Better than Free – British Music in Venezuela

According to Billboard Music, the band Mongrel is “genre smashing”. The supergroup promotes peace and political consciousness in their lyrics.

Comprised of  members from several bands, including Reverend & the Makers, Poisonous Poets, Arctic Monkeys, and Babyshambles, Mongrel is set to put some Venezuelan flavor in their tunes.

This month they’ll travel to Venezuela to launch a musical program and give a free show.

Mongrel is dedicated to sharing music and will give away thousands of CDs when they arrive in Caracas later this month. 400,000 copies of their last album “Better than Heavy” were distributed for free throughout Britain.

They’ll also make an appearance on the President Chavez’s weekly television show Aló Presidente. Plans are in the works to do a new album based on Jamaican reggae and Venezuela folk music, hopefully featuring Damian Marley.

Watch this video of their song “The Menace”.

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Film Shows Struggle for Progress in Venezuela’s “Colonia Tovar”

Debuting soon is a new documentary about Colonia Tovar, the German settlement that lies just 60 kilometers outside of Caracas, but is culturally much further removed. The community, a small but well-touristed village of perhaps 6,000 people, was founded in 1840 by the intrepid Italian geographer Agostino Codazzi.

Colonia Tovar provides the setting for “María y el nuevo mundo” (Maria and the New World), the first full-length film from Venezuelan director George Walker Torres. It tells the story of a middle-aged woman who struggles to survive on a garbage dump and dreams of being reunited with her daughter. A parallel is drawn between her search to create a better life and that of the initial founders of the town.

The documentary is promoted by Venezuela’s National Film Board, or Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía (CNAC). Read more in Spanish. Check back here to watch the trailer once it’s available.

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Venezuelan Woman Promotes Intercultural Education

Intercultural education will soon become a reality in Venezuela, if Professor Angela Diaz has anything to do with it.

She spoke at at a public event today in Washington sponsored by TransAfrica Forum. Diaz has been making her way around the U.S. capital,  speaking at Howard University and meeting Members of Congress to discuss the Afro-Venezuelan experience.

Diaz is a member of the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations (La Red de Organizaciones Afrovenezolanas), has worked tirelessly over the past decade to help create a more inclusive education system. Like the U.S., Afro-descendants and Indigenous peoples in Venezuela have been too often distorted or omitted from public school curricula. Due to the work of people like Diaz, Venezuelan students will learn about all the ethnic groups that built the South American continent.

The new inclusive curriculum has been implemented in 17 states so far. Part of the process involves inviting community elders into the schools to teach.  In one school, grandparents taught students how to make a fish recipe, which is stuffed in a plantain leaf. Fish is a vital resource for residents along the Caribbean coast, many of whom identify as Afro-Venezuelan. Along with the recipe, the children learned about history, culture, art, and the environment. Sharing ancestral knowledge is the key to transmitting what has been left out of the history books.

Diaz emphasized that students are inspired when they can see themselves and their communities represented in their lessons. See more of Professor Diaz’s work with Fundación Curduvare.

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Venezuela’s Santana Ready to Get in the Game

Johan Santana, the star pitcher for the Mets who hails from Venezuela, says that despite elbow problems he will be ready for Spring training on Thursday and wants to pitch opening day on April 6th.

“Right now, I feel pretty good, and I felt like I could get in a game,” he told the New York Daily News. This is despite the fact that he did not pitch in the recent World Baseball Classic, disappointing Venezuelans.

Santana told Newsday: “I haven’t skipped anything. Just staying with the plan. Hopefully whenever it’s the time, the right time, to get on the field, we’ll do it. We’ll get on the mound. But as of right now, there’s no reason to have that competition mind-set. It’s just about getting ready for Opening Day.”

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Arepa Update: A Treat You Can Take Anywhere

The arepa is truly a food without borders. Though it is emblematic of Venezuela, the savory cornmeal snack has a presence abroad, too! Here are some suggestions for where to find arepas in the U.S.:

In New York, the Caracas Arepa Bar (pictured above) is located on 7th St. the East Village. Here, rumor has it you are nearly required to to try Venezuelan-style guacamole, called guasacaca. Rivals El Cocotero are over on West 18th St.

Lucky for folks in Boston, the up-and-coming Orinoco has two locations, one in the South End and another in Brookline.  They have a nice date-worthy ambiance and also sell t-shirts with funny slogans like “arepa boy” and “no se aceptan sifrinos!” (no snobs allowed!).

This may not be the policy at Coupa Cafe in Beverley Hills and Palo Alto, which claims to sell “the finest mountain grown single estate coffees from Venezuela.” It has an entire section of its menu dedicated to gourmet arepas.

Surely Miami is home to the highest density of Venezuelan eateries, but we recommend you try this one first: Caballo Viejo (named for a famous folkloric song by Simon Diaz ) has been described as a “hole-in-the-wall” and a “mom and pop” restaurant that is clean and simple.

Where else do you like to eat arepas? Let us know in the comments section.

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Venezuela’s Nestor Paz Creates “Textures of the Soul”

If you’re in the Miami area this Saturday, check out an exhibit by Nestor Paz called “Textures of the Soul” at the Edgar Ace Gallery. Above is one of his canvasses entitled El Venus en la cama (Venus in bed).

Paz is a native of Venezuela, and has been an artist since early childhood.  He studied painting and sculpture at the Conservatoria Cultural de Zulia and graduated from the Universidad Cecilio Acosta in the city of Maracaibo.

The exhibit is noted today in a Miami Herald blog.

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Venezuela Hosts Ninth International Circus Festival

Caracas is full of clowns. And acrobats. And jugglers. Yesterday marked the start of the ninth annual International Circus Festival of Venezuela.

According to TeleSur, it includes performances by artists from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Italy, as well as seven different groups of performers from Venezuela. The event runs until Sunday and includes free shows for the public.

A series of workshops and discussions will also be held at the festival to gather ideas for how to improve the circus arts in Venezuela. We have written before about an initiative to create a national circus. It seems that plans are continuing, and with any luck, the country will soon be defying the laws of gravity as never before.

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Images of Independence

Simon Bolívar, as you may know, is a revered figure in Venezuela. His revolutionary grit fueled the Wars of Independence against Spain not just in that country, but in many parts of Latin America. Today, Bolívar’s likeness can be seen in public plazas and cities throughout Venezuela.

Interestingly, the U.S. also has its share of Bolívar statues. Below is an homage to the revolutionary rider erected in New York’s Central Park in 1891. Use the comments section to tell us where you’ve spotted Bolívar in your own travels!

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Venezuela Eats More Pasta Than You Do

Did you know? Of all countries in the world, Venezuela consumes the second-largest amount of pasta per capita each year. That means that more Venezuelans have more pasta on their plates more times each year than almost anywhere else. Anywhere besides… you guessed it, Italy.

Annual pasta consumption in Venezuela currently stands at about 30 pounds, and has been climbing steadily.

Some attribute this to the country’s significant Italian heritage. Others suggest that its geographic location makes it more prone to producing wheat than corn (another key staple in Latin America).

Either way, it’s no secret how much Venezuela loves pasta. World Pasta Day was once celebrated off the coast Margarita Island, according to the International Pasta Organization, which promotes “promoting the consumption and knowledge of pasta in the world.” This year, it comes to Istanbul.

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Venezuela Elected to UNESCO Cultural Committee

Venezuela was recently elected to serve on UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. “Intangible heritage” refers to popular culture, or culture that is specific to a group of people living within another culture. This includes traditional oral expressions, traditional music, dance, theater, rituals, festivals, crafts, and knowledge related to nature, among other things.

Venezuela has been working for years on endeavors that emphasize the importance of culture. Some examples are projects such as Misión Cultura, the Census of Venezuelan Cultural Heritage, and the recent call to enter the Contest of Bearers of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The effort to elevate culture is also seen in the 10-woman percussion and vocal group Eleggua. Its performers are direct descendants of African slaves who cultivated cacao and coffee along Venezuela’s central coast. The women research and recover the purest African roots in their music, fusing African polyrhythmic percussion with all-Spanish vocals. Belen Maria Palacios, a 72-year-old mother and grandmother, is the oldest member of the group — she was named a Living Cultural Patrimony by Miranda State in May 2004.

Venezuelan joins Italy, Cyprus, Croatia, Cuba, Paraguay, Republic of Korea, Niger, Kenya, Jordan and Zimbabwe on UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

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L.A. Museum of Art Gets Venezuelan Goods

Tomorrow, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opens two new galleries devoted to pre-Columbian art and artifacts from Latin America. A large part of the material comes from the collection of Venezuela’s wealthy Cisneros family.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Cuban-born sculptor Jorge Pardo was hired by LACMA to design “a contiguous display of Latin American art through the ages, despite aesthetic disparities. The road leads from engaging pre-Columbian ceramics to finely detailed Spanish Colonial artworks and furnishings, stringent Modern abstractions and edgy contemporary creations.”

To read more, click here. Also, check out the Cisneros Foundation online.

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Venezuelan Artist’s Work is for the Birds

A Venezuelan-born artist living in Florida was profiled in the Miami Herald over the weekend.

Francisco Sheuat, who owns an art gallery, is making his name in Fort Lauderdale by creating colorful papier-mache replicas of pink flamingos. Embellished with paint or mosaic, each is unique and beautiful. One looks like a motorcycle rider, another features an antique map of the Bahamas.

Sheuat embraces other mediums, too, like the traditional flat canvas. A common theme among all of his work is birds — not surprising for a man whose home country continues to inspire him. Venezuela boasts over 1,300 species of birds, and the country is known among travelers as a haven for birdwatching.

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