by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
Los Tigres del Norte
YEAR OF THE TIGERS: A day before the world’s top norteño act makes its debut at one of the country’s most prestigious music halls, it was announced that Los Tigres del Norte will be among 2011 recipients of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The San Jose, Calif., based quintet is among 30 recipients of one of Hollywood’s top honors announced June 17 in Los Angeles. The list also includes Spanish actress Penélope Cruz and U.S.-born choreographer Kenny Ortega, the grandson of Spanish immigrants.
Dates or specific locations for the stars were not announced. While Los Tigres may get theirs in 2011, recipients have up to five years to schedule an unveiling ceremony.
Known for their accordion-driven songs that detail the experiences of immigrants in the U.S. as well as for narcocorridos about drug trafficking, Los Tigres del Norte are the first norteño musicians scheduled to perform at Los Angeles Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Los Tigres play the prestigious venue on June 25 as part of the 2010 Global Pop at the Music Center concert series.
During a four-decade career, they have recorded more than 55 albums and topped the Spanish-language charts in the United States and throughout Latin America.
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: Portuguese novelist José Saramago, a writer known both for his complex prose and his staunch Communist political views, has died in his home in the Canary Islands, his publisher said June 18. He was 87.
In 1998 Saramago became the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He was Portugal’s best read contemporary writer, with works translated to some 20 languages. Saramago worked as a journalist for several years before his 1982 novel, Memorial do convento, gained him international fame.
His 1995 novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira was translated to English as Blindness and made into a movie of that name. His last novel, Cain, was published in 2009.
Known also for his blunt manner, Saramago moved to the Spanish Canary Islands after a Portuguese Minister of Culture refused to submit his 1991 novel O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo for the European Literature Prize. The politician objected to the story in which Christ lives with Mary Magdalene and tries to back out of crucifi xion
ONE LINERS: Ernesto Arturo Martínez, an emeri-tus professor and alumnus of California State Univer-sity, Fresno and renowned as a patriarch of Mexican folkloric dancing in the United States, died June 3 at his Fresno home; he was 71…
Puerto Rican urban group Calle 13 wraps up a tour of Spain with that country’s hip-hop artist La Mala, with a June 22 concert in Gijón… Jennifer López and Marc Anthony received the Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis Arts & Hu-manitarian Award, given to a couple who share “a rarified command of their craft (and) a deep commit-ment to their community,” in a June 14 ceremony at the historic venue in New York’s Harlem district..Hispanic Link.
