Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Sinners’ and Beyoncé Battle the Vampires. And the Gatekeepers, Too.

    This moment might call for excessive, imaginative Black art that wants to be gobbled up. That’s Ryan Coogler’s new movie. That’s “Cowboy Carter.” Let’s throw in some Kendrick, too.When Beyoncé wails, in the opening moments of her “Cowboy Carter” album, that “them big ideas are buried here,” I’ve imagined “big” standing in for “racist” but have never hit pause to wonder about the GPS coordinates. That song’s called “Ameriican Requiem,” so the cemetery is everywhere. And yet partway through Ryan Coogler’s hit “Sinners,” I thought, Oh, this is where ‘here’ is, inside a movie about a 1932 juke joint whose music is so soulful that vampires, who are also a white minstrel trio, want to suck its blood.She’s envisioning utopia — a place where a Black woman feels free to make any kind of music she wants, including country. He’s imagined a nightmare in which Black art is doomed to be coveted before it’s ever just simply enjoyed. She’s defying the gatekeepers. He’s arguing that some gates definitely need to be kept. To that end, the movie keeps a gag running wherein vampire etiquette requires a verbal invitation to enter the club, leading to comic scenes of clearly possessed, increasingly itchy soul junkies standing in a doorway begging to be let in. People have been calling certain white performers interested in Black music vampires for years. Here’s a movie that literalizes the metaphor with an audacity that’s thrilling in its obviousness and redundancy.There’s never a bad time for good pop art. There’s never a bad time for Black artists to provide it. But these here times? Times of hatchet work and so-called wood-chipping; of chain saws, as both metaphor and dispiriting political prop; a time of vandalistic racial gaslighting. These times might call for an excessive pop art that takes on too much, that wants to be gobbled up and dug into, an art that isn’t afraid to boast I am this country, while also doing some thinking about what this country is. These here times might call for Black artists to provide that, too, to offer an American education that feels increasingly verboten. That’s not art’s strong suit, pointing at chalkboards. But if school systems are being bullied into coddling snowflakes, then perhaps, on occasion, art should be hitting you upside the head and dancing on your nose.Beyoncé on the opening night of her “Cowboy Carter” tour in Los Angeles last month.The New York TimesNow, it’s true that the knobbiest moments on “Cowboy Carter” and in “Sinners” are the equivalent of diagramed sentences. The album uses elders to do its explaining. Before “Spaghettii” gets underway, the singer and songwriter Linda Martell stops by to dissertate on the limitation of genres; Dolly Parton connects her “Jolene” to the home-wrecker in Beyoncé’s now nine-year-old “Sorry”; and Willie Nelson, as the D.J. on KNTRY, Beyoncé’s fictional broadcast network, turns his dial past some real chestnuts to tee up “Texas Hold ’Em.” They’re vouching for the validity of her project’s scope and sincerity, while, especially in Martell’s case, spelling everything out.The spelling in “Sinners” happens right in the middle of its young protagonist’s first big blues number. Earlier, we’d gotten a taste of what Sammie (Miles Caton), a preacher’s boy, could do. Caton’s molasses baritone and impaling guitar work were really doing it for me when the sound muffles, and in come not one but two micro lectures about this music’s power to “pierce the veil between the present and the past.” And as these explanations of Black music tumble forth, I was surprised to find a very Funkadelic fellow making love to an electric guitar right next to Sammie. Over by the kitchen twerks a woman arguably conjured from some extremely City Girls place. The temperature of instruments changes from live drums to what sound like drum machines. And I soon spy dashikied tribesmen, b-boys, a ballerina and, I’m pretty sure, a decked-out Chinese folk singer, and they’re all gettin’ in the way of the blues.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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    Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire and Susan Sarandon Talk ‘Nonnas’

    Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire and Susan Sarandon discuss playing cooks in a new film, aging in Hollywood and the movies that their grandchildren cannot yet watch.When I signed onto a video interview with the stars of the new Netflix release “Nonnas,” the conversation was already in progress. Brenda Vaccaro, best known for her work in “Midnight Cowboy” and “Once Is Not Enough,” was raving about the film, directed by Stephen Chbosky, based on the true story of Enoteca Maria, a restaurant in Staten Island where the kitchen is run by older women.“This is my Jimmy Stewart movie,” Vaccaro said in between effusive praise.I wondered if I was ever going to get a word in edgewise.Eventually, I was able to greet the group, which includes Vaccaro, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire and Susan Sarandon. The veteran actresses, whose credits include “The Godfather,” “Goodfellas” and “Thelma & Louise,” all play the movie’s nonnas, who are recruited to cook Italian American delicacies by Joe Scaravella (Vince Vaughn), an M.T.A. worker mourning his own mother. Bracco is a brash Sicilian named Roberta whose specialty is a stuffed lamb’s head called capuzzelle. She fights with Vaccaro’s Antonella, loyal to her Bolognese heritage, over which region has the better traditions. Sarandon is the glamorous pastry guru and hair stylist Gia, while Shire is a nun who left the convent to pursue her dreams. (Not all the nonnas here have grandchildren.)With the women, who have nine Oscar nominations between them, gathered on a call, they riffed on their history with one another, their cooking skills, aging in Hollywood and the movies that their grandchildren cannot yet watch. Below are edited excerpts.From left, Sarandon, Vaccaro, Bracco and Talia Shire in “Nonnas.”Jeong Park/NetflixDid you know each other before getting cast?LORRAINE BRACCO: Oh, yes. I knew Brenda. I knew Susan. Talia was the newbie.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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    Baltimore’s Brandon Woody Channels His Hometown on ‘For the Love of It All’

    “To get here, it hasn’t been a yellow brick road. Even now, it’s not no damn yellow brick road,” the trumpeter and composer Brandon Woody said on a video call from a Fort Myers, Fla., hotel room. It was mid-March and Woody, 26, was in between tour stops supporting Luther S. Allison. In the weeks leading up to the release of his first album as a bandleader, his eyes glimmered with vigor.The road he spoke of was both metaphorical and literal. Woody has earned a fortunate position among 20-something peers like Allison and the Toronto electro-jazz group BadBadNotGood (with whom he toured this spring). To get there he traveled a serpentine, sometimes-rocky path through institutionalized jazz education that has, for others, been a prerequisite for obtaining a record deal with a grande dame of jazz labels. It took him from Boston to Stockton, Calif. to New York, in search of a breakthrough that he eventually got — in his hometown, Baltimore.“I’m always going to be a little bit jagged around the edges,” he said of his music. “You’re going to hear my struggles, but you’re also going to hear my celebrations and my successes. This is a homegrown thing, and it’s going to stay that.”“I’m always going to be a little bit jagged around the edges,” Woody said.Kyle Myles for The New York TimesOn Friday, Blue Note Records will release “For the Love of It All,” an album he and his Baltimore-based band Upendo (Swahili that translates roughly to “love”) honed not in the studio, but in front of audiences, primarily in his hometown. At club performances over the past half decade, fans would find ways to request songs that had never been recorded and weren’t yet titled. “People would remember the songs and be like, ‘Yo, when are you going to do,’ — and just sing it because they know the melody,” Woody recalled.The multidisciplinary artist and fellow-Baltimore native Nia June helped title some of the tracks that appear on his album. After “telling her about the story line and what the songs meant to me,” he explained, she worked to synthesize the ideas as titles. June, a filmmaker, poet and writer who has worked with Woody extensively since 2020, described the common thread of artists in the city: They are “brave, real and radically vulnerable.” She added, “The people here possess an unnatural resiliency — an unashamed, relentless will to survive. And with style.”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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    Trump’s Kennedy Center Would Get $257 Million in House Republican Plan

    A House committee proposed a huge increase in federal funding to repair and restore the center, which President Trump took over in February. Democrats have questions.Since leading a stunning takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at the start of his second term, President Trump has repeatedly lamented the building’s condition. He has described the center, which opened in 1971, as in “tremendous disrepair,” and has spoken about the need for a major renovation.Now Republican lawmakers appear to be heeding his call. A House committee approved a budget proposal last week that called for allocating $257 million to the Kennedy Center for capital repairs and other expenses, roughly six times the amount it usually receives from the government. It is a piece of the large reconciliation measure, which Mr. Trump calls his “one big beautiful bill,” that Republicans are writing and hope to push through Congress in the coming months.The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal buildings, said in a statement Tuesday that the “component of the proposal that provides funding for repairs and maintenance needs at the Kennedy Center was requested by the president.”The White House declined to discuss the specifics of the proposal, which is still working its way through the House as the reconciliation package takes shape.“President Trump cares deeply about American arts and culture, which is why he is revitalizing historic institutions like the Kennedy Center to their former greatness,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.The Kennedy Center declined to comment.The center typically gets about $43 million in federal funds, which goes toward operations, maintenance and repairs of the property. That is roughly 16 percent of its $268 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

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    Lulu Roman, Who Brought Big-Hearted Sass to ‘Hee Haw,’ Is Dead at 78

    Obesity was a source of trauma for her, but also of her comedy, which she showcased, along with gospel singing, on the long-running down-home variety show.Lulu Roman, who brought her big-hearted Texas sass and full-throated gospel vocals to the enduring variety show “Hee Haw,” known for its corn-pone comedy sketches and musical interludes provided by a constellation of country stars, died on April 23 in Bellingham, Wash. She was 78.Her son and caretaker, Damon Roman, said she died of heart failure at his home, where she had been living.Ms. Roman’s broad comedic skills and down-home persona proved a valuable asset to “Hee Haw,” which debuted on CBS in 1969 as a folksy heartland answer to NBC’s “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” a network take on contemporary mod culture known for its Day-Glo graphics and risqué one-liners delivered at Gatling-gun pace. It was originally a summer replacement for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” an even edgier variety show that had run afoul of censors for its pointed takes on race relations, drugs, religion and the Vietnam War.But “Hee Haw” was the opposite of hip, and intentionally so. It was the television equivalent of a big country breakfast, heavy on the cheese grits. And it worked.While the show was initially blasted by critics, its mix of back-40 humor and musical appearances by Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and seemingly every other Nashville star propelled it to television institution status. (Although CBS canceled the show in 1971, “Hee Haw” rolled on in syndication, lasting more than a quarter of a century in various iterations.)Ms. Roman, in the foreground, with her “Hee Haw” castmates in an undated photo.Tony Esparza for CBS/TV Guide, via Everett CollectionWe 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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    Going Back to Pavement’s Gold Sounds

    Hear 11 songs to prep for the band’s bizarro documentary, “Pavements.”Stephen Malkmus fronting Pavement.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,This past Friday one of the more bonkers music documentaries ever to hit screens arrived: “Pavements,” the director Alex Ross Perry’s exploration of both the ’90s indie band Pavement and the ways we make myths around musicians. I talked to Perry and the Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus about how the movie ended up taking the wild form that it did, using split-screen images to show Pavement’s most recent reunion tour as well as a jukebox musical (real), a Hollywood biopic (fake) and a museum exhibition (a bit of both). The Times critic Alissa Wilkinson called it all “delightfully destabilizing.”Along with its meta pranks, though, “Pavements” is full of great music. In our interview, Perry said he wanted the movie to “perform like a two-hour Pavement concert where it goes from an achingly beautiful, tender song, to a very loud and bratty punk song, to just an endless, sprawling, loose jam.” It’s an apt description of the band’s catalog, which filtered avant-garde rock influences — like the Velvet Underground, Pere Ubu (R.I.P. David Thomas), Can and especially the Fall — through the suburban California sensibility of Malkmus and Scott Kannberg, a.k.a. Spiral Stairs. “The whole record collection kind of melts into what you are,” Malkmus says in the documentary.You can’t talk about Pavement in 2025 without getting into the story of “Harness Your Hopes,” a non-album track that was boosted by the Spotify and TikTok algorithms until it became Pavement’s best-known song for younger fans. (“That’s really like a crazy, crazy thing that happened,” Malkmus said in a phone interview. “That’s pretty fun.”) The band’s record label had Perry shoot a music video to capitalize on its success; it features Sophie Thatcher from “Yellowjackets” and references all of Pavement’s old videos from the ’90s.If you like that one, just think what they actually put on the records! Here’s a Pavement primer where the beautifully tender rubs shoulders with the loud and bratty and the endless, loose jams.Hi-ho, Silver, ride,DaveListen along while you read.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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    What to Know as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Begins in NYC

    The music mogul known as Puffy and Diddy is facing federal charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s federal criminal trial began this week, and opening statements from prosecutors and Mr. Combs’s lawyers are slated for Monday.The trial is being held at the Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan and is expected to last eight weeks. Here’s a primer on the charges and what’s at stake for the music mogul.Who is Sean Combs?Mr. Combs, 55, is one of the most successful producers and entrepreneurs in the history of hip-hop, who helped make artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into household names. Under the name Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his own in 1997 with “I’ll Be Missing You,” a tribute to B.I.G. that sampled the 1980s band the Police. He dated Jennifer Lopez, threw glittery parties in the Hamptons and was a gossip-column fixture for decades.Music was just one part of what became a multifaceted empire for Mr. Combs. He entered the fashion business in 1998 with his Sean John line, which remained hugely popular for years. His MTV reality show “Making the Band” made him a regular TV presence in the 2000s. Later, he founded a media company, Revolt, and promoted the popular vodka brand Ciroq through a deal with the spirits giant Diageo. At one point, his net worth was estimated as high as $1 billion.Mr. Combs has long been accused of violence or serious misconduct, but largely avoided serious consequences as his career ascended. Among those incidents: a charity basketball game in 1991, where nine young people were crushed to death in a stampede (Mr. Combs paid about $750,000 in private settlements). The beating of a rival music executive in his office in 1999 (Mr. Combs attended a one-day anger management course). The threatening of a choreographer on “Making the Band” in 2007 (the two reconciled, and no criminal charges were brought).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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    Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, Joe Rogan: A ‘Manosphere’ Just Asking Questions

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeSo long Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert? The next generation of celebrity interviewers has emerged, auguring their eventual replacement. On YouTube, a wave of comedians-turned-podcasters, many of them immature verging on boorish, have created a new media mainstream, where actors, musicians and crucially, politicians, sit for loose, extended conversations that are quickly becoming the new norm.Some of the best known of these new chatters are Theo Von, Andrew Schulz and Joe Rogan. Loosely, they’re part of the so-called “manosphere,” a set of social media figures who tilt rightward. But really, they’re a more diverse lot, with varying strengths, interests and politics.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the generation of male comedians who have remade themselves as the interlocutors of the day, how politicians have weaponized them for their purposes, and how they’re reshaping how celebrity is approaching the post-monoculture landscape.Guest:Dan Adler, a staff writer at Vanity FairConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More