I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and over the past few decades I've been amazed at the ways in which this city has grown, changed, and matured, making it one of the most exciting global cities in the world. I don't want to age myself, but music choices back then were limited to classical, pop, and jazz, maybe a bit of folk and blues. African music was acoustic and recorded in the village; Brazilian music didn't exist here except for Stan Getz and The Girl from Ipanema. We had some tiki/cocktail brew from Les Baxter and Martin Denny, enjoyed Olvera Street, Chinatown and Little Tokyo, but that was about it.

Nowadays Los Angeles is an amazingly multicultural city, home to over three hundred languages. Huge influxes of Asians, Central Americans, Armenians, and Latinos have changed the way our city sees and hears music. The Thai restaurant music scene on Hollywood Boulevard near Western Avenue, for example, presents Thai Elvis and Madonna impersonators; the Carousel Restaurant in Glendale serves up Lebanese disco on Saturday nights, and the Brazilian strip along Venice Boulevard offers a myriad of tropical Latin clubs for the growing mambo and salsa crowd.

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