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Nelly Furtado makes smart entry into Latin music market

Nelly Furtado's musical career has been filled with drastic changes. She started as a funky hip-hop / fusion phenomenon, soaring to success with her 2000 debut Whoa, Nelly and its Grammy-winning hit I am Like a Bird, then veered into a Brazilian-tinged world-beat detour. She returned to the mainstream in 2006 with the bestselling, sexy pop-hip-hop of Loose.

Now Furtado is back with a new sound and a new identity -- Latin songstress. Her latest album, Mi plan , a pop-rock record filled with famous Latino guest stars, comes out this week. It's an idea that's been brewing for some time. The Canadian-born daughter of Portuguese immigrants, Furtado performed Portuguese songs as a child. She recorded a hit duet in Spanish, Fotografia, with the Colombian rock star Juanes in 2002, and he returned the favor by guesting on one of two Spanish songs on Loose . (Incidentally, Furtado's husband is a Cuban-American from Kendall, a sound engineer she met while recording Loose at North Miami's Hit Factory

Future Classic Festival to provide a wild mix in Wynwood

Eager to get into Miami's deep, eclectic music scene, but have no idea where to start? The Future Classic Festival may be your answer.

The event, being held Saturday at Soho Studios Miami in Wynwood, is an amalgam of local art cultures: Three music areas, art and graffiti exhibits, dance performances, a video game area, a skateboarding ramp and a food court will all showcase local and even some national acts.

Electro-rock and hip-hop band N*E*R*D, fronted by producer-to-the-superstars Pharrell Williams, is headlining the event, which is appropriate since Williams spends much of his time in Miami.

Urban storyteller: Gables High grad directs some of hip-hop's hottest videos

Music video director Gil Green is in a dank, bombed-out Overtown warehouse, surrounded by what might seem like the predictable panorama of stock hip-hop imagery: especially fine women, a six-figure ride and a couple of iced-out rappers.

Yet Green -- a Coral Gables Senior High graduate who has become one of the decade's definitive directors of hip-hop and dancehall -- delivers cinematic videos that manage to be real and socially responsible. More raw storytelling than hyperbole, Green's visual interpretation of rapper Black Dada's remix single Imma Zoe is a finely woven urban narrative of a Haitian boy's journey to the United States. Through this video, as with his other three-minute productions, Green hopes his refreshing vision will give more texture to the way popular music is experienced.

``There's a way to think and step out of the box and interpret the music in a positive way,'' Green, 34, offers the next morning at a Fat Joe video shoot at Crandon Park hours before he heads to Shanghai to

Boom time: Miami Bass Warriors reclaim the much-maligned music of their childhood

It's 9 on a muggy Thursday night at Montes de Oca, the self-proclaimed birthplace of Cuban pizza on the western fringe of Miami. José el Rey and Debbie D, vocalists in dance-music group Miami Bass Warriors, are soaking in the vibe and ordering a small pie with the house topping.

The waitress smiles slyly, batting her eyelashes at el Rey.

``Chorizo?'' she asks in a sultry voice as she gives the once-over to his unbuttoned pink silk shirt, overflowing chest hair and cartoonishly huge mustache. ``I love chorizo.''

Brazilian kids fulfill a dream at Miami City Ballet School

When 13-year-old Gabrielle Verissimo talks about her neighborhood of Gardenia Azul, in Rio de Janeiro, her wide-eyed face, already stretched tight by hair pulled into a sleek bun, grows still more taut. In Gardenia Azul, drug gangs battle paramilitaries for control and most people can only aspire to jobs as maids or construction workers.

But ask Verissimo about the ballet classes she takes at home, and for two precious weeks here at Miami City Ballet, and the tension disappears into an enormous smile. ``It gives me tremendous pleasure,'' she says. ``I want to be a great dancer.''

Verissimo is one of 35 aspiring young Brazilian dancers studying at Miami City Ballet School's annual summer program. They were brought here by Alice Arja, a former ballerina who has devoted herself to offering desperately needed escape and hope to young people from some of Rio de Janeiro's poorest neighborhoods.