Artist(s): Raúl Cordero
Date: January 1, 1997
Mambo in Miami (1997) by Raúl Cordero is a music video that overlaps a Miami soundscape onto a Havana landscape. Shot spontaneously from a remote building, Cordero matched a woman’s walk through José Martí Park in Havana to the song “Mambo in Miami” by Cal Tjader. Cordero concurrently listened to the song and used solely the recording/stop button on his digital camera to synchronize the cuts in the moving image to the woman’s pace.
Mambo in Miami thus converges sound and image. In the process of doing so, the work fosters a simultaneity between Havana and Miami, two cities culturally interlinked mainly by the emigrant population of the former finding a home in the latter. Cordero’s work seems to express that as life goes in Miami, so too does it in Havana.
Mambo in Miami was presented in the exhibition Vistas Nuevas: Recent Video from Cuba at The Kitchen in 2000.