Andes

The Andes are the longest continental mountain range in the world. They are a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about 7,000 km (4,300 mi) long, about 200 to 700 km (120 to 430 mi) wide (widest between 18° south and 20° south latitude), and of an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, which are separated by intermediate depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaux – some of which host major cities, such as Quito, Bogotá, Arequipa, Medellín, Sucre, Mérida and La Paz. The Altiplano plateau is the world's second-highest after the Tibetan plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate: the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet Andes.

The Andes are the world's highest mountain range outside of Asia. The highest mountain outside Asia, Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorean Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).

Andean music

Andean music is a group of styles of music from the Andes region in South America.

Original chants and melodies come from the general area inhabited by Quechuas, Aymaras and other peoples who lived roughly in the area of the Inca Empire prior to European contact. This early music then was fused with Spanish music elements. It includes folklore music of parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. Andean music is popular to different degrees across Latin America, having its core public in rural areas and among indigenous populations. The Nueva Canción movement of the 70s revived the genre across Latin America and brought it to places where it was unknown or forgotten.

Instruments

The panpipes group include the sikú (or zampoña) and antara. These are ancient indigenous instruments that vary in size, tuning and style. Instruments in this group are constructed from aquatic reeds found in many lakes in the Andean Region of South America. The sikú has two rows of canes and are tuned in either pentatonic or diatonic scales. Some modern single-rowed panpipes modeled after the native Antara are capable of playing full scales, while traditional Sikús are played using two rows of canes wrapped together. It is still commonplace for two performers to share a melody while playing the larger style of sikú called the toyo. This style of voicing interspersed notes between two musicians is called playing in hocket and is still in use today in many of the huaynos traditional songs and contemporary Andean music.

The Naked and Famous

The Naked and Famous are an indie electronic band from Auckland, New Zealand. They formed in 2007 when Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith were working on what became the EPs This Machine and No Light that they recorded with engineer Aaron Short, a fellow student at Auckland's MAINZ music college. The band took their name from the English artist Tricky's song "Tricky Kid", which is ambivalent about the notion of celebrity. In the song, Tricky quotes the line "everybody wants to be naked and famous", from The Presidents of the United States of America's song "Naked and Famous".

The EPs were subsequently released on local independent label Round Trip Mars and Powers and Xayalith began performing live with Ben Knapp and Jordan Clark on bass and drums respectively. Aaron Short became a performing member of the group. Knapp and Clark left the group and Jesse Wood (drums) and David Beadle (bass) joined the band as full-time members in 2009. The group have released two studio albums Passive Me, Aggressive You (2010) and In Rolling Waves (2013). Since 2012, the band has been based in Los Angeles, California, US.

The Naked (band)

The Naked was a Danish indie-rock band that existed from the end of the 1980s and disbanded in 1999. The band started out under the name Naked Lunch, later shortening the name to Naked, and finally to The Naked.

The band was formed by Kasper Andersen (vocal, guitar) and Jacob Als Thomsen (guitar), who met in high school in the mid-eighties. Andersen started out as drummer, but switched to guitar after Thomsen left temporarily to study abroad. At this time guitarist Anders Reuss and bass player Søren Rohde had joined. The band rehearsed with a drum machine until Emil Landgreen joined the band as a drummer in the summer of 1990, coinciding with the return of Thomsen. This line-up started playing regularly on the Copenhagen underground scene from late 1990. At the time of the band's first album, Søren Rohde had left to be replaced by Andreas Koch on bass. During the recording Landgreen left to join Speaker Bite Me and was replaced by Rene Thorny. Astrid Bruun Johansen joined on viola after the second album.

Grand Prix

Grand Prix (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁɑ̃pʁi], meaning Grand Prize; plural Grands Prix) may refer to:

Sports competitions