So I've been hanging out in Spain lately. I spent the weekend watching Woody Allen's "Vicki Cristina Barcelona," eating tapas and listening to live flamenco music. There's something about the intensity of Spanish culture that yanks at me. Watching flamenco dancers twirl their skirts and stomp out rhythms at the local nightclub/restaurant Alahambra Palace (more on this in another post), wasn't enough. So I dug through my flamenco music collection. I love flamenco in all it's forms, traditional guitar, nuevo and fusion. The drama, romance and emotion of the music enthralls me. But I haven't found a single flamenco artist that enthralls me quite like Concha Buika.
Born on Mallorca of parents from Equatorial Guinea, Buika grew up in a swirl of African, jazz and gitano (gypsy) sounds. Her third CD "Nina de Fuego" (Fire Girl) shows her literally unveiled on the cover, with tattoos of the names of her female family members, her muses, trailing down one arm. It's a symbolic image that perfectly captures the rawness and vulnerability of Buika's music. Her smokey, throaty vocals melts around a verse and stabs it out in another. The CD showcases a hypnotic fusion of jazz, flamenco and soul singing. No matter if you don't speak Spanish, the power of her voice leaps over all cultural barriers. You feel the longing and soul-wrenching passion in every note. Javier Limon's guitar soars as eloquently as Buika's voice. It's a perfect, 11-track album, from beginning to end. I thought it was funny when I discovered that before she became the queen of flamenco fusion, Buika used to do Tina Turner tributes in Vegas. Now that I think about it, it's not so surprising. Fiery divas are divas, no matter the culture.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Into The Fire
Posted by Fly Girl at 3:24 PM 17 comments Links to this post
Labels: Buika, flamenco, Global music, World Music
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Riding Through St. Lu



Posted by Fly Girl at 9:04 AM 11 comments Links to this post
Labels: ATV riding, Caribbean Travel, St. Lucia, travel adventure
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Paintball in Paradise


Posted by Fly Girl at 5:00 PM 11 comments Links to this post
Labels: Adventure Travel, Caribbean Travel, Paintball, St. Lucia, travel adventure
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Climbing Volcanos
A few years ago, I decided to celebrate my birthday by pushing myself (rather violently) out of my comfort zone. I travel solo all the time but I don't enjoy adventure travel by myself. What if I get hurt? What if I get killed and nobody's there to report it? I swept past these fears and headed to Costa Rica, where I zip-lined through the rain forest and climbed Central America's most active volcano, Arenal.

Afterwards, I visited the hot springs at the foot of Arenal, in Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort. It's one of those tourist-filled, five-star hotels that I usually avoid but I wanted to float in the hot springs. Immersing myself in the water felt like being embraced by a liquid sun. It was thick and hot and wonderful. They served a four-course meal at Tabacon that I don't remember because about three hours later, I was sick from a parasite. I was throwing up in my hotel, on the plane and at home. It lasted for weeks. It's the only time I've ever gotten that sick on a trip so of course, I'll never forget it or Arenal. Four years later, I still haven't wiped the mud and lava from the sneakers I wore to climb the volcano. When I'm in strength-training class, crumbling from the ridiculous torture my instructor dreams up, I like to look down at my shoes and remember the strength I showed when I climbed that volcano.
Posted by Fly Girl at 12:54 PM 16 comments Links to this post
Labels: Adventure Travel, Costa Rica, Volcano Arenal
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Traveling Through A Liberian Childhood
I like to explore the world with books as much as I like to actually travel. A well-written narrative can transport you to places that you'd never experience with just superficial details like photos and descriptions. I've been interviewing writers about the criteria they use to select books for Summer reading and it made me think about my own general reading criteria. As a journalist, I'm really drawn to biographies, autobiographies and memoirs more than fiction. There's something about using the facts to entice readers into your world that gets me. It's no coincidence that some of my favorite writers--Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zora Neale Hurston, Hemingway, started out as journalists. So when I glimpsed The House at Sugar Beach, at my local bookstore and saw it was a memoir written by a journalist, it was pretty much a done deal that I would buy it.
Now it wasn't only that the author Helene Cooper was a journalist, it was that she was a Liberian journalist chronicling her childhood as a member of the Liberian elite. Liberia is a country that claims an extremely complicated history. It was founded by American blacks in the 1820s and enjoyed generations of prosperity and peace. But discontent bubbled beneath the surface. Native Liberians resented the domination of the Americans and the 80s set off decades of civil wars and coups. I know all of this not because it's covered in the book but because my first college roommate was Rita Tolbert, niece of the President of Liberia and a member of the same elite group as Helene Cooper. President Tolbert was assassinated in 1980 and Rita alluded to threatened rapes, torture and lonely English boarding schools when she summed up her journey to the U.S. At the time, I only understood a little of the political situation on the African continent and I never asked Rita the probing questions that are typical for me.
So I devoured The House at Sugar Beach, eager to witness the details that had escaped me before. Helene Cooper totally delivers. From the rhythm and vernacular of Liberian English, to the cognac-colored couches that filled the 22-room, waterfront mansion where she lived, Cooper escorts her readers on a full tour of 1970s Liberia. We see the olive groves that surround their Summer house in Spain, the shacks that edge the elaborate estates of Congo people, (descendants of the American settlers) and we recognize the intensifying resentment of Native Liberians living in squalor. She also intersperses her accounts with the significant history of her family's involvement in settling Liberia and the political unrest that connects to it.
The House at Sugar Beach rivets you with the nuances of Cooper's childhood, like reading Barbara Cartland novels, eating fufu and pepper soup and telling "heartmen" stories, about men who cut the hearts out of people to sell them. The book also translates the horror of living through a coup 'd tat, where relatives were killed or raped, including Cooper's mother. Cooper, who now covers the White House for the New York Times, says the inspiration to write her story came when she realized that as a foreign correspondent, she had traveled through war zones and battle fields to record the stories of other countries, but never her own. But now Liberia has a richly defined account, that dives beyond the wars and struggles. I highly recommend The House at Sugar Beach.
Posted by Fly Girl at 8:40 AM 21 comments Links to this post
Labels: African culture, Books, Liberia, The House at Sugar Beach
Monday, March 2, 2009
Taste Trippin'
Although most of my trips are scheduled, sometimes I like to fly off with spur- of -the minute jaunts. This weekend, I dashed off to Jamaica, Cuba and Peru with a quick detour to Spain. Instead of feeling strangled with jet lag, I feel full, very full. That's because my trips involved a visit to my favorite Nuevo Latino/Caribbean eatery, Cuatro. I started out with a visit to Spain, sipping on a white wine sangria sprinkled with berries. I'm a lightweight drinker and it almost knocked me out so I traveled to Peru, for a divine ceviche with hearts of palm, avocado and whitefish. For my main excursion, I tripped over to Jamaica and Brazil for jerk chicken drenched in tamarind sauce and spicy morros y christanos accented with plantanos. Meanwhile, my traveling companions ventured into Brazil for my favorite moqueca, which I was too stuffed to sample. It was a satisfying journey that almost completely transported me, except for the good old Chicago house music that blasted a reminder that I was still at home.
Posted by Fly Girl at 3:41 PM 15 comments
Labels: Cuban morros y christianos. Spanish sangria Brazilian Moqueca, global cusine, Jamaican jerk chicken, Peruvian ceviche