Shakira and World Cup Song Sparks Controversy in South Africa

Shakira and World Cup Song Sparks Controversy in South Africa

International Latin super star Shakira sings South African official World Cup song

Nautilus Entertainment News
June, 10 2010
By Graciela J. Ayllon

International Latin super star Shakira has set off a controversy in South Africa over the official World Cup song. Many have expressed disappointment that a non-South African artist was chosen to record the song, though others do not seem to mind.

The new song is called "Waka Waka; ('Waca Waca,Waka Waka or Waca Tokory' is an ancient bolivian traditional dance involving "lecheras," farmers and Cows. See below video.) Waka Waka " means "This Time for Africa" It was unveiled on radio stations a few days ago and immediately produced mixed feelings in South Africa, the host country for this year's World Cup. It is supposed to be the official song for the 2010 event, but according to talk radio host (Talk Radio 702) Jenny Crwys-Williams, many have called in to voice their disappointment.

Original WacaWaca or Waka Tokory traditional Bolivian ancent Aymara dance:

"I love it that South Africans are just coming together as South Africans and saying 'Damn it, we've got our own people and it's an African World Cup, it's ours, it belongs to us' so why don't we use some of the magnificent talent that we've actually got? That's my reading of the calls we got," Crwys-Williams explained.

On the streets of Johannesburg, reactions have been mixed. Some strongly disapprove.

"It sucks. 'Waka Waka?' Shakira must not even come through and sing that song. I am serious. She must not. It sucks," said Lindi Munonde.

Nomaswazi Thomo agrees. "Yeah, it has to be South African," she said. "I mean, we've got so many talented South African singers who can actually pull it off. And really, I mean, how is Shakira going to sing the African part of it?"

Others say the World Cup is not just about South Africa, it's about South Africa hosting it and bringing it to the world.

Sechaba Sebusho states, "I don't have a problem with it being sung by a non-South African in the sense that it might be an African World Cup or a South African World Cup, but it is for everyone to enjoy."

Olebogeng Ntsime agrees, "For the fact that it has Freshlyground [band], they are people who originate from South Africa. I think it's ok. Whether it's Shakira or Beyonce, I think it's OK."

Heidi Botes says, "I think what's great about the fact that there are a lot of artists, it unites the world. The soccer World Cup is not just about South Africa, it's about South Africa hosting it and bringing the world."

The song is a collaboration between Shakira and the South African band Freshlyground. It is scheduled to be performed at the World Cup kickoff concert in Soweto on June 10.

"Daydreams Come True" in Dallas

By: Graciela Ayllon
Famous Dallas City Entertainment News
February 6, 2010

David Cassidy, Davy Jones
Date/Time:Sat., February 6
Price: $49.75-$69.75

Latchkey kids from the 1980s grew up with a very peculiar set of heroes and companions. I spent most of my after-school hours with a disparate group of Monkees, CHiPs officers, Partridges, Bradys and crinkly-nosed witches thanks to Nick at Nite's and TBS' endless reruns. While many of my peers were all about the exploits of Crockett and Tubbs, I was crushing on Michael Nesmith and Erik Estrada. I don't think it's any wonder at all that I grew up to work with cops and exclusively date musicians. There was a certain level of escapism that came with flipping on those shows after dealing with the trials and tribulations of junior high all day. And the musical ones, The Monkees and The Partridge Family, were the best combination of comedy, camp and dreamy boys. Davy Jones could narrow his eyes, shake his hair out of his eyes and launch into "Daydream Believer," and I was totally content. And while David Cassidy's Keith Partridge was a little whiny for my taste, I still couldn't resist "I Think I Love You." I know I wasn't alone, and that David and Davy still hold a place in the hearts of many Nick at Nite junkies who will be there to see them at NOKIA Theatre, 1001 Performance Place, when they roll through town Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $49.75 to $69.75 and may be purchased at ticketmaster.com.

Dallas Greeted Magnificent U2

Famous Dallas City Entertainment News
By: Graciela Ayllon
October 13, 2009

On Monday October 12, 2009 U2 performed an unforgettable night show in Dallas city at the new Cowboys Stadium; certainly it would serve as enough sound-blaster and the best performance evidence. More than 80,000 people witnessed the Dallas city stop of the Irish group's "360 Degrees Tour." The floor, which was standing-room-only and surrounded the mammoth stage, was an immense sea of fans.

It was incredible:”we saw a big platform contraption.” It was like a spaceship merged with a huge spider, its four claw-like structures flanking a circular riser and an outer ring. The two were connected by movable bridges. Above the band was a spectacular rotating video screen that extended into a funnel-like cloud constantly lit for maximum effect.

And of course, there's Bono, Larry Mullen Jr., Adam Clayton and The Edge. These guys couldn't be more comfortable before a humongous mass, or underneath such high-tech gadgetry. For about two hours the U2 members sang and played with passionate precision. They backed up the spectacle with plenty of their best hits.

Bono was a messiah figure when he performed. Dressed in black and prone to raising his arms and tilting his head back, as if basking in the presence of his disciples, he wasted no time in preaching peace, asking for a "non-violent revolution" and turning "Walk On," the final number before the encore, into a thought-provoking tribute to Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi.

For sheer U2 explosiveness, we got "Vertigo," "Get On Your Boots," "Elevation" and "Beautiful Day." If you wanted a good groove, they delivered with "Mysterious Ways" and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight." The tunes from No Line On the Horizon, the quartet's newest disc, blended perfectly with older material.

One more song deserves mention: "Sunday Bloody Sunday," an anthem that prompts fist pumping. It's just as inspiring a song now, with all the violent political unrest in the world, as it was back in 1983 when it was originally released.

Mullen's militaristic drum work filled the stadium with crisp, measured marching beats. Which brings us to the sound at the venue, a constant source of argument among fans. It was an excellent live show performance at Arlington neighbor and we want them to come back to Dallas again.

Check out “Magnificent” from Dallas below.

Eli Young Band Performed at the House of Blues

By: Graciela J. Ayllon
Nautilus Famous Dallas City Entertainment News
March 31, 2009

The Eli Young Band played the House of Blues Friday night, March 27, “they played fantastic, and we enjoyed to the last song” stated Lara Sodano from Mesquite. They played their new and contemporary rhythms, with openers Trailer Choir.

A Glance at Where the Feds Used to Stock up the Gold, Profound Beneath Dallas

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Nautilus Famous Dallas City Entertainment News
March 31, 2009

Ever wondered what the abandoned vault beneath the old Federal Reserve Bank on 400 S. Akard Street looked like? Swell. Because HTML pioneer and blog-advice guru John Pozadzides took some folks from GeekBrief.tv on a tour, and, in return, they offer this video worth a look-see.


GeekBrief.TV #486 from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

Last Night at SMU, Andrés Duany Took the Wrecking Ball to "The North Dallas Special"

Mayor Tom Leppert's introduction of renowned urban planner and architect Andrés Duany last night at the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom on the SMU campus was less a please-welcome than a separate speech altogether. Full of pragmatic optimism and pride, and clad in his trademark pinstripes, the mayor insisted, "Not only is Dallas a player on the environmental front, but we're [in] a leadership position, and I can say that because of policies that have been put in place by the city of Dallas." Leppert went on to describe those policies, from Dallas's green building ordinance to its "very aggressive" recycling program, before, yet again, instructing the full house how to vote on May 9.

But after climbing down form his soapbox, the mayor handed over the stage to Duany, co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, which has gained international recognition for its urban planning work. "New Urbanism" is a multifaceted and, till recently, a somewhat obscure concept, but Duany outlined its basic points in a few words: diversity, connectivity and compactness, the last of which could describe Duany himself.

Small and energetic, what he lacked in physical stature he made up for in style and wit. Within two minutes, he had the audience laughing; within three, he was raining down fire and brimstone on one of the great barriers to the walkable, livable city -- suburban sprawl, exemplified by what Duany calls "the North Dallas special," by which he means the over-sized, treeless mansion of isolation that's cheap to build and far from the city center.

Cul-de-sacs of postwar McMansions, Duany said, are emblematic of the single-use suburbia in which residents must work in one place, shop in another and live in yet another -- and use cars and highways to shuffle between them. Such a model, he says, encourages "social segregation," in which uniformly priced subdivisions separated by walls, gates and automobiles preclude the kind of diversity that makes such cities as New York and Paris edgy and alive.

"We need diversity, and diversity is mixed-use," Duany said. "We need places that within walking distance you can shop, you can live, you can go to school, and you can work. Very little can occur, in terms of the foundation of a community, unless you can walk to things."

Duany has several development projects underway, from Houston and Galveston to North Richland Hills and the Legacy Town Center in North Dallas, so he's heard the old argument about walking: It's too hot to walk in Dallas.

"People walk in hotter places and in colder places [than Dallas]," Duany argued. "There are more walkable streets in four cities in Canada than the entire United States," he added, eliciting a chorus of sheepish laughs from the audience. "It's not the climate, it's the [city's] physical design."

But walkability doesn't come on its own, and it doesn't come just from "creating density," or smooshing buildings together until a city block is full. Rather, Duany insists, crafting a diverse and thriving city needs precise planning and conscious efforts to design incentives, like street life and a "sense of place," that will create real urbanism -- livability -- from density. The more sprawl ensconces people in cocoons of self-sufficiency and car-driving, the more it eliminates their interaction with others and with their environment.

According to Duany, what Dallas lacks "time and time and time again is sense of place. You have a pretty low quality of life, given your wealth."

That's a bitter pill, but the audience took it well.

Duany has the ability to be at once scathing and encouraging, hilarious and morbid. He calls the country's three-tiered crisis -- rising oil prices, a caving economy and global climate change -- "incredibly exciting," because there's just enough desperation to make people open to change. And so it should go with Dallas, in Duany's view.

"When you look upon your Dallas, your model is the neighborhood," Duany explains, illustrating his point with slides of quaint, tree-lined prewar American towns. "That's the human habitat. Nothing in your codes allows that."

So, then, what are we to do?

"Comb through your codes," Duany said. "Better yet, throw them out. They have suburban sprawl in mind. Incentivize the [new] code and let the old code wither. It'll be an historical and hilarious artifact."

AC /DC Preformed at A&A Center Dallas

Nautilus Famous Dallas City Entertainment News
January 23, 2009
By: Marco Ayllon
More than three decades into their career, AC/DC visited Dallas city American Airlines Center. They played classics such as: “Black and Black and Stay with me;” like electricity itself provided the world with an essential source of power and energy. This energy electrified American Airlines Center on January 23 as AC/DC plugged in their "Black Ice World Tour" into Dallas.
AC/DC's mammoth power chord roar became one of the most influential hard rock sounds of the '70s. In its own way, it was a reaction against the pompous art rock and lumbering arena rock of the early '70s. AC/DC's rock was minimalist -- no matter how huge and bludgeoning the guitar chords were, there was a clear sense of space and restraint. Combined with Bon Scott's larynx-shredding vocals, the band spawned countless imitators over the next two decades. AC/DC were formed in 1973 in Australia by guitarist Malcolm Young after his band, the Velvet Underground, collapsed (Young's band has no relation to the seminal American group).
With his younger brother Angus as lead guitarist, the band played some gigs around Sydney. Angus was only 15 years old at the time and his sister suggested that he should wear his school uniform on-stage; the look became the band's visual trademark. While still in Sydney, the original lineup featuring singer Dave Evans cut a single called "Can I Sit Next to You," with ex-Easybeats Harry Vanda and George Young (Malcolm and Angus' older brother) producing.
This worldwide tour - the band's first since 2001 - promotes "Black Ice", AC/DC latest studio album. The album's first single, "Rock 'N' Roll Train" was released to radio on August 28 and immediately went to No. 1 at Rock Radio. People drove from Oklahoma and from Houston so they cloud enjoy their favorite band. “It was an excellent show,” sated Erik Dipp from Mesquite TX. Tickets price started at: $85.00
http://www.acdc.com