In The Heights, a new musical about New York's Washington Heights, is already earning comparisons to West Side Story and Rent.

Written by and starring 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, In The Heights flips hip hop, merengue and salsa to portray life in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Home to Dominicans, some Puerto Ricans and a few Cubans, the real-life Heights is rarely portrayed as a nice place to visit, let alone a good place to live. Not so in this version.

Miranda first wrote In The Heights as a love triangle while attending Wesleyan University. Seven years later, he retooled the play to focus on three generations: a bodega owner named Usnavi, his grandmother, "Abuelita Claudia", Daniela and Vanessa who work in a beauty salon, and Nina, a college student at Stanford returning home to visit her parents.

The award-winning musical has earned glowing coverage for its blend of traditional Broadway and accessible hip hop – Miranda cites the early '90s rap of The Pharcyde and Black Sheep as influences. But not all reviewers have been convinced by a vision of Washington Heights which one critic likened to "Sesame Street without the puppets." Variety slammed the musical for pushing an "idealized fairy-tale world" free of crime and poverty, prompting Miranda to respond in a YouTube rap:

Some say I got the 'hood sanitized
they only scandalize
they ain't never seen Hispanic guys
without smacking their wives
or packin' knives
or having real lives
I went online just to analyze
the rate of crime up in Washington Heights, yo
the crime rate is twice as high on the upper East Side
Yeah, that shit was astounding to me
I ain't seen no slangin' or bangin' in Woody Allen movies

After a successful run off-Broadway, In The Heights will make its Broadway debut in February of 2008.

recommended listening:
myspace.com/ intheheightsthemusical

(image by Señor Codo via flickr)

The hottest Mexican music today isn't even from México – not really. Duranguense ("doo-ron-ghen-say") may be named after the Mexican state of Durango, but it originated in the city of Chicago, in the American state of Illinois.

Popularized by artists like Móntez de Durango, Diana Reyes, Alacranes Musical, Ponzoña Musical, Los Horoscopos de Durango and K-Paz De La Sierra, duranguense is a stripped-down, electronic take on Banda, the horn-heavy traditional Mexican music most Americans associate with burritos and car washes. Substituting tubas and clarinets with keyboards and vocoders, duranguense bangers often exceed 150 beats per minute, driven by a thumping kick and frenetic, syncopated snare rolls or tamborazos. Many acts feature MCs and dancers to drive the audience into a dancing frenzy during live performances.

And what a dance it is. From the waist down, the pasito duranguense looks like many a traditional Mexican dance but a very different party is happening upstairs. Shoulders and elbows lock, pop and roll. Couples dance in tandem but not always arm in arm. It's a subtly forward style that extends off the dance floor where the emphasis falls on accessories like airbrushed cowboy hats and oversized belt buckles.

Like hip hop before it, duranguense is all about the remix. Most tracks are covers of well-known regional Mexican hits and even of straight-up pop like the Diana Reyes cover of Angels by Robbie Williams, Los Horoscopos de Durango updating Pandora's 1985 hit ¿Cómo te va? or Ponzoña Musical's take on "La Loca," originally a mid-70's hit for the Spanish answer to ABBA, Mocedades.

By now, Duranguense has made its way back to México, where it's both hot and hated but its future remains in the hands of Americans who know there's no going back.