CURRENT MISSION

Running with the goats

ABOUT ME

I was raised in beautiful New York City in a very international family - between all the re-marriages, I have family from the U.S, Brazil, South Africa, France, and Russia.

Like many people here, traveling is food for my soul - my parents took me around the globe as a child and I've never been able to stop since. Recently, I had the experience of winning a research grant that allowed me to travel across Latin America for a year researching Afro-Latino music, from the Carribean to the Andes to the Amazon and everywhere else. Mandolin in hand, I played music with bands around the continent. Music really is, as the cliche goes, a universal language.

It was delicious, and I'll be happy if that trip was the best thing I ever do in my life.

Nowadays, I do a lot of things related to Latin American arts and culture, but I'm mostly working with PRI's Afropop Worlwide, a public-radio show in the US that explores the history of music from Africa and the African diaspora. Its a great way to get the message of the musicians I work with out into the world.

I'm a musician and music is everything to me - all kinds, all shapes, all sizes - as long as it has the funk, so to speak. I play the bass and piano and compose, sometimes for film.

Nothing is better in life than a bottle of wine and long and meaningful conversations with interesting strangers.

I can hold my own at any given dance party (ser gringo no significa que tengo cadera de piedra, viste!).
I am a vegetarian. Have been for life.

PHILOSOPHY

The world never ceases to be beautiful. Life is a gift, and as easy as it is sometimes to forget that, keep your vision straight as we hurdle on through space and time. Happiness is a personal choice.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I just discovered Couch Surfing after living a very Couch-Surfing-esque life for a year - and I beleive this project to be bringing out the best in the global human community - we are more than ever making connections, and thats a wonderful thing.

I am interested, in the short-term of finding interesting people to stay with in my travels, and hope to give back and host once I have a place of my own here in New York (I live with my parents).

While traveling, I really survived off the kindness of random strangers who have taken me into their homes, and I try to remember this every time I see somebody lost or lonely in vast New York City.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None, yet.

Interests

I like...

-tango
-block parties
-vintage synthesizers
-urban bicycle riding
-mastering spanish dialects
-Brazil. Everything about it.
-the stars
-Indian food
-riding in pick-up trucks
-the beach at night
-snowball fights
-obsessively collecting musical instruments.
-Afro-syncretic religion
-Film Noire

• arts
• culture
• dancing
• tango
• dining
• wine
• indian food
• vegetarian
• running
• partying
• traveling
• music
• piano
• surfing
• dialects
• history
• religion
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

Movie: The Fifth Element, City of God, Pan's Labyrinth
Music: Stevie Wonder, La Fania, Pink Floyd, Coltrane and Brahms.
Books: Keruac, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Borges, Richard Brautigan

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- Danced badly on Honduran television.
- Surived a fiesta de palo in Villa Mella, Dominican Republic.
- Lived with a Garifuna pop star.
- Conducted an orchestra.
- Got stuck in a landslide in a remote Andean border crossing.
- Las Llamadas in Montevideo's Carnival
- Camped in Parque Lencois, Maranhao, Brazil