To grasp in full this classic work’s complex legacy would allow us to move beyond it, fostering new paths for artists of color.The last live performance I attended before the lockdown last year featured excerpts from Nkeiru Okoye’s gripping 2014 opera “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.” The score takes listeners on a journey through Black musical styles, including spirituals, jazz, blues and gospel.“I am Moses, the liberator,” Harriet proclaims in her final aria, pistol in hand as she urges an exhausted man to continue running toward freedom. “You keep on going or die.”With its themes of survival and deliverance, Okoye’s work would make a fitting grand opening for an opera company’s post-pandemic relaunch. But the American classical music industry has too often chosen familiarity and homogeneity over the liberating power of diverse voices.To help break this inertia, we must confront a work that has left indelible marks on music in this country: Antonin Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. To grasp in full the complex legacy of this classic piece would allow us to move beyond it, fostering new paths for artists of color.In 1893, the year of the symphony’s premiere, Dvorak argued in print that Black musical idioms should form the basis of an American classical style — not an entirely new position, but far from the norm at the time. Some white musicians were so scandalized that they accused reporters of misrepresenting Dvorak’s ideas. Of course, he meant exactly what he said, for he consistently reiterated his views, eventually adding Indigenous American music to his recommendations.Janinah Burnett in the title role of Nkeiru Okoye’s 2014 opera “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.”Richard Termine for The American Opera ProjectDvorak was true to his word in the “New World.” After finishing the symphony, he explained in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that he had studied certain songs from Black traditions until he became “thoroughly imbued with their characteristics” and felt “enabled to make a musical picture in keeping with and partaking of those characteristics.” Musical gestures inspired by these songs pervade the piece, such as the melodic contour of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in the first movement and the second movement’s famous, plaintive Largo theme, which has often been mistaken as a direct quotation of a spiritual — but which actually was only later given words and turned into a spiritual, “Goin’ Home.”Echoing segregationist Jim Crow policies in force at the time, several white critics bent over backward to deny Black influence on the “New World” — despite Dvorak’s own words — as if African origins would preclude the piece’s place in the national musical fabric. Black writers, on the other hand, acknowledged the importance of his advocacy. Richard Greener, a former dean of what is now Howard University School of Law, suggested in 1894 that if Black musicians heeded Dvorak’s recommendations, they would “become greater than the lawgiver” — a clear challenge to the prevailing social order.Composers from a variety of racial backgrounds, including R. Nathaniel Dett, Amy Beach, Henry Gilbert, Florence Price, Dennison Wheelock, John Powell and Nora Holt, followed in Dvorak’s footsteps during the first quarter of the 20th century, writing a cascade of pieces invoking Black or Indigenous folk styles.White writers attacked Black composers like William Dawson for writing under the influence of Black idioms.W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries.White composers frequently earned praise for their music’s engagement with these idioms, which often included direct quotation. A critic for the magazine Musical America wrote, for example, that Powell’s “Rhapsodie Nègre” had a “savage, almost brutal polyphonic climax yielding gradually to a more peaceable slow section reared on a lyrical phrase with Dvorakian loveliness.” But white writers attacked Black composers like Florence Price and William Dawson for using similar approaches.When Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” at Carnegie Hall in 1934, another writer for Musical America wrote that “the influence of Dvorak is strong almost to the point of quotation, and when all is said and done, the Bohemian composer’s symphony, ‘From the New World,’ stands as the best symphony ‘à la Nègre’ written to date.”What was sophisticated and lovely when Powell did it was plagiarism when Dawson did.Dawson responded in The Pittsburgh Courier, a major Black newspaper, to defend his stylistic choices. “Dvorak used Negro idioms,” he said. “That is my language. It is the language of my ancestors, and my misfortune is that I was not born when that great writer came to America in search of material.”Over the decades, the “New World” steadily grew in popularity but never shed the aura of controversy surrounding its connections to Black music. A New York Philharmonic program annotator remarked in 1940 that “Dvorak, in his enthusiasm for Negro music, overlooked the fact that there exists in our diversified population a rich heritage of folk music brought hither by white colonists.” Around the same time, Olin Downes of The New York Times called the origin and inspiration of the symphony “a question for academic argument.”For many Black musicians, though, the “New World” was galvanizing precisely because of its ties to the African diaspora. In June 1940, a little over a year after the release of Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching protest song “Strange Fruit,” Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic premiered Still’s heart-rending “And They Lynched Him on a Tree.” A somber English horn solo early in the piece recalled the famous “New World” Largo, which directly preceded it on the program.A New York Philharmonic program from 1940 included the text for William Grant Still’s “And They Lynched Him on a Tree.”New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital ArchivesAfter Rodzinski discouraged the violinist Everett Lee from auditioning for the Philharmonic because of his race, Lee formed one of the nation’s first racially integrated orchestras, the Cosmopolitan Symphony Society, and became its conductor. During its third season, in 1951, he programmed Dvorak’s Ninth, which he would later direct at engagements around the world in an illustrious career spanning nearly seven decades.At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, in the mid-1960s, a group that included the conductor Benjamin Steinberg and the composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson founded another major integrated orchestra in New York called the Symphony of the New World — an optimistic nod to Dvorak. When Everett Lee returned from Europe to conduct the group in 1966, his program included its namesake, and his favorite: the “New World” Symphony. And the piece has remained a staple in the repertoire of many other prominent Black conductors, including A. Jack Thomas, Rudolph Dunbar, Dean Dixon, Jeri Lynne Johnson, Thomas Wilkins and Michael Morgan.Over the last 50 years, the “New World” has become perhaps the keystone in epochal American orchestral concerts abroad, including the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 tour of China and the New York Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea in 2008. But ensembles have rarely paired it with pieces by living composers of color; instead, Dvorak alone becomes the international spokesman for the whole multiracial American experience.Everett Lee conducted the “New World” at engagements around the world in an illustrious career spanning nearly seven decades.New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital ArchivesThat should change. To start, organizations should reject the uncritical valorization of white composers of the past who appropriated Black or Indigenous musical styles — Dvorak, for example, or George Gershwin — as if programming their work comes at no cost to composers of color, past and present.Like Okoye. Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has its strengths, but unlike it, Okoye’s deeply researched opera offers singers ample opportunity to engage with our national past while being liberated from the burden of embodying distorted stereotypes. Okoye’s evocative “Black Bottom,” premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at its annual Classical Roots celebration last March, is one of the most engrossing musical portraits of Black history in the available repertoire. (The performance was an especially memorable moment for an artist who attributes her decision to continue a career in composition in part to the Detroit orchestra’s tradition of inclusivity.)Beloved and moving, the “New World” Symphony has a secure place on programs well into the future. But Dvorak, and the white composers who followed in his footsteps, should not be the loudest voices speaking on behalf of all Americans.At the Detroit Symphony’s first Classical Roots celebration, in 1978, the conductor Paul Freeman programmed the “New World” alongside music by Hale Smith, William Grant Still and José Maurício Nunes Garcia — a rich musical cross-section of living and historical Black composers from diverse backgrounds. To continue reckoning with Dvorak’s legacy today, Detroit has commissioned a piece by James Lee III that will premiere alongside the “New World” next season. Lee’s work, “Amer’ican,” presents a lavish tapestry of musical images drawn from over six centuries of Indigenous and Black history.Lee said in an interview that he found it “quite gratifying” to join Dvorak in weaving Black and Indigenous musical materials into a work. According to the notes accompanying the piece, it closes with “music representing memories of unbridled freedom and exhilaration.”Lee added that his work had been set alongside Dvorak’s by other orchestras, but that in Detroit he would join a tradition of true creative dialogue between past and present.“Being programmed with the music of Dvorak is nothing new to me,” he said. “But this case is special.”Douglas W. Shadle is an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University and the author of the book “Antonin Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony.” More

“Song to a Refugee,” an inadvertent concept album from the singer and songwriter Diana Jones, strives to center the voices of migrant women.Diana Jones is known as a singer-songwriter of uncommon empathy, an astute observer of the human condition whose heart goes out to those who suffer and are oppressed.Since her 1997 debut, Jones has crafted indelible narratives from the point of view of, among others, a battered woman who contemplates turning a gun on her abuser and of a coal miner trapped underground while writing what would prove to be his last letter to his wife.Released overseas last year, her latest project, “Song to a Refugee” (due Friday), lends compassion to the struggles of immigrants fleeing terror and persecution in their homelands.Produced with David Mansfield, whose uncluttered Neo-Appalachian arrangements deepen the pathos of her lyrics and vocals, Jones’s record is an inadvertent concept album. It evolved rapidly, after a bout of writer’s block, during a flurry of songwriting triggered by the horrors she witnessed in news stories from the United States border with Mexico and beyond.“I was trying to make sense of what was happening, first of all for myself,” Jones, 55, explained. She was speaking by phone from her home in Manhattan’s West Village, describing her response to daily accounts of the treatment of immigrants, most of them people of color.“At the same time, I felt this responsibility to report on what was happening,” she added. “I wanted to boil things down to one small voice because the more personal something is, the harder it is to look away.”Jones, who was adopted at birth and raised on Long Island, N.Y., comes by her empathy naturally. “I was always searching for something, a face or a home, anything to connect with,” she said of her early pursuit of her family of origin. “I was also without a home when I was 15 years old. I never lost sight of what it means to have food to eat and a roof over my head. I have gratitude for physical safety every day.”Her latest project received unexpected early encouragement from someone with a very different background: the actress Emma Thompson. The two women met, coincidentally, in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, where they struck up a conversation about their mutual commitment to human rights. Shortly afterward, Jones wrote “I Wait for You,” a song about a mother from Sudan who seeks asylum in England, hoping to be reunited with her children eventually.“I wanted to boil things down to one small voice because the more personal something is, the harder it is to look away,” Jones said.Erinn Springer for The New York TimesThompson had served on the board of the Helen Bamber Foundation, a British organization originally established to care for Holocaust survivors that now serves victims of human trafficking and other atrocities.“It’s the people to whom we owe nothing, as Helen Bamber said, whose treatment reveals our humanity, our spirit, the quality of our social fabric,” Thompson wrote in an email. “I have an adopted son, a refugee from Rwanda, and what is most important to say about him is that his joining the family made us all immeasurably richer in every way.”The folk singer and activist Peggy Seeger, who appears on the album, said the power of Jones’s album is in its ability to paint vivid portraits. “It’s so easy to discount, when you see so many refugees, the individual story — and these are individual stories,” she said of the 13 songs on the album. “Diana’s record is a relentless hammering home of how we ignore a huge body of people who are living through the results of human cruelty and insanity.”Backed by Mansfield on mandolin and fiddle, the song “Where We Are” is narrated by the older of two brothers who were taken from their parents and detained at the border of the United States and Mexico: “My brother is a baby, he doesn’t understand at all/Freedom, there’s freedom outside the chain-link wall.”“We Believe You,” the album’s centerpiece, was inspired by congressional testimony from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, detailing the dehumanizing conditions she observed at the border.I believe your eyes are tired of cryingand all the reasons you said you came here forI believe you lost your mother and your fatherand there ain’t no sleeping on a concrete floorJones intones this lament in an unadorned alto, her words cradled by the tender filigrees of Richard Thompson’s electric guitar. Steve Earle, Thompson and Seeger take turns singing the stanzas that follow, only to return to bear witness alongside Jones on the song’s final verse and chorus.As Jones explained, “It’s important that we have people in our lives who believe us, especially for traumatized people — people who, in this case, are being demonized or ‘othered’ for wanting a safe haven and, eventually, a home.”Written from the underside of history, “Song to a Refugee” finds Jones steadfastly siding with the oppressed, much in the spirit of Woody Guthrie’s “Dust Bowl Ballads.” One of the most powerful things about the record is how, on tracks like “I Wait for You” and “Mama Hold Your Baby,” the voices of migrant women are centered. Talking about her protagonist in the song “Ask a Woman,” Jones asks, “What must it be like for a mother to have to pick up her baby and start walking to another border, through deserts and with no safety at all?”“Being a refugee,” Thompson wrote, “simply underlines and exacerbates the areas where all women are already challenged — not being heard, not being educated, not being paid, not having power.”Jones wrote and recorded the material for “Song to a Refugee” when President Donald Trump was in office. But the nightmarish realities the album evokes speak as poignantly today.“This is such a big problem that it has to be dealt with in small ways,” Seeger said, referring to the global migration crisis. “But the small ways are not small. This is not a small album.” More

“We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto” is a surprise chart topper and TikTok darling. Here’s how Disney created its biggest smash since “Let It Go.”“A seven-foot frame! Rats along his back!” a curly-haired teenager draped in a cloak lip-syncs for the camera.“I associate him with the sound of falling sand,” a busy mom nods appreciatively, bopping along with a vacuum as she embarks on a kitchen dance break.“I’m sorry, mi vida, go on!” a pair of sisters screech, perilously off-key.“Encanto” cautioned against talking about Bruno, but a whole lot of people are obsessed with a song about him.Since that animated Disney film opened in theaters in November and arrived on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, its playful song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” has steadily grown into an international hit. Unlike most Disney breakouts, “Bruno” is not a wistful hero’s solo or a third-act power ballad. It’s a Broadway-style ensemble track that revels in gossip about a middle-age man.Yet the song recently topped the Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes charts in the United States, reached No. 1 on the global YouTube music videos chart and currently sits at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first original song from a Disney animated film to rank that high since the “Frozen” anthem “Let It Go” in 2014. Other “Encanto” tracks, like “Surface Pressure” and “The Family Madrigal,” are also rising. And this week, the film’s soundtrack bumped Adele’s “30” from the top spot on the Billboard 200.“Bruno” has been bolstered by its popularity on TikTok, where tribute clips from the likes of that cloaked teenager, those screeching sisters and that bopping mom have racked up millions of views.“I could look at the TikToks all day,” one of the “Encanto” directors, Jared Bush, said in an interview. “Everyone is finding a different entry point, whether it’s a specific moment or character dynamic. There’s something in it for everybody and, honestly, it’s just delicious.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.In the movie about a Colombian teenager named Mirabel Madrigal (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) and her supernaturally gifted family, Bruno (John Leguizamo) is a mysterious, outcast uncle whose ability to see the future earns the abject scorn of all those receiving bad news. His family and the townspeople share their colorful, often bitter, anecdotes about his prophecies in the song.Germaine Franco provided the “Encanto” score, while “Bruno” and the rest of the songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who had worked with Disney on the soundtrack of the 2016 film “Moana.” The “Encanto” filmmakers said he had delivered the infectious “Bruno” virtually on command.In spring 2020, the directors Bush and Byron Howard; the co-director Charise Castro Smith; and Tom MacDougall, then head of music at Walt Disney Animation Studios, hopped on one of their weekly video chats with Miranda to brainstorm an ensemble track about Bruno that could provide a jolt of energy midfilm.“We could see Lin thinking, and he looked at us and said, ‘It feels like a spooky ghost story, like a spooky montuno,’” Howard said, referring to a Cuban musical pattern. “And he turns to the piano and plays the first three chords. We literally saw him put it together and compose in that very moment. I’ve never had that happen before.” (Miranda was unavailable for an interview.)The character of Bruno had already evolved during the film’s creation. In an early iteration, he was much younger, someone Mirabel’s age. He was also originally named Oscar, but Bush said a legal snag over the existence of a number of real-life Oscar Madrigals in Colombia, led them to explore other name options. He sent Miranda a list of five alternatives, to which the songwriter replied, “Definitely Bruno.”“I couldn’t figure out why he was so definitive,” Bush said, “until two days later when we heard, ‘Bruno, no, no, no.’”Miranda then recorded a demo track in which he sang all 10 parts. “It was like Lin-Manuel on steroids,” said Adassa, the singer-songwriter who voices Dolores, the Madrigal cousin with exceptional hearing. (That demo has not been released, though a popular Miranda impressionist has taken a stab at what it might sound like.)With only storyboard sketches and Miranda’s audio to guide them, the film’s choreographer, Jamal Sims, and his team spent about two weeks in a Los Angeles studio creating the “Bruno” dance moves for the animators to render digitally. Incorporating elements of cumbia, the Colombian national dance that features African, Indigenous and European influences, along with salsa and rumba, they mapped out every moment of the song and shot a reference video in one take as if part of a live musical. Even Bruno’s rats perform intricate steps. (The animation team would later film the dancers from different camera angles.)“We had to build this all from our imagination,” the assistant choreographer, Kai Martinez, said. “What helped make this piece unique is that we had a group of Latinx dancers from Colombia, from Cuba, from Puerto Rico — people who understood the assignment.” (Clips of their choreography shared by Martinez on TikTok have amassed more than 23 million views.)Martinez, who is a first-generation Colombian American, also served as an animation reference consultant and provided the filmmakers with crucial insights into cultural nuances and mannerisms.“It was bigger than a job,” she said. “Being a Colombian woman, this is the kind of film that I would have wanted to watch when I was a kid.”Meanwhile, because of Covid precautions, the voice actors recorded their parts separately in studios across the United States and Colombia. Rhenzy Feliz sang the shapeshifting cousin Camilo’s lines in a rented space near San Luis Obispo, Calif., and said he channeled “theater kid” energy in his character’s dramatic delivery. Adassa recorded in her home studio in Nashville.“At first my rap was going to be an octave higher,” she said of her whispery bars. “I thought, she’s such an intimate speaker, I’m going to do it an octave lower. And it worked.”Despite its huge popularity, “Bruno” won’t get any Oscar love: The studio submitted only “Dos Oruguitas,” an emotional Spanish ballad performed by Sebastián Yatra, for awards consideration. That song, while not as ubiquitous as “Bruno,” made the academy’s best original song short list last month. Should it go on to take the statuette, it would make history as Disney’s first non-English-language winner.“‘Dos Oruguitas’ was so central to the emotional theme of the movie,” Howard said when asked if they had considered submitting “Bruno.” He added, “It’s probably the most critical bit of musical storytelling in the whole film because it has to do with the history of the family and Mirabel understanding her grandmother.”In fact, betting on “Bruno” would have been a bold strategic departure. You’d need to look as far back as “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to find a Disney Oscar winner with a similar theatrical quirkiness. Since then, when the studio has wowed the academy, it has been overwhelmingly for ballads, including “A Whole New World” (“Aladdin”), “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (“The Lion King”), “Colors of the Wind” (“Pocahontas”), “Let It Go” (“Frozen”) and “Remember Me” (Pixar’s “Coco”), along with the occasional Randy Newman ditty.Besides, multiple submissions could have risked the possibility of splitting votes, and Miranda lacks only an Oscar to achieve the rare career E.G.O.T. This wouldn’t be his first nomination: His “Moana” track, “How Far I’ll Go,” lost to “City of Stars” from “La La Land.” (In addition to his work on “Encanto,” he also directed “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and could potentially land a nomination for that film.)Beyond awards season, the “Encanto” directors said they were open to the possibility of a sequel, stage show or spinoff series. “I would love for there to be continuing stories of these characters because they’re real people to us,” Bush said. “Ninety minutes is not enough time to spend with the Madrigals.”And despite some fans’ theories that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — and the repeated reprimand “Silenzio, Bruno!” in the Pixar film “Luca” — show Disney has an anti-Bruno agenda, the filmmakers insist it isn’t so.“At the end of ‘Encanto,’ Bruno turns out to be a great guy,” Bush said. “So, you know, we’ve resurrected that name. I think Bruno should be proud of that.” More

Member Ashley Roberts shares disappointment that the group have to postpone their tour plans, but notes that it is for the safety and health of their fans amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Mar 19, 2020
AceShowbiz – The Pussycat Dolls have scrapped their reunion tour plans amid growing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.
The group, which was set to hit the road for a series of shows from next month (April 2020), have postponed the concerts to October.
Band member Ashley Roberts announced the news in an Instagram post on Wednesday, March 18, noting she was “sad” and “gutted” to call off the trek.
“Alright Doll lovers… Following the latest government advice we are very sad to announce that we are postponing our upcoming UK and Ireland tour,” she posted. “We’re gutted not to be able to perform next month, but the safety and health of our fans is of course our No.1 priority.”
“That being said… I can’t wait to see y’all in October! We plan to throw down!!”

The group, which also includes Nicole Scherzinger, Kimberly Wyatt, Carmit Bachar and Jessica Sutta, reunited late last year and have already given fans a taste of what to success with a series of TV performances.

You can share this post!

Next article
Tori Spelling Responds to Criticism Over Teaching Daughter ‘Racism’: ‘It’s Not My Intention’

Related Posts More

Instagram

Though he has been busy recording fresh songs at Rockfield Studios in Wales, the lead singer of The Charlatans assures that his band will start to work on new album as soon as they are able to meet up.

Mar 15, 2021
AceShowbiz – Tim Burgess is holed up in a studio in Wales during lockdown, recording a new solo album.
The 53-year-old singer has been busy during the COVID-19 lockdown hosting #TimsTwitterListeningParty nights, which has seen music stars such as Sir Paul McCartney, Iron Maiden, Liam Gallagher and Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp all answer fans’ questions on the social media site during listen-alongs of their albums.
But Tim is not just content with being a social media sensation and has been busy penning tracks for another LP and he has been busy recording his fresh songs at Rockfield Studios in Wales.
Spilling on his new project on the “Rockonteurs” podcast, he said, “I’ve been at Rockfield in Wales, all wearing masks and that. I’m doing a solo record. I’m with two others, they’re both engineers and producers. One is more electronic and the other one plays drums, it’s a nice combination.”

  See also…

“I’ve got quite a lot of songs. I do them all on voice memos really, on my phone. Sometimes I’ll use a drum beat from a YouTube tutorial just to keep me in time. I just write at home and try and do it every day and see what comes out really.”
But Tim has assured fans of The Charlatans that they are not done and says as soon as lockdown measures are lifted they will all meet up and start work on another album, their first since 2017’s “Different Days”.
Admitting he wanted to keep busy on a solo project before the “One To Another” band get together again, he said, “The Charlatans is a completely different thing. We all get together and bring things, unfinished things, together and see if it kind of works. With my stuff I write the songs, and then try and work out the best way for people to be able to listen to them.”
“In this situation [COVID] it’s easier than saving them than waiting for the band.”
“The band will meet very quickly, as soon as lockdown is over. I think we’ve always tried to be open with what The Charlatans can sound like, what would be amazing would be to all find out together; the audience to find out what kind of sound we’re going to make, the band to find out what kind of sound we’re going to make. We don’t know and that’s the good thing.”

You can share this post!

Next article
Chrissy Teigen Presses on With Important Zoom Call While Being Examined at Doctor’s Office

Related Posts More