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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Art Blakey

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      For a time in the late 1940s, Art Blakey went to live in West Africa. When he returned to the United States, he told reporters that his time there had given him a fresh appreciation for the music called jazz. This, he declared, was a Black American music — quite distinct from the folk forms he’d heard in Africa.Yet at the same time, Blakey’s experiences in the motherland — where he’d converted to Islam and taken the name Abdullah ibn Buhaina — filled him with a knowledge of jazz’s roots, allowing him to hone a style that was deeply polyrhythmic, powerful and directly related to the drum’s original role: communication. With that knowledge, he would change jazz history.“When he plays, his drums go beyond a beat,” Herb Nolan once wrote in a DownBeat profile. “They provide a whole tapestry of dynamics and color.”Blakey had started out playing piano on the Pittsburgh scene during the Great Depression, but after switching to the drums he stood out, joining the famous big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. Following his sojourn in Africa, he and other young Muslim musicians in New York formed their own large ensemble, the Seventeen Messengers. After that band broke up, he and the pianist Horace Silver started a smaller group, the Jazz Messengers; before long, Blakey was its sole leader, and with his drumming as the linchpin, the Messengers came to define the straight-ahead, “hard bop” sound of jazz in the 1950s and ’60s.Art Blakey at Cafe Bohemia in New York in the mid-1950s.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesBlakey kept the band together for decades, frequently replenishing its lineup with young talent, so that the Messengers became known as jazz’s premier finishing school. “Once he saw that you’d learned the lesson, it was time for you to go,” the saxophonist Bobby Watson recalled of his time as a Messenger in the 1970s and ’80s. He added, “He was one of the most positive people I ever met, and he loved young people. He used to say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being young — you just need some experience.’ And that’s what he provided.”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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      How Oasis Stayed on People’s Minds (by Fighting Online)

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      The band hasn’t played a show since 2009, but the quarreling Gallaghers kept their names in the news by mastering the art of the troll, on social media and beyond.Oasis is back, but in some senses it never left.The Manchester band, whose anthemic songs and sharp-tongued antics helped define the 1990s Britpop era, will return to the stage Friday in Cardiff, Wales, kicking off a global stadium tour. These will be the first Oasis shows since 2009, when the guitarist and primary songwriter Noel Gallagher quit the group, proclaiming that he could no longer stand to work with Liam Gallagher, the lead singer. The brothers, long known for their brawling, have not performed together since, yet they’ve rarely ceded the spotlight.“They definitely successfully kept themselves in the public eye during the whole breakup period,” said Simon Vozick-Levinson, Rolling Stone’s deputy music editor.The key to their continued relevance hasn’t just been enduring songs like “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova,” but an uncanny ability to keep their famous bickering top of mind using modern tools that didn’t exist when the band’s 1994 debut arrived: social media and blogs.In the absence of Oasis, the Gallaghers released solo music, but also a barrage of insults and barbs via Liam’s eccentric social media posts and Noel’s dryly provocative interviews, all of it breathlessly documented, aggregated and amplified by British tabloids and the online music press. For listeners who discovered the band after it broke up, this constant hum of comedy and conflict has been a glimpse of the Oasis experience — a more potent distillation of the group’s essence than musical offshoots like Beady Eye and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.Noel Gallagher has mostly reserved his frank remarks for interviews, naming his price for an Oasis reunion or doling out insults off the cuff.Luke Brennan/Getty Images“The only little bits you could get of Oasis — it was their Twitter presence, it was their viral silliness, just their boneheaded attacks at each other online,” said Aidan O’Connell, 26, drummer for the Chicago indie-rock band Smut.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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      He’s Ringo. And Nobody Else Is.

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      In the summer of 1985, Ringo Starr’s friend and fellow drummer Max Weinberg flew to England for the former Beatle’s 45th birthday.Though the pair had become chummy since meeting five years earlier in Los Angeles, backstage at a concert Weinberg was playing with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Weinberg remained somewhat intimidated by his boyhood hero in the early stages of their friendship. (The ever-amicable Starr offered advice: “Sometimes it helps if you call me Richie.”)While celebrating at Tittenhurst Park — the sprawling estate outside London that had previously belonged to John Lennon and Yoko Ono — Starr turned to his younger friend, then 34, and said something that remains an inside joke between them: “Well, Max, I’m going to be 45. Doesn’t that make you feel old?”That line is classic Ringo — a dryly clever, double-take koan from rock ’n’ roll’s Yogi Berra, the man whose tossed off “Ringo-isms” became immortalized in Beatles song titles like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”Each year, Starr would update the line for Weinberg, until its recitation became something of an annual tradition. “I imagine if I was speaking to him on July 7,” Weinberg said in a phone interview, “him saying to me, ‘I’m 85.’ And it doesn’t sound so old anymore.”Ringo Starr will be the first Beatle to turn 85, and like his surviving bandmate Paul McCartney, he never retired. 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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      Jury in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial Reaches Verdict on All Counts but Racketeering Conspiracy

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      The jury will keep deliberating on a racketeering conspiracy charge in the morning after saying there were “unpersuadable opinions on both sides.”A jury in Manhattan reached a partial verdict on Tuesday in the federal case against the music mogul Sean Combs, but it did not announce its decision because it was deadlocked on a final charge of racketeering conspiracy. The jury left for the night and will return to continue deliberating on Wednesday morning.The jury, comprising eight men and four women, said there were members “with unpersuadable opinions on both sides” on the racketeering count. After deliberating for more than 12 hours, they reached a verdict on the four other counts in the case, two each of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his lawyers have denied that any of his sexual activities with the women in the trial were nonconsensual.After the jurors alerted the court to the partial verdict at about 4:05 p.m. on Tuesday, Judge Arun Subramanian, who is presiding over the case, brought them into the courtroom and encouraged them to continue their discussions.“I ask at this time that you keep deliberating,” Judge Subramanian said.He reread the panel an excerpt from the jury instructions that said “no juror should surrender his or her conscientious beliefs for the purpose of returning a unanimous verdict.”At that point, the jury decided to conclude its deliberations for the day and return on Wednesday at 9 a.m.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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      Judge Dismisses Jay-Z’s Suit Against Lawyer He Said Extorted Him

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      Lawyers for the rapper had accused Tony Buzbee of making false assault claims. Another federal suit Jay-Z has filed against Mr. Buzbee and his client continues.A judge in Los Angeles on Monday allowed for the dismissal of a months-old lawsuit filed by Jay-Z, in which the rapper had attempted to sue a lawyer he said had tried to blackmail him with false claims of sexual misconduct.In November, lawyers for Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter), brought a suit that accused the lawyer, Tony Buzbee, of extortion, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He sued after Mr. Buzbee, who has filed a number of lawsuits that accuse Sean Combs of sexual assault, reached out to explore a complaint from an anonymous accuser who said that Mr. Carter and Mr. Combs sexually abused her.Mr. Buzbee subsequently filed suit accusing Mr. Carter of raping the anonymous accuser with Mr. Combs when she was 13.That lawsuit accusing Mr. Carter of sexual misconduct was later withdrawn by the woman. Now Mr. Carter’s suit against Mr. Buzbee in Los Angeles has been dismissed.Still ongoing is a separate lawsuit filed by Mr. Carter against Mr. Buzbee in federal court in Alabama, the home state of the anonymous woman who initially sued Mr. Carter on sexual assault grounds.Mr. Carter’s lawyers have asserted in their filings that the woman and her lawyers knew the allegations they were making were false but proceeded with the claim anyway. In the Los Angeles case, Mr. Carter’s lawyers have said he received a letter from Mr. Buzbee threatening to “immediately file” a “public lawsuit” against him unless he agreed to resolve the matter through mediation for money.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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      10 Songs of Rebellion and Defiance for the Fourth

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      Tracy Chapman, Björk, Public Enemy and more songs for rabble-rousing and celebrating revolution.Tracy ChapmanAmy Sussman/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Jon Pareles here, chief pop critic, dropping by The Amplifier while Lindsay is on leave. The Fourth of July is just a few days away. And its celebratory fireworks and parades, lest we forget, commemorate a manifesto of principled rejection of authoritarian rule, which became the foundation of a successful revolution. It’s a good moment to crank up some songs about defiance, rebellion, justice and collective action. Here are a few for starters.Rip the mic, rip the stage, rip the system,JonListen along while you read.1. Tracy Chapman: ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’“Poor people gonna rise up and take what’s theirs,” Tracy Chapman predicted on her 1988 debut album. With a churchy organ looming behind her strummed guitar chords, she envisioned economic discontent that could build from a whisper to a movement — and she welcomed it.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube2. The Isley Brothers: ‘Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2’Frustration energized the funk in this 1975 hit by the Isley Brothers. Tautly contained rhythm guitars and pithy drumming back up the brothers’ growls and falsettos as they rail against red tape, against people who say their “music’s too loud” and generally against a barnyard profanity that was still a rarity in that era of R&B. For the last two minutes of a five-minute track, they bear down directly on their message, vehemently repeating, “Fight it, fight the power!”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube3. Public Enemy: ‘Fight the Power’In 1989, Public Enemy latched onto the Isley Brothers’ title and refrain for “Fight the Power,” which appeared on the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and on Public Enemy’s album “Fear of a Black Planet.” Chuck D declares, “From the heart, it’s a start, a work of art / To revolutionize, make a change,” over the Bomb Squad’s dense, deep funk production — a bristling pileup of samples from James Brown and many others. Decades later, it still sounds uncompromising.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 About Bob Vylan, the Band at the Center of a Scandal

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      British police are investigating and the band lost its U.S. visas after a member called for “death” to Israel’s army at a festival.Before this weekend, Bob Vylan was a rising punk band with about 273,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — hardly a household name.Now, after leading chants of “Death, death to the I.D.F.” in reference to Israel’s army at the Glastonbury festival in England, it has become punk rock’s latest notorious act.On Monday, British police opened a criminal investigation into the chant, shortly after Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Jewish groups condemned it as hate speech.In the United States, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said that the State Department had revoked visas for Bob Vylan’s members, meaning the band can no longer play a planned U.S. tour.Despite all the attention now focused on the group, many people had never heard of it before. Here’s what you need to know.Who is in Bob Vylan and what’s its music like?A British punk-rap duo known for fast-paced, politically provocative songs, the group uses pseudonyms and deliberately obfuscates other biographical details. The singer goes by Bobby Vylan and the drummer by Bobbie Vylan.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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      Neil Sedaka Executed One of Pop’s Great Comebacks. Now, He Just Plays.

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      After the man in a dark cashmere sweater and tortoise shell glasses sat down at a piano and leaned into the microphone, his first words were a declaration: “Sedaka’s back … again!”It was late March and the lounge at Vitello’s — an old-school Italian restaurant in the heart of Studio City, Calif. — was packed for a show by the irrepressible 86-year-old singer and songwriter Neil Sedaka. He had booked a series of semiregular Sunday night appearances here to mark the golden anniversary of his professional resurrection.Fifty years ago, Sedaka completed one of the most remarkable comebacks in pop music. A smiling star of the teen idol era, he’d made his name with run of hummable hits — “Oh Carol,” “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” — but his bubbly tunes, sung in a high tenor, were soon swept away, first by the arrival of the Beatles and then by the turmoil of the 1960s.In the difficult years that followed, Sedaka lost his fortune, his record deal and his sense of self. At his lowest, he would walk down the street and people would ask: “Didn’t you used to be Neil Sedaka?”Neil Sedaka gave up his classical pursuits after hearing the Penguins’ 1954 hit “Earth Angel,” and instead learned his trade as a pop songwriter at the Brill Building.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIn the early ’70s, Sedaka exiled himself to England, where he gradually rebuilt his career, playing small clubs as he rediscovered his muse and a new group of collaborators. A fellow piano man and avowed fan, Elton John, eventually midwifed his return to the American charts in 1975, helping release the hit LP “Sedaka’s Back,” which has just been reissued in a deluxe vinyl package.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