Aurelia Butler

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    Ella Jenkins, Musician Who Found an Audience in Children, Dies at 100

    Performing and recording, she transformed what was seen as a marginal genre in the music industry into a celebration of shared humanity. Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal and moralistic genre into a celebration of a diverse yet common humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song,” died on Saturday in Chicago. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by John Smith, associate director at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.Ms. Jenkins had no formal musical training, but she had an innate sense of rhythm. “I was always humming or singing and la-la, lu-lu or something,” she once said.She absorbed the everyday melodies of her childhood — the playground clapping games, the high school sports chants, the calls of a sidewalk watermelon vendor hawking his produce. As an adult, she paired such singsong rhythms with original compositions and sought not simply to amuse or distract children but to teach them to respect themselves and others.Against the sound of a kazoo, a harmonica, a variety of hand drums or, later, a baritone ukulele, Ms. Jenkins sang subtly instructive lyrics, as in “A Neighborhood Is a Friendly Place,” a song she wrote in 1976:You can say hiTo friends passing byA neighborhood is a friendly place.You can say helloTo people that you knowA neighborhood is a friendly place.Neighbors to learn to shareNeighbors learn to careA neighborhood is a friendly place.Over children’s steady clapping, she recorded the age-old “A Sailor Went to Sea”:A sailor went to sea, sea, seaTo see what he could see, see, seeAnd all that he could see, see, seeWas down in the bottom of the sea, sea, sea.For many parents and classroom teachers, Ms. Jenkins’s renditions of traditional nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” are authoritative.Still, from the beginning of her career in the 1950s, Ms. Jenkins pronounced her signature to be call-and-response, in which she asked her charges to participate directly in the music-making, granting them an equal responsibility in a song’s success. She had seen Cab Calloway employ the technique in “Hi-De-Ho,” and for her, the animating idea, veiled in a playful to-and-fro, was that everything good in the world was born of collaboration.In one of her most popular recordings, Ms. Jenkins sings out, “Did you feed my cow?” “Yes, ma’am!” a group of children trumpet back. The song continues:Could you tell me how?Yes, ma’am!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!What did you feed her?Corn and hay!As Ms. Jenkins repopularized time-honored children’s songs, she also gave the genre global scope. Before Ms. Jenkins, children’s music in the United States consisted primarily of simplified, often cartoonish renditions of classical music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Freddy Kreuger and 40 Years of Nightmares

    With the release of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” 40 years ago, the horror villain Freddy Krueger clawed his way to becoming a pop culture phenomenon.When “A Nightmare on Elm Street” hit theaters 40 years ago this month, few would have predicted a pop culture phenomenon in the making. Yet it would become one of 1984’s most profitable pictures and spur a lucrative franchise.The success of the series was due primarily to two factors. The first was the thoughtful approach Wes Craven, a humanities professor-turned-filmmaker, took to the material, drawing inspiration from the terrifying stories of Southeast Asian refugees in America who died in their sleep under mysterious circumstances in the 1980s. He fused those stories with the contemporaneous satanic panic and accusations of widespread child molestation to create the character of Fred Krueger, a high-school janitor accused of sexually abusing several children in the small town of Springwood, Ohio. After the man was freed on a technicality, the parents of Springwood took the law into their own hands, burning Krueger alive. A decade later, the undead Freddy haunts the nightmares of Springwood’s teens, murdering them in their dreams.“Nightmare” is a film of genuine fear, dread and menace in which Craven effectively contrasts the pure Americana of the daytime sequences — picturesque houses, tree-lined streets, chirping birds — with the darkness of Freddy’s gruesome deeds. He’s tapping into universal fears, beyond even those of his slasher-movie brethren; not all of us have been stalked by a masked killer while babysitting or fooling around with a fellow camp counselor, but we all sleep, and dream and have nightmares.The second key to the success of the “Nightmare” films was Robert Englund, the classically trained actor who played Krueger — referred to as Fred in the original film, but by the cuddlier Freddy as the series continued. Each installment brought in new protagonists, new actors, new writers and new directors, who fleshed out the character (pardon the pun) with new dimensions and a broadened back story. He would evolve — if that’s the proper description — from the menacing, murderous abuser of the initial entry to a rakish antihero. By the fourth film, he was like an Arnold Schwarzenegger character of the era, spouting groan-inducing quips at his victims (“No pain, no gain!” he would taunt a weight lifter he was torturing) in films that were as silly as they were scary.Robert Englund in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”New Line CinemaFreddy was a ubiquitous pop culture presence. He was mentioned in speeches by President Ronald Reagan, featured in pop songs, video games and a “Freddy’s Nightmares” anthology television series, and feverishly merchandised in products including children’s toys and pajamas, odd branding for a character accused of being a pedophile. Englund was among the last names in the credits for the first film; by the fourth, he was billed above the title. As the series progressed, the actor would contemplate the social implications of the character. “It’s a warning of the future,” he told Newsday in 1989. “It’s a fable. It’s the Ballad of Freddy Krueger. I am the ghost story of the late ’80s.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

    Mr. Todd’s decades-long career spanned across mediums and genres, but he was largely associated with a scary figure summoned in front of a mirror.Tony Todd, a prolific actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included “Candyman” and “Final Destination,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Saturday morning. He did not specify the cause.Mr. Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Crow,” “The Rock” and Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie, “Platoon.” His television credits include “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “24,” “The X-Files,” and many other shows. He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie “Candyman,” He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a Black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror — unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him. “If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”Mr. Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele.In the “Final Destination” franchise, Mr. Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth — the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Most Anticipated New Movie Releases in Winter 2024

    From life stories (“A Complete Unknown,” “The Fire Inside”) to animated tales (“Moana 2,” “Mufasa”), these are the films we can’t wait to see this season.November‘EMILIA PÉREZ’ Four actresses — Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz — shared a prize at Cannes for their performances in this unlikeliest of musicals, about the friendship between a Mexican cartel kingpin (Gascón) and a lawyer (Saldaña) hired to arrange the kingpin’s gender transition. Jacques Audiard directed. (Nov. 13; Netflix)‘HOT FROSTY’ Remember “Mannequin”? This sounds kind of like that, except instead of a mannequin coming to life, it’s a snowman (Dustin Milligan), and instead of Andrew McCarthy, it has Lacey Chabert. (Nov. 13; Netflix)‘ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT’ This film from Payal Kapadia was the first Indian feature to compete at Cannes in 30 years; it won the Grand Jury Prize, effectively second place. It concerns two women (Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha) in Mumbai. One has a husband living abroad; the other is navigating an interfaith relationship that she strives to keep quiet. (Nov. 15; in theaters)Karla Sofía Gascón, left, is the title drug kingpin and Zoe Saldaña is the lawyer helping arrange her client’s gender transition.Netflix‘ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE’ The rocket man himself recalls how he soared to stardom in this documentary, shot during preparations for his 2022 appearances at Dodger Stadium, purportedly his final North American concerts. (Nov. 15 in theaters, Dec. 13 on Disney+)‘GHOST CAT ANZU’ Anzu is a big, fluffy, animated talking cat whose antics give Garfield a run for his money in this anime favorite from the festival circuit. (Nov. 15; in theaters)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Dwight Yoakam, Country Rebel, Has a New Attitude

    With the sun setting over the vast expanse of Los Angeles, Dwight Yoakam sighed softly as tears rolled down his cheeks. For a moment, the scene played like one of his own portraits of honky-tonk heartache and regret. But sitting in the country star’s 12th-story offices above the Sunset Strip, it became clear that the emotion gripping him was not sadness, but joy.Forty years ago this month, Yoakam arrived with his debut, the indie EP “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.” The record — later expanded to a full-length — helped shake country music from its mid-1980s doldrums while starting a career filled with more than a dozen Top 10 radio hits and six platinum albums, even as Yoakam took a rebel stance, operating largely outside the Nashville establishment.At 68, as he prepares to release his 18th studio album, and his first on his own label, the ambitious Yoakam has found meaning in something other than his career: his wife, the photographer Emily Joyce, whom he quietly married during the pandemic, and their 4-year-old son, Dalton.“I’ve known the two of them since before I ever met them,” Yoakam said, drying his eyes. “Not to get overly metaphysical, but our connection in the universe, to one another, precedes us and will continue beyond us.”Dwight Yoakam at the Rainbow Room in Los Angeles. He has called the city home since the late 1970s.Wray Sinclair for The New York TimesThe vibe shift is evident on “Brighter Days,” (out Nov. 15), his first album of original material in nearly a decade, where Yoakam’s music takes on a sun-dappled optimism. It features a twangy, pedal-steel-laden track with Post Malone, a fan turned friend and collaborator who likewise made his name outside of country’s embrace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Book Review: ‘Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music,’ by Rob Sheffield

    HEARTBREAK IS THE NATIONAL ANTHEM: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music, by Rob SheffieldIt’s possible that I know too much about Taylor Swift. I know the words to all her singles and every name on her long list of ex-lovers. Thanks to her current relationship with Travis Kelce, I know details about the various social entanglements of his Kansas City Chiefs teammates that I would prefer not to. I listen to her music about as much as the median American, which is to say: all of the time. Swift has become America’s Muzak, her songs the soundtrack to our Starbucks lines and her life the fodder for our tabloid stories.In “Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music,” Rob Sheffield charts how Swift, who rose to fame writing songs for teenage girls (when she was still one herself), became ubiquitous — and he makes the case that even as her cultural dominance can work to obscure her skill, everything always leads back to her virtuosic writing.Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he publishes consistently glowing reviews of Swift’s seemingly limitless offerings. Here he steps back to consider the roots of her appeal. Swift has “always had a unique flair for writing songs in which people hear themselves — her music keeps crossing generational and cultural boundaries, in ways that are often mystifying,” he writes. She makes her “experiences public property, to the point where she makes the world think of her as a character.”Swift’s self-mythologizing stretches beyond her music to become a collaborative storytelling prompt, one that manages to absorb even her critics. As her superfans brand themselves as “Swifties” and build an extended Taylorverse of analysis and intrigue on social media, they recruit her haters into their project, using them to cast their billionaire idol as a complex and scrappy protagonist.A character becomes more interesting when she has challengers and flaws. “Taylor’s hubris, her way-too-muchness, her narcissism disguised as even more narcissism, her inability to Not Be Taylor for a microsecond — it’s a lot,” Sheffield writes. “You can’t fully appreciate her without appreciating the wide range of visceral reactions she brings out in people.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    $7 Million Deal Is Reached for Upper West Side Movie Theater, Nonprofit Says

    A nonprofit group says it has reached an agreement to buy the shuttered Metro Theater from its owners, but the deal is contingent on raising the money by the end of the year.A group trying to restore a landmark Upper West Side movie theater says it has signed an agreement to buy the building for $7 million if it can raise the money by the end of the year.The nonprofit corporation Upper West Side Cinema Center said on Friday it had reached the agreement with the current owners of the Metro Theater, which is on Broadway near 99th Street and closed in 2005. The building, known for its pink terra-cotta Art Deco facade, is owned by the estate of its former owner, Albert Bialek, who died last year. The owners could not immediately be reached for comment.Attempts in recent years to reimagine the space as a Planet Fitness gym or Alamo Drafthouse cinema were unsuccessful, and development options are limited because of the theater’s landmark status and because Bialek sold the air rights above the building. The nonprofit is spearheaded by Ira Deutchman, an independent film producer, and Adeline Monzier, the U.S. representative of the French film promoter Unifrance and a guest programmer at the Metrograph, a Lower East Side theater.Deutchman said that there was already funding pledged to cover about one-third of the sale price. The nonprofit is hoping to raise the rest with a mix of philanthropic support from major donors, government financing and individual contributions from current and former Upper West Side residents who may be nostalgic about the theater’s golden days, he said.If the nonprofit is successful in securing the money to cover the sale price, the next step would be to raise an additional, estimated $15 million to $25 million for its restoration.“I’d never worked on a project before where every single person I tell about it, their response is, ‘Oh, that is so needed,’” Deutchman said. “My joke is that they’ve never said that about a movie I’ve made.” More

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    St. Thomas Church Will Outsource Choir School in Bid to Save It

    The Manhattan church said it would turn over administration of its boarding school for choristers, one of only a few of its kind remaining, because of financial woes.St. Thomas Church in Manhattan, which has been grappling with serious financial problems in recent years, said on Friday that it would outsource the administration of its renowned boarding school for choristers in a bid to preserve the 105-year-old program.Starting in 2025, the Professional Children’s School, an independent day school in New York, will manage St. Thomas Choir School’s academic program. St. Thomas, an Episcopal church, will continue to provide housing for the school’s 26 students, as well as offering music and religious instruction. Some of the school’s 24 faculty and staff members are expected to lose their jobs, the church’s leaders said.The Rev. Canon Carl F. Turner, the church’s rector, said, “We’ve found a way to preserve our school in a different form through collaboration, which will not only deepen the music making but also help us make it more sustainable financially.”St. Thomas Choir School has had financial problems for decades, balancing its budget with the help of donations and bequests, and by dipping into investment funds. Tuition, at $20,570 per year, is heavily subsidized, and many students receive scholarships.St. Thomas’s leaders warned earlier this year that the church was considering closing the choir school, one of only a few remaining boarding schools for young choristers in the world. The church said at the time that its endowment, annual fund-raising and tuition fees were no longer sufficient to cover the roughly $4 million a year it costs to operate the school, about 30 percent of the church’s $14 million annual budget.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More