which eliminates any possibility that this repressive escalation could be described as a 'coincidence,' " the statement said. "In Cuba, the voice of the brave is silenced by the regime, which doesn't hesitate to use intimidation and force."

This is not the first time Aguila has been locked up for his anti-revolutionary vitriol in songs that explicitly criticize the Castro regime. He was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to two years on trumped up drug charges. His release came after Freemuse, an international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers living in oppressive political systems, intervened on the Cuban rocker's behalf. Since his release Aguila had been repeatedly harassed, threatened, and was briefly detained last year. His only crime, one for which he's willing to face the music, no pun intended, is having the balls to call a communist dictatorship by its name.

Songs such as "Comunista de la Gran Escena," "Ratas Dirigentes," and "El Comandante," are full of schoolboy zeal and a biting sense of humor, combined with an imploding, angst-driven thrashing that borders on insanity. The four members of Porno Para Ricardo had continued to undermine authority, recording music in a makeshift studio and performing underground just hours after announcing their shows through word of mouth. In true D.I.Y. fashion, the foursome has released five full-length albums under Aguila's own label La Paja Records. They are distributed like contraband and sold on the Internet with the help of a friend outside the country. Now Aguila is paying the price for having conspicuously strayed from the party line in true punk style and for assuming that rockin' in a free world is a universal right.

Dorival Caymmi Dead At 94

Dorival Caymmi, a pillar of Brazilian popular music, died Saturday at his home in Rio de Janiero. The cause was multiple organ failure. Caymmi was 94. His storied career spanning 60 years and some 20 albums, Caymmi's romantic, sun-drenched, rhythmic style was the prelude to the emergence of bossa nova in the fifites. At 16, he wrote Carmen Miranda's first hit “O Que É Que a Baiana Tem?” (“What Is It About Brazilian Women?”). Songs like “Marina” (1944) and “O Samba da Minha Terra” (1941) inspired the greats of bossa nova. Writing in The New York Times in 2001, music critic Ben Ratliff said Caymmi was perhaps second only to Antonio Carlos Jobim “in establishing a songbook of this century’s Brazilian identity.”

Dorival Caymmi was born on April 30, 1914, in Salvador, the capital of Bahia state. A journalist by profession, Caymmi won a songwriting contest in 1936 as part of Salvador’s carnaval and two years later went to Rio de Janeiro to study law. Instead he went into the music business. He became a regular on Radio Nacional, and his fame grew through his early collaborations with Miranda. Caymmi recorded for five decades, both singing solo with his own guitar accompaniment and velvety baritone and backed by bands and orchestras. His last album was released four years ago.

Caymmi is survived by his wife of nearly 70 years, singer Adelaide Tostes, who used the stage name Stella Maris, along with their sons, Dori and Danilo, and their daughter, Nana, who are all also successful musicians.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Soundtrack

Chance encounters, carnal pleasures, and the fine line between love and desire are strands that run through the storyline of Woody Allen's new film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," a worldly romantic comedy that stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, set against the magnificent backdrop of the boundless city of Barcelona. There's no place in the world like it. The soundtrack fits the film like a glove. It's wonderfully eclectic, fresh, and cosmopolitan, with just enough brooding darkness below the surface to keep you on edge. Those moments coincide with Cruz's character, the untamed and quick-witted, suicidal/homicidal ex-wife of Bardem's Juan Antonio. The soundtrack even comes with a storyline of its own, one which has created buzz around a little-known indie band that formed in Barcelona, also quite by accident, and whose song fell into Allen's hands on a whim, only to become the score's main track. Giulia y los Tellarini's song "Barcelona," is a bouncy, harmonica-laden tune that's eerily seductive. Intoned by Giulia Tellarini's off-kilter, whispery vocals, the song reflects her on-and-off relationship with the city, written at a time when she was deciding between staying in Barcelona or returning to Paris. The soundtrack also includes another of the band's songs "La Ley del Retiro." Then there are the beautifully rendered instrumental guitar pieces. Guitarist Juan Serrano, whose reputation as a flamenco virtuoso spans six decades delivers the churning "Gorrión" early in the set, followed much later by the equally mesmerizing closer, "Entre Olas." Paco de Lucia's "Entre Dos Aguas" offers a sultry guitar/percussion arrangement driven by a plunging bassline that goads the transition from glowing embers into a fiery rumba. The Biel Ballester Trio oscillates from infectiously shuffling rhythms on "When I Was a Boy" to melodic artistry on "Your Shining Eyes."

Donny McCaslin's Trio For The Ages On His "Recommended Tools"

Saxophonist Donny McCaslin is a well-versed jazzman who isn't afraid to partake in some stylistic somersaults in the kind of experimentalism that leads to that far out place that shimmers just beyond the horizon. On his latest recording, Recommended Tools (Greenleaf Music), McCaslin chooses a trio formation for the first time and delivers a dynamic set that really is, as the press release boasts, reminiscent of the classic trios of Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson. At times rambunctious, other times laid back and cool, McCaslin's distinct tenor is always conversational no matter what the context and there's great chemistry in the room. Jonathan Blake's drum work is snappy -- crisp rolls and precise interplay -- while the bass adds depth in the hands of Hans Glawischnig. There are great improvisational solos that seem to build and expand in every direction to then naturally flow back in sync with the rest of the band. This is one of those great rummaging, probing, jazz albums that has all the makings of a timeless affair.

After Years of Performing In Bars Miami's Locos Por Juana Finally Makes A Grand Entrance

FUNDarte presents Locos Por Juana on Friday, August 22 at 9:00 p.m. in Little Havana’s Manuel Artime Theater. For the first time the Grammy nominated, Latin urban fusion outfit will perform a large-venue concert in Miami for their home-town audience. The show comes on the heels of the band's new full-length, La Verdad (Machete Music/Universal). After nine years of performing almost exclusively in Miami's club circuit, Locos Por Juana is thrilled about rising up from the underground. “It’s time we do this show and we’re really excited,” said lead singer Itagui. “We have fans of all ages and it will be great to give a concert for them in the city where we live,” he concluded.

Formed almost a decade ago in Miami, the six friends -- lead singer Itagui, Javier "Lakambra" Delgado on drums, Guillermo "El Chamo" Cabral on bass, percussionist Alan Reyna, Emiliano "Che Funk" Torres on trumpet and lead axman Mark Kondrat -- released their much anticipated third album, La Verdad, in May. The first production distributed and marketed by a major label (Machete Music/Universal Music Group), the album reflects the sound of a mature band that cut its teeth touring and performing live before an ever-growing legion of fans.