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    Book Review: ‘Wannabe,’ by Aisha Harris

    In her essay collection “Wannabe,” Aisha Harris argues that Black critics can both appreciate, and demand more from, shifts in popular culture.WANNABE: Reckonings With the Pop Culture That Shapes Me, by Aisha HarrisBeing a Black critic in a time of exceptional art made by Black people has immense rewards and myriad risks. “Wannabe,” the debut essay collection from Aisha Harris, a co-host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” is at its best when engaging with those risks and the thorny questions of her profession. In what ways does identity inform a critic’s work? And should it?Harris can laugh about the demands of endorsing positive representations of Blackness, no matter how trite (“When encountering Black art out in the wild, be on the lookout for Black Girl Magic, Black Love, Black Excellence and the direct involvement of Common and/or John Legend”). She cheekily pushes Issa Rae’s now-famous awards show proclamation — “I’m rooting for everybody Black” — to its most absurd extent: “It’s only right we take her at her literal word and support all Black artists and art, no matter how questionable, incompetent or just plain offensive they might be.” But when a podcast listener chastises Harris for finding the Will Smith movie “King Richard” middling, she roars back. “I don’t want to ‘just be happy’ about ‘King Richard,’” she insists. “I want interiority and surprise and characters who feel as though they have a reason to exist beyond retelling history.”It’s complicated, though. Harris recounts conflictedness about being disappointed by “A Wrinkle in Time,” which was directed by Ava DuVernay, whose film career was firmly on the rise. Harris, who wrote movie reviews for Slate and is a former editor at The New York Times, worried that a lukewarm piece could mean it would “be decades before another studio handed a movie of this stature to a woman of color.” Looking back, she arrived at a place that was “true to my own reactions to the movie without being scathing.”“Wannabe” is a blend of memoir and cultural analysis, framed as “reckonings with the pop culture that shapes me.” Harris flaunts a wide range of references, moving easily between decades and arenas. She makes smart use of Roger Ebert on Fellini, revisits “Key & Peele” sketches and dissects bell hooks’s analysis of the experimental film hero Stan Brakhage. The book is especially effective when its author leans on her personal experience. Harris grew up in Connecticut, in “predominantly white and suburban circles,” and she tenderly illustrates the trials of growing up “The Black Friend” in white environments.“These Black Friends,” Harris offers, “were a reminder of my isolation and the fact that I often felt as if I was a blip on the radar of the many white peers I attempted to befriend.”Harris braids her personal pain with incisive critiques of the trope and its limitations, constructing internal monologues for famous pop culture examples, like Gabrielle Union’s Katie in “She’s All That” and Lamorne Morris’s Winston in “New Girl.” She deftly connects the rise of the personal brand and the toxic cultures of online fandom (“The overpersonalization of pop culture begets acrimony and pathological obsession”); confronts her decision to not have kids through the prism of “The Brady Bunch” and Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up”; and quotes from her own LiveJournal about a hurtful memory involving an oft-forgotten scene in Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls.”Still, for all its range, “Wannabe” contains occasions that demand more rigorous engagement. Contending with Dave Chappelle’s thorny legacy is limited to an aside: “While I recognize that present-day Dave Chappelle suffers from transphobic diarrhea of the mouth,” Harris writes, “I cannot pretend as though some of his old jokes no longer slap.” (She goes on to quote several of them.)And the recency of the pop references in “Wannabe” is both a strength and a weakness, and risks dating the book.The groundbreaking success of Disney’s “Encanto” and the multiple Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is likely to matter for a long time; Warner Bros. Discovery’s cancellation of the “Batgirl” film or the Harper’s letter on “Justice and Open Debate” might lose potency for the reader not engaged with the mostly-online #discourse.But enlisting movies and TV to explain the world is Harris’s expertise, arriving at “inadvertent self-formation by way of popular culture.” For readers already inclined to read culture to understand themselves, “Wannabe” is a compelling affirmation that they’re looking in the right place.Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a podcaster and the author of “Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces,” a New York Times Notable Book in 2022.WANNABE: Reckonings With the Pop Culture That Shapes Me | By Aisha Harris | 280 pp. | HarperOne | $29.99 More

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    Jessie Maple, Pathbreaking Filmmaker, Is Dead at 86

    She was believed to be the first Black woman to produce, write and direct an independent feature film. She also broke ground as a union cinematographer.Jessie Maple, who built careers as a camerawoman and an independent filmmaker when Black women were almost nonexistent in those fields, and who then left meticulous instructions for later generations to follow in her footsteps, died on May 30 at her home in Atlanta. She was 86.Her death was confirmed by E. Danielle Butler, her longtime assistant and the co-author of her self-published 2019 memoir, “The Maple Crew.”Director and camerawoman were just two of Ms. Maple’s many jobs. She also worked as a bacteriologist; wrote a newspaper column; owned coffee shops; baked vegan cookies; and ran a 50-seat theater in the basement of her Harlem brownstone.Ms. Maple had been writing a column called Jessie’s Grapevine for The New York Courier, a Harlem newspaper, when she moved to broadcast journalism from print in the early 1970s because she wanted to reach more people.After studying film editing in programs at WNET, New York’s public television station, and Third World Cinema, the actor Ossie Davis’s film company, and working as an apprentice editor on the Gordon Parks films “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972) and “The Super Cops” (1974), Ms. Maple realized that she yearned to be behind the camera.In 1975 she became the first African American woman to join New York’s cinematographers union (now called the International Cinematographers Guild), according to Indiana University’s Black Film Center and Archive, which holds a collection of her papers and films. But, she said, the union banned her after she fought to change rules that required her to complete a lengthy apprenticeship.“If I had waited, I never would have become a cameraperson,” Ms. Maple told The New York Times for a 2016 article about women who broke barriers to work on film crews. “So I took ’em to court.”Ms. Maple with cast members on the set of her second feature film, “Twice as Nice,” the story of twin sisters who are college basketball stars.Black Film Center Archive, Indiana University, BloomingtonShe sued several New York television stations for gender and racial discrimination in the mid-1970s, and she won a lawsuit against WCBS in 1977 that earned her a trial period with the station. That blossomed into a freelance career there and at the local ABC and NBC stations.Ms. Maple wrote that she faced crew members who did not want to work with her and nasty whispers, sometimes quite audible, behind her back. But she persevered, even when she got assignments that felt especially difficult — for example, flying in a helicopter to get aerial footage on a near-daily basis even though she had motion sickness.In 1977 Ms. Maple wrote about her experiences in “How to Become a Union Camerawoman,” a detailed guide to succeeding in a forbidding industry.But as TV news moved from film to video, Ms. Maple decided that she would rather become an independent filmmaker, with complete control of her work. She made short documentaries with Leroy Patton, her husband, including “Methadone: Wonder Drug or Evil Spirit?,” before turning to features.Ms. Maple said she wanted to shoot films about issues that were important to her community.“I want to tell the stories about things that bother me which may not otherwise be told,” she wrote in her memoir. “I strive to use the resources that are around me. Most importantly, I work to give voice to my people and the challenges we face.”According to the Black Film Center and Archive, Ms. Maple was the first known African American woman to produce, write and direct an independent feature film. That film, “Will” (1981), followed a former college basketball player struggling with addiction (played by Obaka Adedunyo) who takes in a 12-year-old boy to prevent him from developing a habit of his own. Loretta Devine, in her first film role, played Will’s significant other.Ms. Maple said she wanted to shoot films in her community about issues that were important to it. “I work, she said, “to give voice to my people and the challenges we face.”Black Film Center Archive, Indiana University, BloomingtonMs. Maple’s second feature, “Twice as Nice” (1989), was the story of twin sisters, both college basketball standouts, who are preparing to take part in a professional draft. The movie starred Pamela and Paula McGee, twins who won back-to-back N.C.A.A. basketball championships at the University of Southern California but were not professional actors.In 1982 Ms. Maple and Mr. Patton opened a theater to show “Will” and other independent films in the basement of their brownstone on 120th Street in Harlem. They called it 20 West, billed it as “the home of Black cinema” and featured movies by up-and-comers like Spike Lee. They closed it about a decade later — because, she said, she wanted to focus more on her own films.Ms. Maple’s films have achieved greater recognition in recent years than they did when they were released. In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art screened “Will”; that same year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (now Film at Lincoln Center) showed both her features as part of a series called “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986.”Ms. Maple in 2016. A year earlier, her films had been shown at both the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMs. Maple was born on Feb. 14, 1937, in McComb, Miss., about 80 miles south of Jackson, the second oldest of 12 children. Her father was a farmer, her mother a teacher and dietitian.Her father died when she was 13, and her mother sent her and many of her siblings to the Northeast, where she went to high school.After high school she studied medical technology and then started working in bacteriology. She eventually ran a lab at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and Medical Center (now part of New York University’s hospital system) in Manhattan while the hospital administration searched for a permanent replacement because, she wrote, she did not have a Ph.D. She was credited with leading the preliminary identification of a new strain of bacteria; on her lunch breaks, she joined other, lower-paid workers who were trying to organize.It was a steady, well-paying job, but Ms. Maple, who was married and had a young daughter, tired of the work and left bacteriology in 1968 to pursue journalism. She was on assignment for a magazine in Texas when she met Mr. Patton, a photographer for Jet and Ebony magazines who lived in Los Angeles, and they developed a bicoastal relationship.Ms. Maple had separated from her husband; Mr. Patton was still living with his wife. In time they divorced their spouses and married, and Mr. Patton moved to Manhattan. (Ms. Maple was sometimes billed as Jessie Maple Patton in her film work.)Ms. Maple is survived by her husband; her daughter, Audrey Snipes; five sisters, Lorrain Crosby, Peggy Lincoln, Debbie Reed, Camilla Clarke Doremus and Stephanie Robinson; and a grandson.Ms. Maple worked relentlessly to accomplish her dreams. She supplemented her income through ventures including two Harlem coffee shops she ran with Mr. Patton and a line of vegan cookies she made in the 1990s, which were eventually available at retailers on the East Coast.“I was too busy doing the work to slow down,” she wrote in her memoir. “I’d like to believe that my efforts have paved the way for the people behind me to work just as hard but struggle a little less.” More

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    Opera About Refugee Children to Premiere at Spoleto Festival

    “Ruinous Gods,” an exploration of the trauma of mass displacement, will be staged in Charleston, S.C., next year.A chamber opera about refugee children and the trauma of mass displacement will premiere next year at Spoleto Festival USA, the organization in Charleston, S.C., announced on Saturday.That work, “Ruinous Gods,” tells the story of a mother and her 12-year-old daughter, who are forced to flee their home. The opera evokes the crises over refugee families and migrant children that have played out in recent years in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.The violinist and composer Layale Chaker, who was born in France and raised in Lebanon, is writing the music, to a libretto by Lisa Schlesinger, a playwright, activist and educator from New York.“‘Ruinous Gods’ speaks to the maddening political morass that drags down the world’s most vulnerable,” said Mena Mark Hanna, Spoleto’s general director. “Reverberations of this piece shook me to my core, especially as a father.”The festival, known for bringing artists together across disciplines and commissioning and staging innovative works, has sought in recent years to more directly address contemporary social problems.Last year, Spoleto gave the premiere of “Omar,” an opera by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels based on the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, a Muslim man from West Africa who was enslaved and transported to Charleston in 1807. The work went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.“Ruinous Gods” focuses on a condition known as resignation syndrome, in which children living in a state of limbo fall into comalike states. It is loosely based on the Greek story of Persephone and Demeter.Schlesinger said she began thinking about the story as a rush of migrants, many from Syria, entered Europe in 2015. She was moved by reports about resignation syndrome affecting refugee children in Sweden in 2017.“I could feel these children inside my body, like the way that they felt like they needed to fall asleep in order to be in the world,” she said. “That was really the genesis for this piece.”Chaker said that her desire for the work was to prompt fresh conversations about how governments and societies treat migrant families.“I hope that this provides us with the means to interrogate our legacy, the state of the world as we are leaving to our children,” she said. “How can we do better and how can we ensure we leave the world kinder and more just to them, for them to be able to carry on?” More

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    What Happens When A.I. Enters the Concert Hall

    Artificial intelligence is not new to classical music. But its recent, rapid developments have composers worried, and intrigued.When the composer and vocalist Jen Wang took the stage at the Monk Space in Los Angeles to perform Alvin Lucier’s “The Duke of York” (1971) earlier this year, she sang with a digital rendition of her voice, synthesized by artificial intelligence.It was the first time she had done that. “I thought it was going to be really disorienting,” Wang said in an interview, “but it felt like I was collaborating with this instrument that was me and was not me.”Isaac Io Schankler, a composer and music professor at Cal Poly Pomona, conceived the performance and joined Wang onstage to monitor and manipulate Realtime Audio Variational autoEncoder, or R.A.V.E., the neural audio synthesis algorithm that modeled Wang’s voice.R.A.V.E. is an example of machine learning, a specific category of artificial intelligence technology that musicians have experimented with since the 1990s — but that now is defined by rapid development, the arrival of publicly available, A.I.-powered music tools and the dominating influence of high-profile initiatives by large tech companies.Dr. Schankler ultimately used R.A.V.E in that performance of “The Duke Of York,” though, because its ability to augment an individual performer’s sound, they said, “seemed thematically resonant with the piece.” For it to work, the duo needed to train it on a personalized corpus of recordings. “I sang and spoke for three hours straight,” Wang recalled. “I sang every song I could think of.”Antoine Caillon developed R.A.V.E. in 2021, during his graduate studies at IRCAM, the institute founded by the composer Pierre Boulez in Paris. “R.A.V.E.’s goal is to reconstruct its input,” he said. “The model compresses the audio signal it receives and tries to extract the sound’s salient features in order to resynthesize it properly.”Wang felt comfortable performing with the software because, no matter the sounds it produced in the moment, she could hear herself in R.A.V.E.’s synthesized voice. “The gestures were surprising, and the textures were surprising,” she said, “but the timbre was incredibly familiar.” And, because R.A.V.E. is compatible with common electronic music software, Dr. Schankler was able to adjust the program in real time, they said, to “create this halo of other versions of Jen’s voice around her.”Tina Tallon, a composer and professor of A.I. and the arts at the University of Florida, said that musicians have used various A.I.-related technologies since the mid-20th century.“There are rule-based systems, which is what artificial intelligence used to be in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s,” she said, “and then there is machine learning, which became more popular and more practical in the ’90s, and involves ingesting large amounts of data to infer how a system functions.”Today, developments in A.I. that were once contained to specialized applications impinge on virtually every corner of life, and already impact the way people make music. Dr. Caillon, in addition to developing R.A.V.E., has contributed to the Google-led projects SingSong, which generates accompaniments for recorded vocal melodies, and MusicLM, another text-to-music generator. Innovations in other areas are driving new music technologies, too: WavTool, a recently released, A.I.-powered music production platform, fully integrates OpenAI’s GPT-4 to enable users to create music via text prompts.For Dr. Tallon, the difference in scale between individual composers’ customized use of A.I. and these new, broad-reaching technologies represents a cause for concern.“We are looking at different types of datasets that are compiled for different reasons,” she said. “Tools like MusicLM are trained on datasets that are compiled by pulling from thousands of hours of labeled audio from YouTube and other places on the internet.”“When I design a tool for my own personal use,” Dr. Tallon continued, “I’m looking at data related to my sonic priorities. But public-facing technologies use datasets that focus on, for instance, aesthetic ideals that align more closely with Western classical systems of organizing pitches and rhythms.”Concerns over bias in music-related A.I. tools do not stop at aesthetics. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, a music professor at Brown University, also worries about how these technologies can reproduce social hierarchies.“There is a very specific racial discourse that I’m very concerned about,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that hip-hop artistry is forming the testing ground for understanding how A.I. affects artists and their artistry given the centuries-long story of co-optation and theft of Black expressive forms by those in power.”The popularity of recent A.I.-generated songs that mimicked artists like Drake, the Weeknd, Travis Scott and others have animated Dr. Lumumba-Kasongo’s fears. “What I’m most concerned about with A.I. Drake and A.I. Travis Scott is that their music is highly listenable,” she said, “and calls into question any need for an artist once they’ve articulated a distinct ‘voice.’”For Dr. Schankler, there are key differences between using R.A.V.E. to synthesize new versions of a collaborator’s voice and using A.I. to anonymously imitate a living musician. “I don’t find it super interesting to copy someone’s voice exactly, because that person already exists,” they said. “I’m more interested in the new sonic possibilities of this technology. And what I like about R.A.V.E. is that I can work with a small dataset that is created by one person who gives their permission and participates in the process.”The composer Robert Laidlow also uses A.I. in his work to contemplate the technology’s fraught implications. “Silicon,” which premiered last October with the BBC Philharmonic under Vimbayi Kaziboni, employs multiple tools to explore themes drawn from the technology’s transformative and disruptive potential.Laidlow described “Silicon” as “about technology as much as it uses technology,” adding: “The overriding aesthetic of each movement of this piece are the questions, ‘What does it mean for an orchestra to use this technology?’ and ‘What would be the point of an orchestra if we had a technology that can emulate it in every way?’”The work’s entirely acoustic first movement features a mixture of Laidlow’s original music and ideas he adapted from the output, he said, of a “symbolic, generative A.I. that was trained on notated material from composers all throughout history.” The second movement features an A.I.-powered digital instrument, performed by the orchestra’s pianist, that, “sometimes mimics the orchestra and sometimes makes uncanny, weird sounds.”In the last movement, the orchestra is accompanied with sounds generated by a neural synthesis program called PRiSM-SampleRNN, which is akin to R.A.V.E. and was trained on a large archive of BBC Philharmonic radio broadcasts. Laidlow describes the resulting audio as, “featuring synthesized orchestral music, voices of phantom presenters and the sounds the artificial intelligence has learned from audiences.”The size of “Silicon” contrasts with the intimacy of Dr. Schankler and Wang’s performance of “The Duke of York.” But both instances illustrate A.I.’s potential to expand musical practices and human expression. And, importantly, by employing small, curated datasets tailored to individual collaborators, these projects attempt to obviate ethical concerns many have identified in larger-scale technologies.George E. Lewis, a music professor at Columbia University, has designed and performed alongside interactive A.I. music programs for four decades, focusing primarily on the technology’s capacity to participate in live performance. “I keep talking about real-time dialogue,” he said. “Music is so communal, it’s so personal, it’s so dialogic, it’s communitarian.”He is hopeful that people will continue to explore interactivity and spontaneity. “It seems the current generation of A.I. music programs have been designed for a culturally specific way of thinking about music,” Lewis said. “Imagine if the culture favored improvisation.”As a composer, Lewis is continuing to explore this topic, including his recent work “Forager,” for chamber ensemble and A.I., which was created during a 2022 residency at PRiSM. The piece marks the latest update to “Voyager,” a piece that he developed in 1985 and described as a, “virtual improvising pianist.” “Forager” enhances the software’s responsiveness to its human co-performers with new programming that enables what he called, “a more holistic recognition” of musical materials.The differences among Dr. Schankler’s use of R.A.V.E., Robert Laidlow’s orchestral work “Silicon” and Lewis’s interactive “Forager” underscore the nuances with which composers and experimental musicians are approaching A.I. This culture celebrates technology as means to customize musical ideas and computer-generated sounds to suit specific performers and a given moment. Still, these artistic aims stand at odds with the foreboding prompted by others like Dr. Tallon and Dr. Lumumba-Kasongo.Individual musicians can do their part to counter those worries by using A.I. ethically and generatively. But even so, as Laidlow observed, being truly individual — which is to say independent — is difficult.“There is a fundamental problem of resources in this field,” Laidlow said. “It is almost impossible to create something computationally powerful without the assistance of a huge, technologically advanced institute or corporation.” More

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    David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’ Reaches Deal With Broadway Musicians

    After the musicians’ union raised objections to the show’s plans to use recorded music instead of a live band, the show agreed to use 12 musicians.“Here Lies Love,” the new David Byrne musical scheduled to start previews on Broadway next week, has bowed to objections by a labor union and agreed that 12 musicians will be part of the production.The producers of the musical, which is a dance-club-like show about Imelda Marcos, and the union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, announced the agreement late Friday afternoon.“On behalf of our entire cast, company and creative team, we have reached an agreement with Musicians Union Local 802, per the collective bargaining agreement,” the producers of the musical said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming audiences to experience the revolutionary musical experience that is ‘Here Lies Love’ at the Broadway Theater beginning on Saturday, June 17.”The union issued a similarly terse, but slightly more detailed, statement, saying, “After negotiation, we have reached an agreement that will bring live music to ‘Here Lies Love’ with the inclusion of 12 musicians to the show. Broadway is a very special place with the best musicians and performances in the world, and we are glad this agreement honors that tradition.”Eric Koch, a communications consultant for the union, said three of the company’s actors would be counted among the 12 musicians.Asked about that, the producers responded: “‘Here Lies Love’ has always had three actor-musicians and a musical director in every production. The show’s integrity and the musical concept remains the same.”“Here Lies Love” is being led by a group of producers, including Patrick Catullo, Hal Luftig, Kevin Connor, Jose Antonio Vargas, Diana DiMenna and Clint Ramos. The show is one of the larger productions opening on Broadway this summer, with a big budget — it is being capitalized for up to $22 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — and plans to redo the Broadway Theater so that the production can be staged in an immersive fashion, with much of the audience on a dance floor surrounded by the action.“Here Lies Love,” about Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, was written by Byrne and Fatboy Slim. It has been around for more than 15 years, and has been praised by critics and popular with audiences. It was presented as a song cycle at Carnegie Hall in 2007, and there were productions in 2012 at Mass MoCA, an art museum in the Berkshires; in 2013 at the Public Theater in New York; in 2014 at London’s National Theater and back at the Public for a second engagement; and in 2017 at the Seattle Repertory Theater.The production has in the past used recorded music, which the show said was meant to create a karaoke-like atmosphere, but as the Broadway opening neared, the labor union objected, saying its contract with the Broadway League requires the use of live musicians. The union had threatened to protest this weekend’s Tony Awards and the show’s upcoming previews; on Friday, the two sides settled the dispute. More

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    Comedian’s Malaysia Joke Prompts Threats and a Diplomatic Incident

    Jocelyn Chia’s line about the 2014 missing airliner was part of a Comedy Cellar set in April. But when video was posted this week, outrage poured in.At the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan this spring, the stand-up comedian Jocelyn Chia performed a routine that she had reliably included in her sets for more than a year, about the historical animosity between Singapore, the city-state in Southeast Asia where she was raised, and its neighbor Malaysia.But when Chia and the club posted a clip from the April 7 set to TikTok and Instagram this week, it provoked a heated backlash. The 89-second video showed the comedian bantering with an audience member who volunteered that he is Malaysian. And it concluded with Chia’s making light of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people onboard. Angry Malaysians flooded the comment sections on Chia’s social media accounts. The Comedy Cellar received 4,000 one-star reviews on Google almost overnight and its website was hacked, its owner said. TikTok removed a clip of the joke from Chia’s account, flagging it as “hateful behavior” and a violation of its community guidelines, according to a screenshot Chia shared with The New York Times.Even Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, weighed in, condemning Chia and apologizing for her “horrendous comments” in a tweet noting, “She certainly does not speak for Singaporeans.”The incident demonstrated the fraught line toed by comedians when edgy routines are removed from their natural habitats in dark, late-night, alcohol-lubricated clubs and posted to social media for all to see. Managers of the Comedy Cellar and the West Side Comedy Club, where Chia has performed, said they had received or been threatened with negative reviews as part of the backlash. Chia said that her family and friends had received hate messages.At a club, “you can get away with saying stuff that’s kind of outrageous,” said Noam Dworman, the Comedy Cellar’s owner. “You can’t put that same moment into a small screen that you’re watching over morning coffee.”But Chia, who performed this week in New York and has future gigs planned, said in an interview on Friday that the fallout had not damaged her career. “I’m in no way canceled in America, in any sense of the word,” she said. “Now people want to come see me.”Chia, who was born in Boston and held joint American-Singaporean citizenship until adulthood, was a lawyer who decided her true calling lay in stand-up comedy.Her extended routine, which the clip abbreviated, mentions the former Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew and how he appeared to tear up in 1965 when the city-state was expelled from Malaysia “because he thought we were not going to survive,” Chia says in the video. “But then 40 years later, we became a first-world country. And you guys, Malaysia, what are you now? Still a developing country. Awww.”Likening the 1965 rupture to a breakup, she imagined Malaysia trying to woo Singapore back and explaining it hadn’t visited because “my airplanes cannot fly.” Then she added, to laughter, “What? Malaysia Airlines going missing not funny?”The complete routine has been one of her most successful recent bits, she said. “It gets raucous,” she said. “The full bit is well set up — I build up emotion.”The set seemed to set off an international incident only after its appearance this week on social media. Following the backlash, Chia removed the clip at the Comedy Cellar’s request, then reposted it to TikTok without the club’s logo. That’s when TikTok removed it.“I didn’t want the haters to think they had won and got me to back down,” she said. “Audiences at the Comedy Cellar see the best comedians and they love it, so how can I be embarrassed by it?”Felicia Madison, the managing partner and talent booker at the West Side Comedy Club in Manhattan, said she had been threatened with negative reviews by fans who figured out that Chia had appeared there. “We’re a pretty new club,” she said. “When people want to see if they should go, they look at reviews.”Dworman argued that the spate of negative reviews — which dragged down the Comedy Cellar’s overall rating before Google restored it — went beyond people exercising their right to be offended.“You’re entitled to dislike it and complain about it, but they’re trying to make it too risky for me to allow this woman to speak onstage,” he said. “That’s not a refutation of what she said, or a thoughtful appeal to the fact that this is something she should consider was too hurtful. This is essentially using brute force to make the other side say ‘uncle.’” More

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    First Favorite Songs Are Like Sonic Baby Pictures

    How a minor 1989 George Harrison single from the “Lethal Weapon 2” soundtrack opened a young listener’s ears.George Harrison, when he first had an impact on The Amplifier’s author.Pete Still/Redferns, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,What was your first favorite song?I’m not talking about that hip, semi-obscure tune around which you formulated your preteen identity — the one you told everyone at school you loved because it made you seem mysterious and cool. I’m talking about a time before all that, before you were conscious of taste, and all you knew about a song you loved was that it struck a resounding chord somewhere deep inside of you.Here’s what I’m talking about:Shortly after I turned 3, “Lethal Weapon 2” came out on VHS. One night my dad was lucky enough to score this coveted Blockbuster rental, and because it was — gasp! — an R-rated movie, I was not allowed to go in the living room while he was watching it. Of course, for the next two hours there was nowhere in the universe that I wanted to be more desperately than the living room.From my safe, G-rated perch upstairs, I strained to hear any sound I could make out from this tantalizingly forbidden flick. I was getting so cranky about it that my parents made me a compromise: They would let me watch the closing credits of “Lethal Weapon 2” — a black screen filled with a bunch of ascending white words and names I could not yet read. But it didn’t matter, because the song that played while they scrolled was incredible. “Again!” I cried when it was over; they were kind and rewound. There I sat directly in front of the television, enraptured by what turned out to be a very minor 1989 George Harrison single, “Cheer Down.”I didn’t yet know who George Harrison was. I didn’t yet know that it is kind of random that George Harrison wrote the theme song for “Lethal Weapon 2.” I didn’t even know who the Beatles were. I just knew that this evocative, lightly melancholic sequence of chords, that comfortingly gruff voice and those slide guitar notes that streak across the song’s coda like shooting stars made me feel a certain way, and that I wanted to feel that way forever.Before he returned it to the video store — F.B.I. agents, look away! — my dad gamely taped the closing credits for me on a blank VHS. It’s still an inside joke in my family, the story of a 3-year-old future music critic constantly asking her parents to put on “the ‘Lethal Weapon tape,’” just so she could listen to this Harrison song over and over.You can learn a lot about a person from asking about their first favorite songs — it’s the sonic equivalent of looking at someone’s baby pictures. And since I’ve been dropping into your inbox twice a week with this newsletter, I figured it was only fair that you heard a few of mine.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Cat Stevens: “Moonshadow”I am pretty sure someone sang this as a lullaby to me when I was a baby, and to this day the-artist-formerly-known-as-Cat-Stevens’s voice can still make me feel an almost preternatural comfort — a feeling of being swaddled beyond what even the heaviest weighted blanket can offer. My parents got a CD player (state-of-the-art technology) when I was young, and I can still remember being taught how to place “Cat Stevens: Greatest Hits” into the tray very, very carefully and cue up track 8, which was of course my song, “Moonshadow.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Tom Petty: “Free Fallin’”I grew up in New Jersey and did not visit the West Coast until my mid-20s, so throughout my youth the proper nouns in this song sounded exquisitely exotic to me: Mulholland, Ventura Boulevard, this surely indescribably glamorous oasis called “Reseda.” “Free Fallin’” would now probably land on the shortlist of the most overplayed American rock songs of the 20th century, and yet — perhaps the reason I cannot imagine ever getting sick of it — I can still travel back to a time when its lyrics sounded alluringly strange to me, and when I believed there might be actual vampires haunting Ventura Boulevard. (Petty also co-wrote “Cheer Down,” and Jeff Lynne helped produce both of those songs — so clearly the Traveling Wilburys had a hold on my musical taste from an early age.) (Listen on YouTube)3. U2: “Zoo Station”After it came out in late 1991, U2’s angsty, glammy “Achtung Baby” was an absolute staple in my parents’ steel-blue Ford Taurus. Taking it in over and over again from the back seat, this album seemed to contain all of the mysteries of the adult world, set somewhere just beyond my realm of understanding. All I knew was that it sounded cool. And a little scary! On “Achtung Baby,” relatively straightforward rock songs are haunted by weird, ghostly sounds, like the mournful, malfunctioning tape loop at the beginning of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” the eerie distortion of “Until the End of the World” or any number of ghost noises that lurk throughout the tone-setting opener “Zoo Station.” I later realized that a lot of this strangeness was the result of the Edge’s adventurousness with effects pedals and, even more ineffably, Brian Eno’s arty production. (I also realized much later — for shame — that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was an iconic second-wave feminist slogan, not a funny lyric that Bono made up.) No matter what U2 does or how many albums it forcefully installs on my iPhone, “Achtung Baby” will always have a special place in my heart for being one of the first records to freak me out — in a good way. (Listen on YouTube)4. Peter Gabriel: “Steam”Peter Gabriel is another artist whose voice and melodic sensibility I’ve been drawn to — disquieted and then subsequently comforted by — for as long as I can remember. The seemingly childlike “Games Without Frontiers” was a song I always loved hearing on the radio, even if its geopolitical message and lyrical content went completely over my head. The one I requested over and over, though, was Gabriel’s punchy, absurdly satirical 1992 single “Steam.” (It boasts what I now regard as the most 1992 music video of all time.) Except I confess that I thought that this song was called … “Steve.” Yes, “Steve.” I imagined on the chorus he was demanding, somewhat menacingly over a telephone, “Give me Steve.” Being a kid is weird. So is this song. (Listen on YouTube)5. Fine Young Cannibals: “She Drives Me Crazy”This song was everywhere as the ’80s became the ’90s — it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a week in April 1989 — and, to quote a phrase, I just could not help myself. The bright, synthetic textures were such an adrenaline rush to me: the cavernous echo of that hopscotching breakbeat, those jagged lightning-bolt riffs that puncture the production’s perfect sheen, and the acrobatic, androgynous beauty of Roland Gift’s vocals. It sounded like the national anthem of another planet, and I wanted to live there. Even today, I’ll sometimes become obsessed with a song and not realize why I can’t stop listening to it, until I realize: “Duh, it kind of sounds like ‘She Drives Me Crazy.’” I am of course incredibly biased, still being an excitable ’80s baby at heart, but I still think it’s one of the more perfect pop songs ever written. (Listen on YouTube)6. George Harrison: “Cheer Down”Play the “Lethal Weapon” tape! Again! (Listen on YouTube)Give me Steve,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Sonic Baby Pictures” track listTrack 1: Cat Stevens, “Moonshadow”Track 2: Tom Petty, “Free Fallin’”Track 3: U2, “Zoo Station”Track 4: Peter Gabriel, “Steam”Track 5: Fine Young Cannibals, “She Drives Me Crazy”Track 6: George Harrison, “Cheer Down”Bonus tracksA few years back, I wrote about another song that similarly enchanted me as a child, perhaps more than any other: Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” I omitted that track from this playlist because I would prefer that you continue subscribing to this newsletter, but you can read that essay if you’re so inclined.I also love this 2014 column from my old colleague at Pitchfork, the brilliant Jayson Greene, about a song that captivated him at a very early age: Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”Plus, if you’re looking for new music, this week’s Playlist has fresh tracks from PinkPantheress, Rosalía, Romy and more.Don’t forget: your Pride songs!I’m still collecting your stories and song suggestions for Pride. So, tell me: Was there a certain song that first gave you the courage to come out? Or is there a particular track that, to you, embodies the spirit of Pride? Share your answers here so I can consider them for an upcoming edition of The Amplifier. More

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    A Russian Pianist Speaks Out Against the War From Home

    Polina Osetinskaya, a critic of the invasion who has stayed in Moscow even as the government cracks down on dissent, will play a Baroque program in New York.When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the pianist Polina Osetinskaya, who lives in Moscow, was distraught. She took to social media to describe a sense of “horror, shame and disgust,” and expressed solidarity with Ukraine, where she had often performed.But unlike many artists, activists and intellectuals, Osetinskaya, 47, decided to remain in Russia, where she lives with her three children, even as the Kremlin cracked down on free expression and made clear that any contradiction of the government’s statements on the invasion could be treated as a crime. She has faced consequences for her views — some concerts at state-run halls have been canceled, while others have been interrupted by the authorities.Osetinskaya, who was born in Moscow, says her international career has also suffered because of her Russian identity. She lost some overseas engagements after the invasion, she says, because presenters were nervous about featuring Russian citizens. As a result, she says that she often feels caught in the middle: seen suspiciously both inside and outside her country.Osetinskaya will perform a program of Bach, Handel, Purcell and Rameau at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Saturday, part of a five-city tour organized by the Cherry Orchard Festival, which promotes global cultural exchange. The program explores Baroque masterpieces featured in movies like “The Godfather” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”In between concerts and rehearsals this week, she discussed her opposition to the war, the role of music in healing and her decision to remain in Moscow. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve made the difficult decision to stay in Russia even as you criticize the war. Why have you continued to speak out?This is a huge tragedy that is happening in my soul every day. Some of my friends tell me, “Take this war out of your heart, it’s not your problem.” I think it’s our problem. A lot of us, in the beginning, didn’t think it would turn out this way. Being Russian now is kind of like being crucified in the eyes of a lot of people. But I know that there are Russians who are truly against the war and against what is happening.I want people to know that there are a lot of people like this in Russia. And they’ve been put in prison for their views, or for their likes on Facebook. And they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their freedom just for openly expressing their opinions. I want people to know that there are a lot of good Russians, if I may say so.“I was born in 1975 and remember the repression that was in the Soviet Union. And I have a feeling like I’m back in this time.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesAre you concerned about your own safety?I was born in 1975 and remember the repression that was in the Soviet Union. And I have a feeling like I’m back in this time. And that’s what makes me so sad. We have so many opportunities to grow, to be a part of a world community, and instead we’re still repeating our own story, and it’s not the best pages of our story.Right now, I’m playing private concerts in Moscow because big halls are closed for me. I truly hope that I won’t be put in jail for my views and opinions. Every time I talk openly about my feelings, I’m being watched. All I need now is to be able to work, to feed my children, and not to be afraid that I might be a political prisoner.In March, the authorities in Moscow interrupted a concert in which you and several other artists were playing works by Shostakovich and Mieczysław Weinberg.The police ran into the concert hall in the middle of the performance, and they said they got a call that there was a bomb inside. And they asked everyone to to leave. And everybody stepped out onto the rainy street, and the police went inside with the bomb-sniffing dogs. And the audience stayed with me — there under the rain — and nobody left. And when finally the police hadn’t found any bombs, obviously, we got back to the hall and we continued the concert.How did that experience make you feel?At that moment, I was completely broken because I had the feeling that I had been struggling for months for the possibility to play, and it was interrupted. But I remembered the people who have been thanking me for not leaving Russia. People write me letters telling me that they don’t feel abandoned because I’m here. Many of the artists have left.Did you have any hesitations about speaking out when the war first started?On the first day of the war, I woke up at 7 a.m. because I was making my children breakfast and taking them to school. And I opened my eyes and I saw a post on Facebook by my friend that said, “Oh God, No! No!” I immediately understood what was going on. I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I never had the idea that I could keep silent. I had to scream.What do you hope audiences will take away from your tour in the United States this week?Baroque music very much suits our time because it has so much drama, so much tragedy, so much power, so much consolation at the same time. It sounds like it was written just now. The music that I am playing makes us look into ourselves, feel empathy to anyone who is suffering right now, including ourselves, and gives us hope. That’s what we need probably most right now. When the war started, this program made so much sense. I want as many people as possible to hear this music.Do you think your words and music can have an impact?I feel a little bit useless. I have no power to stop the war. I have no power to do anything to change things. But playing music and touching the keyboard — that’s the only thing I can do to solve my own pain and to solve other people’s pain.It’s dangerous to say this right now, but I have to say that I love Russia. I can separate Russia — my country, my homeland, the beautiful people who live there — from the government and from the people who are making decisions. I can tell one from the other, but it seems to me that nobody else can.Life is not just black and white like my keyboard. It has a lot of colors and it has a lot of shades. We should remember people’s feelings and souls. More