© Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
The Jazz Plaza International Festival, one of the reference points on the world jazz calendar, will hold its 42nd edition from January 24 to 31, 2027, in Havana, its customary main seat, the organizing committee announced this Wedneday.
Organizers presented the plans at the “Benny Moré” Mexico-Cuba Cultural Center in Mexico City. Committee president Víctor Rodríguez García highlighted the growing participation of Mexican, North American and European musicians and reaffirmed the commitment to hold the festival despite the difficulties facing the country.
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“We want everyone to know that from January 24 to 31 there will be a festival in Havana with Mexican participation, and that there will also be a venue in this country,” Rodríguez said at the press conference.
According to a caption accompanying the original report, more than 120 U.S. artists have already confirmed their participation despite restrictions imposed by the U.S. blockade.
The 42nd edition of Jazz Plaza International Festival will take place from January 24 to 31, 2027 in 🇨🇺. It will also include tributes to Bola de Nieve, the Roberto Faz Ensemble and the Chepín Chovén, in addition to an inaugural concert by Frank Fernández. pic.twitter.com/1xlvCNvqs2
— Gabriela Glez (@Gabiglez06) October 14, 2026
The 2027 edition will be dedicated to dance. The program includes tributes to Cuban pianist “Bola de Nieve” and to the popular orchestra Chepín-Choven. Cuban performers will include jazz figures Hernán López-Nussa, Roberto Fonseca and Alejandro Falcón.
The opening night belongs to pianist Frank Fernández, a composer of at least 650 works spanning symphonies, choirs and ballets. Organizers also underscored one of the festival’s enduring achievements, its alliance with Cuba’s music education system, which has trained generations of jazz performers now recognized internationally.
The National Folkloric Ensemble of Cuba and the Maraguán Artistic Ensemble of the University of Camagüey, among other groups, will also take part. The official poster was designed by artist Lesbia Vent Dumois, a National Prize for Visual Arts winner.
That bond has made the festival more than a concert series. It functions as a bridge between conservatories and professional stages, giving young Cuban musicians a window into an international circuit that rarely opens to the island.
Text reads: “Abdala studios recorded the musical theme that will accompany the 42nd edition of the International Jazz Plaza Festival. A space for training and growth for the new generations. Thanks to master Roberto Fonseca and his entire team.”
Havana, with 20 stages, will be joined by Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Camagüey, Villa Clara and Matanzas as host provinces during the week devoted to jazz. One of the festival’s stated goals and achievements has been its link with the music education system, which in recent decades has trained some of Cuba’s most internationally recognized performers of the genre.
During the press conference, organizers announced several initiatives to facilitate Mexican participation and joint work. Mexican organizers announced a series of initiatives to ease attendance and collaborative work. The “Benny Moré” center has been proposed as a satellite stage, adding interactive presentations to its streaming broadcasts, a format that lets distant audiences follow the concerts in real time.
With the dates set for the final week of January 2027, Havana anchors the festival while the five additional provinces and the Mexican venue extend its reach. Streaming broadcasts from the Benny Moré center will carry portions of the program to audiences beyond both countries.
The Jazz Plaza Festival is one of the main fixtures on the international jazz calendar and, held each January in Havana, has long drawn musicians and audiences from several countries. The expansion to Mexico suggests organizers are looking to widen the festival’s reach beyond the island.
Cuban singer and composer Manolo del Valle—whose real name was Manuel Batista Salgado—passed away this Sunday at the age of 84. The news was announced by the Cuban Music Institute (ICM) and the Orquesta Original de Manzanillo, a group with which the artist maintained a long professional relationship. The news prompted expressions of sorrow within the music community and among fans of the Cuban bolero, both in Cuba and abroad.
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Del Valle was one of the island’s most recognized voices in romantic song. His career, spanning more than six decades, was closely tied to the bolero genre; he delivered performances that resonated with several generations of listeners, including songs such as “Es mejor vivir así” and “Celos del viento y el mar.”
His early artistic steps were linked to local groups such as the trios Ideal and Los Bohemios. In 1964, he joined the Orquesta Original de Manzanillo, an ensemble with which he remained associated for 14 years and with which he recorded songs he had composed himself.
Portada del Disco: La Vida es un Sueño.
The group highlighted the singer’s contribution to a sound that blended son and popular dance music with romantic song. Following that period, Del Valle settled in Havana to pursue a solo career.
Manolo del Valle’s repertoire included bolero classics as well as compositions that became synonymous with his name, such as “No renunciaré a tu amor,” “Celos del viento y el mar,” “Ni tu cama ni tu almohada,” “Será la última carta,” “Solo mía y basta,” and “Este es mi último adiós.”
His discography includes productions such as Es mejor vivir así (1981), alongside numerous performances at bolero festivals held in Cuba and other countries. Throughout his career, he received various cultural honors and maintained a close bond with audiences both on and off the island.
News of his passing prompted reactions from musicians, colleagues, and admirers. Singer Lourdes Libertad expressed her sorrow on social media and recalled years of friendship and professional collaboration with Del Valle, whom she described as one of the great exponents of the bolero.
With his passing, Cuban music loses a performer whose legacy endures through his recordings and the bolero repertoire. His songs remain part of the musical memory of several generations, both in Cuba and among Cuban communities abroad.
#Cuba | The Recording and Music Publishing Company (Egrem) is celebrating the nominations for the Cubadisco 2026 Awards, which will be announced on May 16 during the awards ceremony of the Cuban Record Festival.https://t.co/iOAteQYMqn pic.twitter.com/s7rpZFOLBy
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 4, 2026
Portuguese priest-turned-DJ Father Guilherme has made his debut in the world’s top 100 DJs, becoming the only Portuguese artist to feature in the 2026 ranking published by British electronic music
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Artists pour their souls into recording studios, but success can create a peculiar kind of regret when one song comes to overshadow everything else they have accomplished. Fans may cherish a familiar anthem forever, while the musician who recorded it must sing the same words night after night, answer the same questions, and watch one […]
The post 10 Famous Musicians Who Grew to Resent Their Biggest Hits appeared first on Listverse.
Audiophiles are sometimes described in terms reserved for cults; a 1956 New Yorker story, referenced in Colin Vanderburg’s exceptional tour of extreme listening, refers to “a remarkably articulate group of zealots” and “an almost mystical reverence for sound.” Vanderburg travels among the believers, tracing the decades-long promise of “consumer audio innovations” to their technological apex: the New York International Audio Show, where audiophiles sample six-figure sound systems in pursuit of a signal as pure as the world they already inhabit.
More than anything, I have spent long passages of this earthly life sitting on my ass, listening. I listen to music, but what I hear is sound. Texture, timbre, and tone; clarity and detail; space and depth. And I hear, even more acutely, what thwarts sound. Shrill treble, muddled bass — for me these are worse than peeves. They offend hearing. They diminish the human sensorium. Earbuds repulse me; laptop speakers grate; a tabletop Bluetooth unit is a kind of vandalism.
The word audiophile — etymologically, one who “loves to hear” — has a wine-sipping pretension that I hate, but sometimes an ugly shoe fits. Like similarly suffixed psychopathologies, the term suggests a state of warped dependence, of inbent sublimation. I didn’t set out to be this way, but neither have I ever sought help. My symptoms are apparent, their causes obscure. What, after all, do we love when we love sound?
In the year of the 250th anniversary of US independence, the bipartisan US Semiquincentennial Commission released “America’s Soundtrack: The Sound of 250 Years.” Perhaps unsurprisingly – because the initiative was planned over the course of a decade with the support of corporations like Amazon, Oracle, and Palantir – the playlist is a romantic ode to the most paternalistic and militaristic sides of the United States.
However, activists have pointed out that there are “Two Americas at 250.” In other words, there is a working-class history and culture that directly contradicts the imperialist project of the billionaire class. Therefore, we must study another soundtrack: one based on the struggles, desires, and traditions of the people. One person that represents this soundtrack is “America’s favorite blues man,” 34-year-old Buffalo Nicols.
Music characterized Carl Nichols’s upbringing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though not surrounded by musicians, he always had the sounds of jazz on the radio, his mother‘s music collection, his older brother’s hip-hop, and his older sisters, R&B, punk, and metal. This was the context in which he taught himself to play his sister’s guitar at the age of 12.
Performing with bands throughout high school, Carl found kinship among the West African community. As he played a cheap banjo along with a friend on the instrument known as the xalam, he embraced music as an opportunity to learn about other cultures. Traveling through countries like Senegal, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine in his early 20s and learning their sonic traditions, motivated him to study Black American music with the same rigor.
Performers like Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie left a lasting mark on him, specifically relating to communal and commercial music. Similarly, the writing of Etheridge Knight, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka helped him understand the blues as “a living thing” rather than a set of important names and dates. He said, “There’s always been this connection between activism and folk music because I think trying to exist as an artist in America has been a political thing.”
His 2025 song “Belly of the Beast“ is one example of this because it asks about the responsibility which domestic victims of US imperialism have for protecting victims abroad. Written during the heightened media coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the song calls attention to the relationship between Black Americans and Palestinians. He conceptualized the song following a period of political education defined by a collection of Malcolm X speeches and Régis Debray’s 1967 “Revolution in the Revolution?”
I live in the belly of the beast
Though I only meant to look into his mouth
It was not opportunity but chains he used to capture me
And every day I’ve tried to get back out
While these lines of the chorus speak from the individual or first person perspective, Nichols uses them to describe a common experience.This is why the song ends with the collective “we live in the belly of the beast.” The song is neither nihilistic or romantic in its allusion to topics like police killings, occupation and ethnic cleansing. Rather, in verse four, the singer puts his hope for change in the hands of the people, saying “we cannot win ’till we get organized.”
Some, who mistake folk music as apolitical, took offense to this song. They attack him in social media comments, direct messages, and hate mail. In the spirit of the blues, Nichols said he laughs at their assumption that they can hurt him. The same minority of listeners attacked him for his 2025 song “Ice Age Blues.”
He wrote the song in response to the second Trump administration’s escalation of ICE terror. Specifically, on the widespread sense of surprise that law-enforcement would use deadly force against the US residents. He said that it reminded him of the same realization among new activists during the 2020 uprising for George Floyd. However, Nichols shows that he was not shocked by the contradiction – he ends the song by asking,
You think all that money is for war fought abroad?
They won’t hesitate to kill you in your own backyard.
They’d be happy to kill you in your own backyard.
Nichols said that political finger pointing will not help identify the common perpetrator of a shared oppression. Instead, he urges readers to understand the state and how it works against the people; to study the basis of its patterns and changes. By doing so, he calls listeners attention to the basis of repression rather than simply what accelerates it.
Similarly, he recommends the new generation of blues people to “return to the root.” That is, to disregard stereotypes about their Black art and study those – like Zora Neal Hurston – who preserved long-standing traditions. By reclaiming their legacy, he said that culture workers can affect consciousness on a mass level.
I know no artist really wants to be a role model or to be representing an entire people but the reality is that Black culture is such a fragile, delicate and important thing that we have to be more mindful of how we share it and how we interact with it.
Buffalo Nichols is currently touring through states like West Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, and Minnesota.
Mary Austin was the woman behind Freddie Mercury, quietly supporting him for decades, from their intense early romance to the long years they remained close friends after accepting that he was gay. The vast legacy he left her—his home, much of his fortune, and his most personal belongings—has been a mixed blessing that she has spent her life trying to navigate with loyalty and discretion. As Simon Hattenstone explores Austin’s life in this interview, the unresolved emotion of the shared past with Mercury is still palpable.
Did the piano change him? “Yes, there was much more purposeful energy. He would sit at the piano, play the odd key, hum a bit and he looked very happy. Transported.” By now they were spending less time together. When she was working at Biba, he would often be sleeping. When she returned home, he would be preparing for a gig.
They’d been living together for four years when Mercury said he had something to tell her. He struggled to get the words out. He said, ‘I think I’m bisexual.’ I said ‘No, Freddie, I think you’re gay.’” He didn’t argue. Was that a huge upset? “No, it was a huge relief, because I wasn’t sure whether we were travelling in the same direction any more. Some time earlier I saw a dress and thought, that would be a really nice wedding dress. I asked Freddie, is it worth me buying it, and he looked at me and shook his head. So I knew from there on …”
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Dolly Parton may be gone, but her music, kindness and legacy will inspire generations to come.
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