President Barack Obama celebrated the growing contribution of Hispanic culture and music to the United States with a "Fiesta Latina" at the White House, part of a musical series started by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Latin music "moves us and tends to make us want to move ourselves," the president declared.

Actors Eva Longoria Parker, George Lopez and Jimmy Smits began the show joking that Obama is Hispanic.

Gloria Estefan followed with her Billboard hit "No Llores," accompanied by Jose Feliciano and percussionist Sheila E.

While the celebration of Hispanic music brought other entertainment heavyweights as Marc Anthony and Jeninfer Lopez, Los Lobos, Thalia  and Pete Escovedo to the White House, the evening's standing ovation went to the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic member of the high court.

Bachata also came out of the dance clubs and onto the White House's South Lawn, with the Bronx-based group Aventura performing a style of music that has begun to dominate dance floors alongside Salsa and Merengue in clubs across the country.

The music was first heard at parties in the Dominican Republic in the 60s but, largely thanks to Aventura, it has recently taken hold in the United States.   The four-man music group debuted in 1999 and is known for combining the ballad-like music and its strumming guitars with r&b, hip-hop and Reggaeton.

In his remarks, Obama said  the roots of Latin music are threaded throughout the world, from the streets of New York to West Africa.   "Even though it is constantly evolving and changing, Latin music speaks to us in a language we all can understand," Obama said.

For everyone who didn't get an invite to the concert,  fret not -- the "In Performance at the White House: Fiesta Latina" will be broadcast on PBS Thursday night  and on the Spanish language network Telemundo on Sunday.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage

Photo credit: Larry Downing (George Lopez, Eva Longoria Parker and Jimmy Smits; and Aventura at White House concert)

Visitors to Greece's capital these days cannot escape the fact that a general election is on he way.  But it is not just the constant discussion on television and the excited newspaper headlines about a U.S.-style debate between front runners that lets you know.

Peppered across the city are political stalls, open for the public to come in and be persuaded to vote on Oct. 4 for whichever party is hosting them. The style ranges from a bench and chairs manned by two ageing communists in the northern suburbs to a rather slick structure in Athen's central Syndagma Square touting the worth  of the ruling conservative New Democracy party. For some reason the latter was blaring out The Clash's "Rocking the Casbah" on a recent sunny morning.

It is all very frothy and something of a celebration of democracy in the city which, after all, invented it.

Which is why a quieter, almost unnoticed gallery on the corner of Syndagma is offering something all the more poignant -- a reminder that it was not that long ago that such expressions of democracy would be met with batons, water cannons and even tanks.

"Mikis Theodorakis: The Composer - The Politician - The Thinker" is a temporary exhibition funded by the Greek parliament to honour one of the country's greatest living artists and an icon of left-wing resistance.

Best known to the world at large for composing the music for Michael Cacoyannis' 1960s film "Zorba the Greek" -- now almost a Greek anthem -- Theodorakis has a huge and respected body of work covering some 60 years, from operas to song cycles, ballets and symphonies. Among his film themes are those for Sidney Lumet's "Serpico" and Costa-Gavras' "State of Siege".

These are all celebrated with due reverence at the exhibition, including displays of many strangely ancient-looking  record album covers. But in the current political climate, it is the politics which catches the eye.

Various phases of Theodorakis' life are highlighted -- from wounded resitance fighter in the Second World War to internal exile in the Greek Civil War that raged until 1949. His music was banned and the composer himself arrested during the brutal military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. But his escape to Paris in 1970 combined with his music and imposing presence to set him up as a voice for democracy's return.

A particulary historic photograph for the period shows Theodorakis embracing Mercedes Sosa, the Argentine singer who had similar struggles with her own country's junta. 

It is all puts "Rocking the Casbah" into context as Greeks ready themselves for a simple excercise in democracy.

(Photo: Jeremy Gaunt)

Lead singer Liam Gallagher has issued a typically blunt rebuttal to rumours and speculation that Oasis, arguably Britain’s biggest band of the ’90s, had played their final gig.

The rumours began after Liam and his older brother Noel, the band’s guitarist and songwriter, announced they had fallen out and were communicating via the band’s website or on Twitter. Then, when Oasis cancelled a gig at the last minute over the weekend, the doomsayers went into overdrive.

The reason for the band’s pullout was actually Liam contracting viral laryngitis, but that did not stop the columnists rushing to fill their columns. Liam, who thrives off his bad boy, rock’n'roll image, was clearly not impressed.

“Reports in the smartarses column about Oasis last british gig ever. The kids talking out his arse.” Lax grammar aside, the message was clear, although could Gallagher really be that annoyed at all the free publicity?

The website further explained that Oasis, behind hits like “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova”, would complete its world tour and then take a break before thinking about recording another album.

We’ve all been there — sitting at a rock/folk/country concert, politely waiting for the band to get through its new songs and start belting out the reasons we came in the first place. But if we do that, do the performers then have a responsibilty to deliver the oldies? And in a form we want to hear?

A couple of recent performances have underlined the issue. As Fan Fare noted recently, Yusuf, the former Cat Stevens, left some fans disappointed at the recent festival in Cropredy. He delivered a fine set, but primarily stuck to new songs and some obscure old ones. He was unprepared to give the crowd the big hits it was hoping, indeed asking for.

Meanwhile, a review in R2 (the former Rock’n'Reel) magazine of Bob Dylan’s gig at the O2 Arena in London was scathing. Critic Rychard Carrington wrote:

“The set included many classics from the 60s … but all in radically revised versions. On paper this sounds interesting, but in practise I felt half-cheated — I was excited that he was playing an old favourite, but frustrated that what I was actually hearing felt like a different song.”

Carrington also reckoned the great man was rude, not saying anything to the audience apart from introducing the band members and mainly playing towards the band.

“Doubtless some will see enigmatic integrity in the lack of communication, deep signficance in the revisons of old numbers, but for the less-devoted fans the concert succeeded only in the narrowest of musical terms.”

It is easy to understand why a musician might get sick of banging out the same songs for year on end. Fans, after all, change the CD when they get bored. But for the most part the hit songs are why the artist is there in the first place. As singer-songwriter Don McLean said of his mega-hit:

“I have  always sung ‘American Pie’ for my audience and would never think of disappointing them since it is they who have given me a wonderful life and untold affection for almost 30 years.”

So should fans be upset when they do not get the big hits?  Or should they defer to the artists sensibilities and vision?

(Reuters photo: Lee Celano)

Perhaps the world of opera could learn a thing or two about marketing to the masses. Long seen as the bastion of wealthy, ageing patrons and obsessive fans, opera houses say they are trying to reach out to a wider audience by bringing down ticket prices and beaming performances on to giant screens and into cinemas.

The Sun tabloid in Britain has an alternative approach — make opera sexy. After the doors of the notoriously pricey Royal Opera House were thrown open to Sun readers last year for a cut-price performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, a similar offer has been announced for Bizet’s “Carmen” on October 3. All tickets will be priced between 7.50 and 30 pounds ($12-50), a far cry from regular prices of up to 230 pounds per seat, not including the exclusive boxes.

Its description of Carmen sounds like an advertisement for a night out at a lap dance club: “Georges Bizet’s brilliant but tragic French opera, set in Seville around 1830, is packed with trollops, treachery, filthy vices and fabulous voices.” It goes on to describe Carmen as a “slapper”, a less-than-complimentary term describing a woman of, shall we say, easy virtue.

And here is what the most widely read British daily newspaper had to say about Don Giovanni: “More than 2,000 of you were treated to a night of blood, betrayal, ghosts and topless totty in the story about a bed-hopping stud who is dragged to hell for his wicked ways.”

If London’s Royal Opera House or the Metropolitan Opera in New York hired the Sun to write their programmes, they might just get the diverse audience they crave.

Hallelujah, indeed. Leonard Cohen, in all his sartorial splendor, will kick off the second and final leg of his North American tour in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on Oct. 17. 

The 74-year-old Canadian singer/songwriter has scheduled 15 dates through Nov. 13 in San Jose, Calif. It was not immediately clear if there would be any additional stops.

Cohen is currently on tour in Europe, with dates on tap through Sept. 21 in Barcelona. He has been on the road since May last year, forced out of retirement after a former manager made off with his life savings.

The first North American leg, marking his first Stateside tour in 15 years, ran for two months through early June, and was one of the hottest tickets in town.

Here are the dates:
    
Sat, Oct 17 — Ft. Lauderdale (BankAtlantic Center)
Mon, Oct 19 — Tampa (St. Pete Times Forum)
Tue, Oct 20 — Atlanta (Fox Theatre)
Thu, Oct 22 — Philadelphia (Wachovia Spectrum)
Fri, Oct 23 — New York City (Madison Square Garden)
Sun, Oct 25 — Cleveland (Allen Theatre)
Tue, Oct 27 — Columbus (Palace Theatre)
Thu, Oct 29 — Chicago (Rosemont Theatre)
Sun, Nov 1 — Asheville, N.C. (Thomas Wolfe Auditorium)
Tue, Nov 3 — Durham, N.C. (Durham Performing Arts Center)
Thu, Nov 5 — Nashville (Tennessee Performing Arts Center (Andrew Jackson Hall)
Sat, Nov 7 — St. Louis (Fox Theatre)
Mon, Nov 9 — Kansas City (The Midland by AMC)
Thu, Nov 12 — Las Vegas (The Colosseum at Caesars Palace)
Fri, Nov 13 — San Jose (HP Pavilion)

After years of adulation over the hilarity of their genre-spawning rockumentary This is Spinal Tap, screenwriter Christopher Guest and the other actors of the much-loved spoof band Spinal Tap decided it was time to pay a visit to the prehistoric monument behind one of the hit movie’s funniest scenes - Stonehenge.

News of the visit comes courtesy of Canadian indie rock outfit Metric, who, like Spinal Tap, were fresh off a performance at Britain’s Glastonbury music festival when they made a pit stop to check out the landmark.

Upon arriving at the monument, Metric frontwoman Emily Haines and her bandmates were disappointed to find the entrance closed. But as she recounts on her band’s blog, their sightseeing detour was about to get a lot more exciting.

“We were staring at the stones through the fence and halfheartedly watching various generic families wander toward their cars when Joules said the words we will remember forever: ‘Um, guys, that’s . . . Spinal Tap!”

The irony drenched Rob Reiner-directed “This is Spinal Tap,” which apes a documentary film style, follows a fictionalized heavy metal band as it blunders its way through one career misstep after another. Most notably, in one scene the band unveils a stage prop modeled on Stonehenge during a concert, only to find out at that moment their set designer had made the model a mere 18 inches tall.

At the real Stonehenge, Haines and her bandmates approached the actors and managed to catch up with their favorite, Harry Shearer, as he and the others were on their way to a nearby parking lot. Shearer even posed for a picture with the group, which you can see on the blog.

“The best part is, it was Spinal Tap’s first trip to Stonehenge as well,” Haines enthuses. “According to Shearer, they were just making their way back to London when they spotted the source of their most memorable joke in the distance and decided, ‘this would be the time to see the full-scale version.’”

Since its original release in 1984, “This is Spinal Tap” has developed a sizeable cult following and influenced other filmmakers looking to document the ups and downs of life in a rock band.

Watch the Stonehenge scene from the film below.

It’s been more than 15 years since grunge-rock pioneer Kurt Cobain took his own life, but the late Nirvana frontman’s legacy appears to be alive and well.

A Sears-model bass guitar owned by Cobain as a teenager sold for $43,750 at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday.

According to the auction house, Cobain used the instrument on two early demo recordings he made at his aunt Mari Earl’s house near Seattle during his pre-Nirvana days.

The demos, one recorded under the moniker Organized Confusion in 1982 and another in 1985 under the name Fecal Matter, are rare to all but the most die-hard Cobain fans.

But one song entitled “Spank Thru” from the 1985 recordings went on to become a staple of Nirvana’s live set and was featured on several of the band’s releases. The tune also became Nirvana’s first official song, according to former Cobain bandmate Krist Novoselic.

The auctioned-off bass is accompanied by a picture of a young Cobain playing the instrument and a letter of authenticity from Mari Earl.

Cobain was catapulted into international stardom after Nirvana’s major-label debut Nevermind became a huge success on mainstream music charts. The department-store bass stands as a humble contrast to the stable of Fender-brand guitars Cobain came to swear by as the frontman for Nirvana.

(Photo: REUTERS/Lee Celano)

Mel Gibson just released his latest movie. Well, actually, it’s a music video he directed for his pregnant 39-year-old girlfriend, Russian singer/pianist Oksana Grigorieva. 

“Say My Name” is the first video from her upcoming debut album, “Beautiful Heartache,” which will be released through Gibson’s Icon Records label. The clip can be downloaded from her Web site, along with a new track “Flying Upside Down.”

Gibson shot the video in Mexico, opting for black-and-white “to reflect the mourning of something irreplaceable that was lost,” according to Grigorieva. “Its spare nature emphasizes the voice, the piano and its heart.”

“Flying Upside Down,” on the other hand, is an upbeat pop tune, although the lyrical content is also heavy. The song “is about difficult choices we have to make, the path we take and the brave faces we adopt in order to go on,” she said. 

Grigorieva and Gibson started working together in 2008, after Gibson had split from his wife, Robyn. (They are currently in divorce proceedings.) ”She can play,” Gibson, 53, admiringly told Jay Leno last month. “She was trained in Russia. Rachmaninoff, there’s very few people who are man enough for Rachmaninoff.”

So Susan Boyle DIDN’T win “Britain’s Got Talent”. After the show turned her into a household name in more countries than I could list, the 48-year-old came second in Saturday’s final, surprisingly losing out to street dancers Diversity. Now don’t get me wrong. Diversity were impressive, and the choreography was as good as the execution on the night. It’s just that the momentum behind Boyle, one of the biggest Internet stars in history, was so great that it had been widely assumed she would walk off with the cheque for 100,000 pounds and the headlines on Sunday.

It was not to be, but this is unlikely to be the end of the road for Boyle. A lucrative recording contract is surely only days away as labels, notably Simon Cowell’s very own Syco, seek to trade in on her global fame, fine voice and anti-celebrity appeal. Some might feel that losing out to Diversity could be a blessing in disguise for a woman who has struggled to cope with the demands her instant celebrity has brought. She threatened to walk out of the show, had an altercation with journalists and reports said she had to be taken to a “safe house” in the days leading to the final to escape the limelight. Perhaps coming second will give her a little space and time to recover from what judge Cowell rightly called “a weird seven weeks”.