Miami Herald: Latin American Hip Hop

Image Copyright © Noelle Theard-All Rights Reserved
The Miami Herald just produced a brilliant multimedia feature on the hip-hop culture in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The feature is part of a larger many-layered and equally brilliant feature titled A Rising Voice: Afro-Latin Americans which examines social and racial tensions in Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras (just listen to the beat of the Garifuna music!), Dominican Republic and Brazil.

The Latin American Hip Hop feature is a Soundslides production, with the photographs of Noelle Theard, a Miami-based photojournalist, whose talented lenswork and great sense of color/movement allows us to enter the hip hop world in these Latin American countries. The able narration is by Alvaro Cuello who describes for us how hip-hop creates a cultural bond above race and social class.

A highly recommended multimedia feature, here's Miami Herald's Latin American Hip Hop.

Noelle Theard's website is here

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Jon Anderson: El Camino de los Negros

Batey Smoker - Image Copyright © Jon Anderson
A superb photographer and photojournalist, a talented writer, a blogger of incisive intellect, a captivating storyteller, a graphic artist, a website designer and a multimedia artist, Jon divides his time between Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and New York City. He was recently awarded a fellowship by the Alicia Foundation to pursue his ongoing project documenting the plight and exploitation of braceros (gatherers and cutters) in the sugarcane plantations of the Dominican Republic.

He studied journalism at Columbia University, and initially joined the famed Black Star photo agency.

To showcase Jon's many talents, I chose his multimedia documentary El Camino de los Negros, which deals with religious rituals and some of the endangered traditions of the Dominican Republic. We all heard of santeria and voodoo practiced in parts of the Caribbean, but this is somewhat different.

Jon's enormous talents are in clear evidence here; the composition of his black and white photography, the intelligent juxtaposition of ritualistic music and songs with narration, the judicious use of the Ken Burns effect, combined with his narrative make this powerful documentary a mandatory stop for all of us who are entering the world of multimedia photography.

Jon's El Camino de los Negros

Jon's website "Dark Horse Images"

Jon's Blog: The Spark of Accident

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