/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-ARGENTINA: Preserving Andean Folk Traditions

An original new course of studies has been created in northwestern Argentina to preserve traditional Andean music by training ''socio-musical promoters'' who will go out into local communities with the aim of strengthening native cultural identities.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CHINA: Heroic Blockbuster Takes on Hollywood

In their ambitions to fend off cultural imperialism, Beijing's mandarins have done them all - challenged Disney characters by creating homegrown cartoon heroes, and made a pilgrimage to the theatre mecca of Broadway to seek inspiration for Chinese musicals.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-COLOMBIA: Carnivals to Exorcise Tragedies

Millions of Colombians this month are exorcising the often violent drama of their daily lives in more than a hundred local festivals, the most notable being the carnivals of the 'Diablo' (Devil) and of the 'Blancos y Negros' (Whites and Blacks).

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-UGANDA/: The Power of the Pen

Goretti Kyomuhendo, 37, discovered she could write after her first attempt to get an article published in a local newspaper. She had submitted a creative piece, which she was not sure would get published. That was in 1994.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: ‘Cyborg’ Professor Predicts Future without Identity

Steve Mann has been a part of technology - and technology has been a part of him - for so long that he cannot remember when he did not have some kind of electric device attached to his body.

/ARTS WEEKLY/JAPAN: Museums Battle Recession, Pop Culture

It is not just bankers and chief executive officers who are worried by Japan's long recession. Artists, curators, art critics and academics are alarmed too - the government's desperate efforts to boost the economy have pushed culture and the arts way down the agenda, they say, and it is hurting.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ART: An Africa Regained in London

Ghanaian sculptor Al Anatsui has become one of Africa's foremost artists over his long career. A visit to London's October Gallery that is currently hosting an exhibition of his most recent work shows why.

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-KENYA: Poet Plays Her Own Drum

For Kenya's 'Queen of Poetry', Caroline Nderitu, the introduction of free primary education could not have come at a better time - just as she is launching her second collection of poems, 'Play Your Drum'.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC: Montañez, Cuba’s First 21st Century Legend

Virtually overnight, Polo Montañez became Cuba's most popular musician, and he has just as quickly been converted into the country's first great legendary figure of the 21st century since his death in late November of injuries caused by a car crash.

/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE: China’s New Female Voices Move Readers

Two utterly different female voices of China have come to fascinate worldwide publishers in recent months, giving rise to yet another round of enchantment with the exoticism of China's multiple faces.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-CHILE: Documentary to Stir Memories of Allende

Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán is beginning work on a documentary about the former president Salvador Allende (1970-1973) nearly 30 years after the leftist leader's death in during the coup d'état led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-SIERRA LEONE: South African Reggae Star Thrills Fans

South African-born reggae sensation Lucky Dube thrilled thousands of his fans at the National Stadium in the capital, Freetown, in a yearend concert dubbed ''Smile Sierra Leone''.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: Meet the Vietcong – Romantic, Poetic, Human

Vietcong soldiers are romantic, poetic, jovial. You may not see this in Hollywood movies on the Vietnam War, but a new film, 'Song of the Stork', gives you an alternative peek into a conflict that has been the subject of many movies in the last 25 years.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-CANADA: ‘Bog People’ Display Provokes Protest

Some art experts are protesting a travelling exhibition of items found in the peat bogs of northwestern Europe because it includes the mummified remains of people, some of them killed violently.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MEXICO: Battle on for Return of Moctezuma’s Crown

The campaign to demand that Austria return the headdress of Aztec emperor Moctezuma will continue, despite the European country's repeated refusal to do so, pledge Mexican cultural authorities and indigenous groups.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-VENEZUELA: A Rockin’ Philharmonic

The Venezuelan Philharmonic Orchestra recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with an unprecedented concert series that put its 60 symphony musicians on stage with two alternative rock bands.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-INDIA: Voluntary Movement Keeps Performing Arts Alive

It was a moving 'dhrupad' (classical singing) performance by the famous Dagar brothers back in the seventies that fired Kiran Seth, then an engineering student at Columbia University, into forming a movement to ensure that India's rich tradition in classical music did not die unsung.

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-INDIA: Voluntary Movement Keeps Performing Arts Alive

It was a moving 'dhrupad' (classical singing) performance by the famous Dagar brothers back in the seventies that fired Kiran Seth, then an engineering student at Columbia University, into forming a movement to ensure that India's rich tradition in classical music did not die unsung.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-VENEZUELA: A Rockin’ Philharmonic

The Venezuelan Philharmonic Orchestra recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with an unprecedented concert series that put its 60 symphony musicians on stage with two alternative rock bands.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MEXICO: Battle on for Return of Moctezuma’s Crown

The campaign to demand that Austria return the headdress of Aztec emperor Moctezuma will continue, despite the European country's repeated refusal to do so, pledge Mexican cultural authorities and indigenous groups.

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-PERU: Simon Bolivar as Othello of the Americas

South American liberator Simón Bolívar, who fought to free Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela from the Spanish colonial oppression, is the jealous "Othello" in a bold staging of the William Shakespeare classic by the Catholic University of Lima.