World-Class Latin Culture & Global Roots
25th Flamenco Festival 2026 is a New York Love Story
This special 25th Anniversary Flamenco Festival New York explores how New York City changed flamenco from a dance done at home and in bars, to a music and dance performed on the world’s greatest stages. The main stage is New York City Center.
Flamenco Guitar Tribute to Sabicas for the World Music Institute at The Town Hall
Ángeles Toledano Rising Star for Robert Browning Associates at Roulette
New York Latin Culture Brings the World Together
FIFA World Cup 2026 Draw Sets Up Soccer Matches in the USA, Mexico, and Canada
Latin Culture & Global Roots
America is the greatest mix of Indigenous, European, African, and Asian peoples and cultures on Earth. God Bless America from the Arctic to the Land of Fire!
Indigenous American 🪶
African Roots 🇦🇴 🇧🇯 🇨🇲 🇨🇬 🇨🇩 🇨🇮 🇬🇶 🇬🇦 🇬🇲 🇬🇭 🇬🇼 🇱🇷 🇲🇿 🇳🇬 🇸🇳 🇸🇱 🇹🇬
Asian Roots 🇮🇱 🇱🇧 🇸🇦 ~ 🇮🇳 ~ 🇨🇳 🇮🇩 🇯🇵 🇵🇭
Iroko “Kíko” Keith Widyolar
Founder, Editor, Cacique, Mayimbe, Oba, Payaso, Whatever
¿KLK? I’m a 20-year New Yorker who lives, loves, and works in the Latin world. I’m American, but my Afro-Indigenous Dominican Taína wife and children don’t speak English.
I build brands and businesses, but my life’s purpose is to bring people together through culture. Maferefún Eleguá.
I’ve been looking for the roots of Latin culture since 2006. They reach around the world, but the literal root has been on my dinner plate the entire time. It’s the yuca.
Raw yuca root is poisonous. Indigenous Amazonians developed the technology to make it safe to eat.
Taíno brought it to the Caribbean because it’s nutritious and didn’t spoil on long sea voyages.
On the islands, Taíno developed advanced farming techniques and mass-produced casabe flatbread. Yuca was so important, they named the great father Yucahú.
In the Caribbean, we still eat boiled yuca with garlic and oil, bitter orange, and sauteed onions for any meal. It’s inexpensive, filling, and delicious.
The Colonizers recognized yuca’s power and took it to Africa and Asia.
In Mother Afrika, it’s called “cassava,” “manioc” (French for the Brazilian Tupi-Guarani word “mandioca”) or “muhogo.” In West Africa it can be used to make fufu.
In the Pacific, yuca is called some version of “tapioca” or “manioka” and has become the main starch of the islands.
In Asia, yuca is often called “tapioca,” or “cassava.” It is used to make sweets, including the tapioca balls in your favorite Taiwanese Boba Tea.
Thailand is now one of the world’s major yuca producers. That’s where I first tasted it as a child.
I had no idea then that those tapioca balls and the boiled yuca I now eat for dinner are the same Amazonian Caribbean super food.
So come with me and Yucahú. Let’s explore New York’s Latin World, el barrio del encanto. ¡Ay bendito!
“E-le-le, le-le-le…” WEPA. ¡Ashé!