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    City in Mexico Bans Performances of Songs With Misogynistic Lyrics

    The city of Chihuahua said it would impose hefty fines on bands that perform songs with lyrics that “promote violence against women.”Fed up with persistent violence, officials in the city of Chihuahua in northern Mexico approved a ban last week forbidding musical acts from performing songs with lyrics that degrade women.Mayor Marco Bonilla of Chihuahua said in an video update last week that the law banned the performance of songs that “promote violence against women” or encourage their discrimination, marginalization or exclusion.Mr. Bonilla said that those who violate the ban could face fines ranging from 674,000 pesos to 1.2 million pesos, or between about $39,000 and $71,000.The City Council approved the ban unanimously on Wednesday amid a rise in killings of women across Mexico in recent years, and as Chihuahua, a city of about 940,000 residents, is struggling with its own cases of violence against women. Recently, Mr. Bonilla said, about seven out of 10 calls to 911 in Chihuahua have involved cases of domestic violence, particularly against women.“Violence against women has reached levels that we could consider like a pandemic,” he said. “We can’t allow this to happen, and we also can’t allow this to be normalized.”It was unclear from his message who would impose the fines or how the ban on misogynistic lyrics would be enforced. Money raised from the fines will be channeled to a women’s institute in Chihuahua and a confidential women’s shelter, said Blanca Patricia Ulate Bernal, a Chihuahua city councilwoman who proposed the ban.Ms. Ulate Bernal said in a post on Facebook last week that the law will apply to concerts and events in the city that require a municipal permit. She added that the ban would help ensure that women have the right “to enjoy a life free of violence.”Mr. Bonilla, Ms. Ulate Bernal and other council members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The lyrics ban was passed about a month after Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, criticized songs known as corridos tumbados, or trap ballads, whose lyrics glorify drug smugglers and violence.“We’re never going to censor anyone,” Mr. López Obrador said at a news conference in June. “They can sing what they want, but we’re not going to stay quiet.”The approval of the ban is not the first time the city of Chihuahua has taken a strong stance against the performance of certain songs. Citing high levels of drug violence, Chihuahua banned the long-running band Los Tigres del Norte in 2012 after a concert during which the group performed three songs known as narcocorridos, which celebrate the exploits of drug traffickers. The city also fined the concert organizers 20,000 pesos, or about $1,600, at the time. More

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    Can a Rapper Change Italy’s Mind About Migrants?

    In mid-March, weeks after a ship wrecked on Italy’s Calabrian coast, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea were still releasing ashore what remained: planks of wood, engine parts, children’s shoes, bodies. The season of drowning migrants had come early this year.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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    5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Miles Davis’s Electric Period

    Navigate the trumpeter’s snaky, endless grooves with picks from Flying Lotus, Cindy Blackman Santana and Terence Blanchard, among other musicians, writers and critics.For the past year, The New York Times has been asking musicians, writers and scholars to share the music they’d play for a friend to get them into jazz — one artist, instrument and subgenre at a time. We’ve covered Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, New Orleans music, jazz vocalists and much more.Now, we’re turning to the man known as the Prince of Darkness, who gave us the “Birth of the Cool” and never stopped redefining it: Miles Davis. Since the trumpeter’s shape-shifting career encompassed so many phases and styles, we’ve decided to focus on just one: the era known as “Electric Miles,” starting in 1968 and continuing for more than 20 years, when he embraced electric instruments and stubborn, snaky grooves, in the process basically drawing up a blueprint for the genre now known as jazz-rock fusion.“I have to change,” Davis once said. “It’s like a curse.” And as he changed, so did American music. For much of the 1950s and basically all of the ’60s, any time Davis released an album, the center of gravity in jazz shifted a bit.In the late 1960s, urged on by his young wife, the singer Betty (Mabry) Davis, and impressed by funk and rock musicians like Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, the trumpeter disbanded his acoustic quintet and put aside his tailored business suits. (It bears noting that his marriage to Betty was part of a toxic pattern: He frequently drew creative inspiration from the women in his life, but he was often physically abusive and ruthlessly controlling, as he was toward her.) With Betty as a kind of creative adviser, he bought a psychedelic wardrobe, started running his trumpet through a wah-wah pedal — like Hendrix’s guitar — and convened enormously long jam sessions with hordes of musicians: With multiple guitarists, keyboardists, drummers, bassists and percussionists playing together, he would build collective improvisations that took on lives of their own.About that: When you’re dealing with Electric Miles, you aren’t going to get very far in five minutes. So we’ve got to beg a little forgiveness for the name of this piece. But if you’ve got a little more than five, read on to see the picks of musicians, critics and writers who share a deep love for Davis’s electric period; a playlist is at the bottom of the article, and you can leave your own favorites in the comments. We’re sure you’ll find yourself happily immersed in Davis’s “brew.”◆ ◆ ◆Kalamu Ya Salaam, poet“Mademoiselle Mabry (Miss Mabry)”And the music cried Miles. So much was going on. Many of us turned significant corners during the decade after M.L.K. was murdered, April 1968. “Filles de Kilimanjaro” was the gone song. Nothing would any longer be the same. Miles went electric. Clothes and all. The concept was new directions. Miles responding to the killing fields. Post-funeral drug. After this, he had no more memorable bands. (Most of us could not even name the new members — only one great musician, Kenny Garrett, would graduate from that post-60s academy de Miles.) But, oh my, Miss Mabry had us enraptured. This was a way to meditate, to think about what was unthinkable, a new era, a realm most of us did not see coming. Miles knew the music had to change because the times they were a-changing, and the sound of the “Filles” album in 1968 was a lonely goodbye. If you listen to this late at night with the lights out, you will be able to deal with both the death of what was and the birth of things to come.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Cindy Blackman Santana, drummer“Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”“Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” from “Bitches Brew” (1970), has got a really slinky, cool, funky groove that’s very inviting. It’s easy for people to feel where it’s at. I love the way the song progresses and starts to fill in, with the guitar and the keyboards. And as Miles develops into playing inside of that groove, you hear that big, gorgeous trumpet sound that everybody’s used to. All of the phrasing is just so meaningful and so heartfelt. When Miles first heard Tony Williams’s Lifetime, he wanted to make that band his band — but that wasn’t going to fly with Tony, so Miles took the guitarist, John McLaughlin, and the organist, Larry Young, and he recorded with them. A lot of people don’t give Tony the credit he deserves for that beginning. But at the end of the day, Miles had the openness of mind and the foresight to see how incredible that was, and to take his version of that and keep progressing with his ideas.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Flying Lotus, electronic musician“Lonely Fire”“Lonely Fire” happens to be my favorite Miles Davis tune. People always describe Miles as sounding like the voice of “the outsider” or “the loner,” and this track breathes life into those labels, a testament to his unparalleled spirit. I’ve listened to this song countless times through many phases of my life and moods, and I still don’t know what kind of configuration it takes to create a moment like this. And to be honest, I kinda don’t want to know. To me, it’s magic.I hadn’t thought of it until now — but this song really does sound like what it’s like to stare into a fire. For a moment, nothing else exists. There’s that same feeling of being lost and suspended in time, mesmerized by some destructive beauty.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Wadada Leo Smith, trumpeter and composer“Prelude, Pt. 1”My favorite pieces from Miles’s electric era are the live recordings he made in Japan in 1975 for the “Agharta” and “Pangaea” albums. The band develops a certain kind of tapestry that allows each performer to have individuality, but measured by the whole: Everything is equal. And the only thing that really stands out from that tapestry are the comments that Miles Davis makes on his horn. In this era, he chose to make shorter phrases than he had in his acoustical music — not disconnected from each other, but just shorter phrases with more space in between them — and he blurred the palette that dealt with tone or pitch. With the guitars and electric keyboards and all those extra components in play, he would shape whatever was coming out of the band based off what I would call his unspoken philosophy of what the music should be. It would all depend on whether he looked at somebody, or he played something, or he changed the mute on his trumpet, or he went over to the keyboards. All of those things were the components of his composition.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Lakecia Benjamin, saxophonist“Human Nature” (live)This cover of Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” was actually the first music of Miles Davis’s that I heard. I had a teacher who was like, “You guys like Michael Jackson? Michael Jackson and jazz are the same.” And we were like, yeah right. But then they played us Miles’s version of “Human Nature.” Because of the time period, I knew that song really well, and to hear somebody so famous playing that melody on a trumpet was really inspiring. I can’t tell you how motivational it was. I started exploring videos online and saw all the different ways he might solo on that song; this also was the first time I saw how Miles dressed and how he looked, how he interacted with his band, how the audience interacted with him. An instrumentalist operating at a rock-star level was something that I had never seen before in my life.On live performances, like this one from 1991, there would be a huge Kenny Garrett solo at the end of the tune, and that helped me understand the role that the alto saxophone was playing in a modern era, too. We all know Kenny Garrett is kind of like the god of the alto, and this was my first experience of knowing who he is: completely ripping “Human Nature.”Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Terence Blanchard, trumpeter“Filles de Kilimanjaro”“Filles de Kilimanjaro,” to me, marks the start of the fusion period in Miles’s career. His moment in time was filled with experimentation, so his being open to new sounds and approaches was not a shock. Using those electric elements seems to come from a need to find new sounds and colors. I think what made it so useful is how their use didn’t result in him watering down his musical approach, it only enhanced it. Which reminded all of us how the music was always the most important thing, not just the use of those elements. Miles Davis’s entire career was based on a pursuit for truth and discovery. With his electric period, this constant pursuit of new ideas and sounds brought us an entire genre of music.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Teebs, electronic musician“In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time”“In a Silent Way” is just magical. The song’s beginning gives me a sense of sustained stillness within the air before moving into a full groove and returning back again into a still space. I find a lot of value in spacing and timing in music, and Miles seems to capture these sensibilities with purpose. This record, from 1969, was around the beginning of his step into more electric sounds, and I enjoy how confidently it was made. I am forever grateful for this song and the records that followed.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Elena Pinderhughes, flutist“He Loved Him Madly”On “He Loved Him Madly,” a tribute to Duke Ellington from 1974, you can hear every musician really searching: taking their time, searching for the collective sound and vision. There’s so much patience, it’s almost meditative, even though it’s so electric: three guitars, and then all these different layers of electricity on top of them. At many times, you wouldn’t even know how many people are on the song, but if you listen and break it down, it’s amazing. It grows into this groove; you start getting this beautiful alto flute moment with the guitars, and then around halfway — which is 16 minutes in! — Miles comes in with his perfect trumpet voice and opens it up again completely.“He Loved Him Madly” encapsulates one of my favorite things about Miles, which is that he’s so intentional with everything. Every note and every change that’s happening with the rhythm section matters to how it feels collectively, with this simple slow groove that’s almost 30 minutes long. And then in the last section, you get a little more edge — that grittier, funkier side that comes out — and it’s just the most incredible evolution. For anyone that’s not as familiar with Davis’s work, I think it would be rewarding to just sit with the evolution of this one song, sit with the intention and the patience that it takes to create something like this.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Tony Bolden, Black Studies scholar“Yesternow”While listening recently to Maurice White playing drums on “The Mighty Quinn,” Ramsey Lewis’s 1968 cover of the Bob Dylan classic made popular by Manfred Mann, I heard inklings of jazz-funk. (Of course, White became better known as the founder and lead singer of Earth, Wind & Fire.) However, Miles Davis’s 1971 album “Jack Johnson” is an early example of genuine jazz-funk. Recorded in 1970, “Jack Johnson” features Davis’s characteristically pensive sound on trumpet, while Michael Henderson’s head-nodding bass lines are classic funk. Also notable are John McLaughlin’s bluesy licks on guitar and the actor Brock Peters’s interpretation of Jack Johnson’s unreconstructed Blackness (heard in a voice-over at the end of the 25-minute “Yesternow”). The album foreshadows Davis’s increasing fascination with funk and its broader impact on Black music and culture in the 1970s.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“Hannibal”Hear me out on this. With Davis’s 1980s stuff, there will always be things you need to get over. Let’s call it the “Law & Order”-theme aesthetic, for short, and leave it at that. But if some of the choices on “Hannibal” can feel superficial (Marcus Miller’s slap-happy bass, the strings-adjacent synth sound, the misfit steel pan), they also make the track’s major achievement all the more impressive: It preserves the sense of darkness and danger that has always run just below the surface through Davis’s best work. You can’t miss how tightly plotted and produced this tune is — it’s far from his sprawling funk jams of the 1970s — but it still bristles and skulks mysteriously. You can’t pin it down. “Hannibal” comes from “Amandla,” a masterful 1989 LP whose name, meaning “power” in Zulu, expressed solidarity with the revolutionaries fighting apartheid in South Africa. Let your expectations go, and it’ll win you over.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Harmony Holiday, poet“Two Faced”Miles Davis is the “hero with a thousand faces,” the one Joseph Campbell reveals as the muse of all myths and legends that arrive in his realm, beyond the West, beyond life and afterlife, beyond evil and virtue, what Ellington might call “beyond category.” On the sessions that would become his album “Water Babies” (1976), he gave us two of those faces, halved to the precision of divine union and returning as one. “Two Faced” as in Gemini, along with fellow heroes who attempt to pierce the electroacoustic farce like Kendrick Lamar, like Tupac, like Ye — like stars, like years, like numerals. At times they draw their own blood in search of sound’s life force. It makes logical sense that this album, composed of outtakes from “Nefertiti” and “In a Silent Way,” would also harbor what I believe is one of the only autobiographical moments in Miles’s catalog. He tells on himself for the 18-minute relay between ballad and blues, upbeat and adagio. He admits the excess of vision that he cannot help, retraces it slowly, retracts it with urgency, back and forth in perfect and signature ambivalence. He once said he played ballads so well he had to stop playing them, to get better, or to master himself. On “Two Faced,” recorded in 1968, he blurs a ballad so well you think he succeeded; he hides his restrained saunter in the piano’s frenetic sprint. He takes himself back. In a bit of humor, the album also has a song called “Capricorn.” He knows his foils. He knows himself.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Graham Haynes, trumpeter“Lonely Fire”I remember something Miles said in an interview, right around the time this piece was released: “Don’t write about the music. The music speaks for itself!” I’ve always agreed with this opinion, particularly with Miles’s music and particularly from this period. So, with that in mind, I’m hoping that Miles doesn’t get too angry with me here, wherever he is. “Lonely Fire” is a beautiful piece of music. The performance is as fresh today as it was in 1974, when it was released. The orchestration is something that classes in conservatories need to make a part of their curriculums. The song is essentially a sketch. The melody is played by Miles several times, then Wayne Shorter on soprano sax, then Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet, then back to Miles, who keeps embellishing more. There are no solos. In that way it is also like the Wayne Shorter piece “Nefertiti,” because there are no “solos,” only the melody, over and over with embellishments. The choice of colors with the rhythm section is stellar, with sitar, tamboura, Fender Rhodes piano, bass, drums and percussion. Miles’s sound here is hauntingly beautiful. In an interview Greg Tate did with Wayne Shorter several years ago, Wayne referred to Miles’s trumpet sound as “Excalibur.” Here we see why. This music is beyond any words I can think to give it. I would give it 10 stars!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆David Renard, Times senior editor“Rated X”It’s a little perverse to choose a song where Miles Davis plays the organ, not the trumpet. That alone would set “Rated X” apart, even on an album (“Get Up With It”) brimming with experiments and stylistic shifts. But “Rated X” delivers a singular jolt, one of those “this was recorded in which decade?” moments. (It’s the ’70s.) The drums sound more programmed than played — crisp and frantically precise, completely modern — and they’re both a backbone and a destabilizing force, cutting off abruptly into silence and pulling the rug out from under the droning organ, only to drop back in just as quickly. Propelled by galloping bass and heavily wah-wah’d guitar, the track sets a mood that’s anxious and tense but exhilarating, an unsettling rush into the future.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Jlin, electronic musician“Pharaoh’s Dance”I have so many Miles Davis favorites, but one track that just does it for me every time is “Pharaoh’s Dance,” from his album “Bitches Brew,” which is insanely genius. “Pharaoh’s Dance” for me just screams the word “fulfilled.” I can hear how in-tune Miles is with himself each time I play this. He never misses a chance to play, but also never overplays his chance, either. Miles has this striking beauty of balance he creates with his eclectic approach each time he decides to pop in and out of the track. It’s never the same; he never repeats a phrase or sequence.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ibrahim Maalouf, trumpeter“Turnaround”The first time I listened to this box set, “The Complete On the Corner Sessions,” I was in my 30s. I had just played with Marcus Miller on the French Riviera, and I felt the urge to revisit all of Miles Davis’s work. I realized that the entire electric part had eluded me. It was “On the Corner” and specifically “Turnaround” that helped me understand his approach. His desire never to be bound by the norms that often turn success in jazz into a curse. He embraced his history while resonating with the evolution of his time. This album, for me, is the pursuit of that sound. And on “Turnaround,” he found it.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆George Grella Jr., music critic“Sivad”One of the vital revelations about music came to me as a teenager, sitting in a friend’s basement, listening to his parents’ LPs. The move from Miles’s quintet albums to “Live-Evil” (1971) was drastic; the reward was understanding that groove and details of space, placement and articulation were profound and masterful. Even more, during the heyday of album-rock radio and the singer-songwriter stars, it was thrilling to feel music that wasn’t about anything but its own sound, saying so much more than words could. And that the sensuality of music in the body could carry Miles’s rich, complex intellect.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆ More

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    Dancers Accuse Lizzo of Harassment and Hostile Work Environment in Lawsuit

    In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, three dancers claim that touring with the Grammy winner meant working in an “overtly sexual atmosphere” that subjected them to harassment.Three of Lizzo’s former dancers filed a lawsuit against her on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, accusing the Grammy-winning singer and the captain of her dance team of creating a hostile work environment while performing concerts on her Special Tour this year.The lawsuit, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by the plaintiffs’ law firm, said the dancers had been “exposed to an overtly sexual atmosphere that permeated their workplace,” which included “outings where nudity and sexuality were a focal point,” it said. The suit was first reported by NBC.The defendants include Lizzo, using her full name Melissa Jefferson instead of her stage name; her production company, Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc.; and Shirlene Quigley, the tour’s dance captain. It does not specify whether the singer was aware of the plaintiffs’ allegations linked to Ms. Quigley.The suit alleges that Lizzo and Ms. Quigley were involved in several episodes that lawyers for the three dancers said amounted to sexual and religious harassment and weight shaming, among other allegations.The suit alleges that Ms. Quigley “made it her mission to preach” Christianity to the dancers, and fixated on virginity, while Lizzo sexually harassed them.On one occasion while at a nightclub in Amsterdam, the lawsuit says, Lizzo began inviting employees to touch nude performers and handle dildos and bananas used in their performances.Out of fear of retaliation, a dancer eventually “acquiesced” to touching the breast of a nude female performer despite repeatedly expressing no interest in doing so, the suit says.Representatives for Lizzo and her production company did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.Dancers on Lizzo’s “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” reality show last year. Arianna Davis, bottom right, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesTwo of the plaintiffs, Arianna Davis and Crystal Williams, began performing with Lizzo after competing on her reality television show on Amazon Prime, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” in 2021. The show was an opportunity to give plus-size dancers representation, Lizzo said at the time. Ms. Davis and Ms. Williams were fired in the spring of 2023, the lawsuit says.Separately, a third plaintiff, Noelle Rodriguez, was hired in May 2021 to perform in Lizzo’s “Rumors” music video and remained on as part of her dance team. According to the lawsuit, Ms. Rodriguez resigned shortly after Ms. Davis and Ms. Williams had been fired.Some of the allegations seemed to take aim at Lizzo’s reputation for championing body positivity and inclusivity.“The stunning nature of how Lizzo and her management team treated their performers seems to go against everything Lizzo stands for publicly,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ron Zambrano, said in a statement on Monday. Privately, he said, Lizzo “weight-shames her dancers and demeans them in ways that are not only illegal but absolutely demoralizing.”Some of Lizzo’s statements to the dancers gave Ms. Davis, who was diagnosed with a binge eating disorder, the impression that she had to “explain her weight gain and disclose intimate personal details about her life in order to keep her job,” the suit says.Since her breakout hit “Truth Hurts” dominated charts in 2019, Lizzo has popularized “feel-good music” and self-love and has celebrated diversity in all forms by churning out empowerment anthems, introducing a size-inclusive shapewear line and racking up millions of views on social media.She won this year’s Grammy for record of the year for “About Damn Time.”Diana Reddy, an assistant professor at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, said that allegations that fall outside legally protected categories could undermine Lizzo’s body-positive message and “could certainly encourage a settlement.”Proving a hostile work environment in the unconventional entertainment industry is difficult, she said, so the plaintiffs’ lawyers could be hoping for a settlement. “Employment discrimination plaintiffs don’t fare particularly well in court,” Ms. Reddy said. More

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    Mahogany L. Browne’s Love Letter to Hip-Hop

    It was a clear black night, a clear white moon. Warren G, “Regulate” (1994)Originally appearing on the soundtrack of the Tupac Shakur film “Above the Rim,” this song is built around a sample of Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).” I’m looking like a star when you see me make a wish. […] More

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    8 Songs About August

    The dog days are over. Here are some tunes to celebrate.Florence + the Machine, escaping the dog days.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,Happy August. It’s the month of out-of-office auto replies, finally breaking heat waves, and — if the songs about August are to believed, anyway — waning summer romances.After an especially brutal July, we’re finally enjoying some pleasant summer weather here in New York. I’m celebrating by going for runs in nearby parks, venturing into parts of my apartment that are not directly in front of the air-conditioner, and, of course, putting together a playlist in honor of this lazy, hazy, hopefully milder month.Songs about August tend to be languid, wistful and suffused with the feeling that Lana Del Rey once named, with appropriate vagueness, “that summertime sadness.” Some of us look forward to summer all year, but by August that sense of too-much-dessert can set in, leaving us secretly pining for the first rustles of September — or at least that unseasonal cold wind in August that sets the scene for Van Morrison’s entry on this playlist.In addition to Van the Man, today’s selections include a weepy country standard, a detour into early psych-pop from a once and future Bee Gee and yet another Taylor Swift song about the cruelty of summer. (Not that one, though.) The dog days are over. Maybe not yet for good, but at least for now, and I’d say that’s reason enough to rejoice.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Carole King: “The First Day in August”“On the first day in August, I wanna wake up by your side/After sleeping with you on the last night in July,” Carole King begins this gorgeous ballad from her 1972 album, “Rhymes and Reasons.” A chill of melancholy quivers through the piano-driven song, but the resonant yearning in King’s voice provides warmth. (Listen on YouTube)2. Taylor Swift: “August”The dreamy, anguished eighth track on Swift’s 2020 album “Folklore” has become a feverishly beloved fan favorite among Swifties (and even some Swift skeptics). “August” is part of a trio of “Folklore” songs that depict a love triangle from different characters’ perspectives, and given that it’s told from the vantage point of “the other woman,” it’s the most gloriously melodramatic of the three: “So much for summer love and saying ‘us,’” Swift sings, “’cause you weren’t mine to lose.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Waxahatchee: “Summer of Love”Though Katie Crutchfield doesn’t specifically mention August on this acoustic lament from “Ivy Tripp,” her 2015 album as Waxahatchee, something about its rueful sense of nostalgia evokes the pathos of summer’s end. “I can’t make out a face in the picture of palm trees,” she sings in a keening wail. “The summer of love is a photo of us.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Rilo Kiley: “August”Now, from Crutchfield to a band that inspired her so profoundly that she has a tattoo of its second album: Rilo Kiley. Though Jenny Lewis sang many of the Los Angeles group’s best-known songs, the guitarist Blake Sennett takes the lead on the gently buoyant “August,” from its 2001 debut album, “Take Offs and Landings.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Van Morrison: “Cold Wind in August”Released to high expectations in 1977, Van Morrison’s “Period of Transition” was, as its title suggests, a bit of a departure from his more blistering, mystical albums of the early 1970s. An undeniable highlight is its closing track, the soulful “Cold Wind in August,” which features inspired piano playing from the album’s co-producer, Dr. John. (Listen on YouTube)6. Robin Gibb: “August October”In 1969, Robin Gibb briefly quit the Bee Gees and embarked upon a solo career. A year later, he released the baroque, delightfully strange album “Robin’s Reign,” his only solo LP of the 1970s. The mournful “August October,” an ode to the stasis of heartbreak, opens the album, and was later covered by a huge fan of “Robin’s Reign,” none other than Elton John. (Listen on YouTube)7. Waylon Jennings: “The Thirty Third of August”The country singer-songwriter Mickey Newbury penned this down-and-out tear-jerker, but Waylon Jennings was the first to make it more widely known, when he recorded it for his 1970 album, “Waylon.” Countless other artists have covered it since, though if you want to hear what is perhaps the most gut-wrenching rendition, check out David Allan Coe’s. (Listen on YouTube)8. Florence + the Machine: “Dog Days Are Over”Well, let’s at least hope. (Listen on YouTube)Meet me behind the mall,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“8 Songs About August” track listTrack 1: Carole King, “The First Day in August”Track 2: Taylor Swift, “August”Track 3: Waxahatchee, “Summer of Love”Track 4: Rilo Kiley, “August”Track 5: Van Morrison, “Cold Wind in August”Track 6: Robin Gibb, “August October”Track 7: Waylon Jennings, “The Thirty Third of August”Track 8: Florence + the Machine, “Dog Days Are Over”Bonus TracksPour one out for one of my first favorite movie stars, Pee-wee Herman. Preferably: “Tequila!”Speaking of movies, if you’re looking for a reason to enjoy some theater air-conditioning that is not that pair of summer blockbusters you have almost certainly heard about, I’d highly recommend “Afire,” the latest from the German director Christian Petzold, who happens to be one of my favorite working filmmakers. “Afire” is like a bleaker and more biting Éric Rohmer movie — just as many enviable summer-vacation vibes, plus some dark twists. (The Times’s chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, liked it too.) More

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    At Bayreuth, the Work on Wagner’s Operas Is Never Done

    At the festival that Wagner founded, a new “Parsifal” looks different depending on how you see it, and a workshop model refreshes revivals.After the enormous risk of its beginning, the Bayreuth Festival in Germany was for a long time a place where the stagings of Richard Wagner’s operas were encased in amber.When his four-opera “Ring,” which inaugurated the festival in 1876, was brought back for the first time 20 years later, Wagner’s widow, Cosima, stuck with a vision essentially identical to the one her husband had overseen. “Parsifal” was even more static: After premiering at Bayreuth in 1882, it returned there as an unchanging ritual until 1934.But in Bayreuth’s modern era, perpetual workshopping prevails. New productions usually play for five summers before cycling out, and the expectation is that directors will keep futzing through that time. Sets change; sequences are adjusted and eliminated; details are added and subtracted.Now, it’s Valentin Schwarz’s turn to tinker.His “Ring” opened last summer. It was a caustic, contemporary-dress interpretation that compressed the work’s sprawling settings to a single estate and eliminated the mythological magic, the dragons, potions and instant transformations. The “Ride of the Valkyries” was a waiting room of wealthy women strutting in cosmetic surgery bandages. The world-ending conflagration Wagner intended for the ending was a fire-free anticlimax at the bottom of an empty pool.On Monday, though, as the sweeping music of that ending played, a backdrop lowered to reveal the theatrical lighting behind, and the body of Wotan, the king of the gods, was seen hanging from the grid, dripping wet — the death of divinity, “Sunset Boulevard”-style. It was a fresh addition to the staging, if still something of a letdown, a mild finale after 15 keyed-up hours.There were more tweaks to this “Ring.” The kidnapping and hoarding of children — an obsession with youthfulness; a sense of violence passed through generations — is one of Schwarz’s themes. So it makes sense for girls we saw drawing in “Das Rheingold” to now return to pay their respects at a coffin in “Die Walküre.” The hard-partying decadence of the characters in “Götterdämmerung” is even harsher this year, and the suicide of a goddess earlier in the “Ring” is more strongly telegraphed in the final moments of “Rheingold.” The child of Brünnhilde and Siegfried, not in Wagner’s libretto, died in last year’s version but now escapes the apocalyptic finale.You can tell Schwarz intended these revisions to heighten certain aspects of his interpretation. But their impact is generally minor. And the most important change from last summer isn’t onstage — it’s in the pit.Last year, Cornelius Meister conducted the premiere because Pietari Inkinen had to drop out with a case of Covid late in the rehearsal process. Meister’s work ended up being blandly neutral, not quite compatible with Schwarz’s vivid, provocative staging.Newly volatile and fierce under Inkinen, the orchestra now matches, and feeds, the curdled, unsettled mood of this “Ring”; the sound is often forceful, but it’s stubbornly anti-grandeur. Sometimes that means brash playing that even verges on unbeautiful. The winds were almost wild in a grinding, grim account of the introduction to “Siegfried” on Saturday, and gawkily reedy — at once sinister and whimsical — as Hagen and Gutrune plotted in “Götterdämmerung” on Monday.The pacing is tauter this year, and more tense. Inkinen propelled scenes forward, giving and receiving from the singers during long narratives. The “Todesverkündigung,” the dreamlike scene in “Die Walküre” in which Brünnhilde appears to Siegmund in a vision, was steadily, hauntingly built. All in all, the orchestra was, as Wagner intended, a character in its own right, one as anxious, unstable and fascinating as Schwarz’s conception at its best.As Hagen, the production’s linchpin, the bass Mika Kares, a newcomer to the cast, was most memorable: aggressive and doleful, stony and agonized, shambling around the set like the overgrown child he is.Another newcomer, the soprano Catherine Foster, an alert actress and proud presence, sang with clean tone and slicing high notes as Brünnhilde in “Die Walküre” and “Götterdämmerung.” Sounding gruff as Wotan — a role he shared last year with another singer — and acting with overkill, even by this staging’s standards, the bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny settled in as a meditative, wry Wanderer in “Siegfried.”Tobias Kratzer’s 2019 staging of “Tannhäuser,” revived this year, features a performance within a performance of the opera.Enrico NawrathOver a week at the festival, the quality of the singing was consistently high. And pre-opening cancellations provided the opportunity for some heroics.The uncannily pure-toned tenor Klaus Florian Vogt and the sensitive, easily vulnerable soprano Elisabeth Teige sang in “Die Walküre” one day, and “Tannhäuser” the next. Even more remarkable, the tenor Andreas Schager sang the title roles in “Siegfried” on Saturday and “Parsifal” on Sunday, and then Siegfried in “Götterdämmerung” on Monday — all with clarion enthusiasm. This is the kind of Wagnerian Everest-climbing you get only at Bayreuth.In Tobias Kratzer’s crowd-pleasing 2019 production of “Tannhäuser,” the title character abandons the bohemian high life of Venus and her road-tripping pals for a sober, rule-based order: a performance at Bayreuth of, yes, “Tannhäuser.” (Referencing Bayreuth and its past productions in new stagings is almost de rigueur at the festival.)Metatheatrical collisions ensue — Ekaterina Gubanova is laugh-out-loud funny as Venus infiltrates the “Tannhäuser” within the “Tannhäuser” — before a tragic final act strains to tie up a lot of thematic loose ends.But the production is an endearing party, one that extends outside during the first intermission to a pond near the festival theater, for a gleefully messy, proudly queer, highly eclectic performance ranging among the likes of “I Am What I Am,” “Part of Your World” and “Ol’ Man River.” Back inside, Nathalie Stutzmann conducted a warmly effusive performance, with just a slightly chaotic ending to Act II.It was a superb vehicle for the festival’s chorus, directed by Eberhard Friedrich — but quite possibly outdone by the group’s powerful, elegant work in “Parsifal,” from ethereal to mighty to ferocious and back again.Georg Zeppenfeld, left, and Andreas Schager in Jay Scheib’s new production of “Parsifal,” which is designed to be seen in augmented reality but which can also be viewed as a more straightforward staging without the technology.Enrico NawrathPablo Heras-Casado led that opera with a calm confidence that never felt rigid. The selling point of this “Parsifal” — new this year and directed by Jay Scheib — is the incorporation of augmented reality, or AR. But because of internal conflicts over funding, less than a fifth of the audience is provided with the glasses that superimpose over the live action a panoply of floating, moving digital images.On opening night, I and other critics saw the staging with the AR glasses. But then I returned to see the show as the vast majority of visitors will: without them.Some things about the inoffensive, unilluminating, unmoving live staging are clearer without the busy AR imagery. I now caught that desert mining seems to be going on in Act III, and that, at the end, Gurnemanz and a female lover, who embraced guiltily at the opera’s start, are happily reunited.But the use of live video onstage — highly effective in an unsparing perspective on Amfortas’s bloody wound being probed and dressed — elsewhere just shows us close-ups of what we can already see, as at a stadium concert. The fallen sorcerer Klingsor wears high heels, a nod toward gender blurring that goes otherwise unexplored.As a traditional production, this “Parsifal” was nothing special; it felt palpable that most of the staging’s resources were going into developing the AR. But even if the results of that venture weren’t satisfying artistically or emotionally, the technology worked. And its ambition was true to the spirit of experimentation — and, these days, revision — that has coexisted with reverent tradition at Bayreuth for almost 150 years. More

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    I’ve Listened to This Breakup Song a Million Times

    Why does it feel so good to cry this hard?I’m mobbing through Bushwick, Brooklyn, in the back of a cab, listening to Lady Wray’s “Piece of Me” for the 12th time in a row, and I’m crying — very, very hard — and no, it’s not ugly crying. In fact, I’m pretty sure I look beautiful right now.There is no greater balm in the universe than a Black woman singing (I said what I said). I remember being a young gay boy in San Francisco, hanging out at the Eagle bar in SoMa, when an older white gay explained to me that he only talks to Black women therapists. He went on: “I like my health care like I like my house music — I want a beautiful Black woman telling me that everything is going to be OK.” I was 23 and literally balked at the nerve of this man. I hate to admit it, but now that I’m 41 and I finally — maybe — understand what things like heartbreak are about, I completely agree with him.There has to be a reason it’s called soul music, right? Perhaps because that’s where it grips you the most? In my short lifetime, I feel like I’ve seen every nationality, age group and social class of singer do their jarring impersonation of a Black woman singing soul, but, cultural erasure be damned, it’s like Tammi and Marvin sang: Ain’t nothing like the real thing, goddamn it.Why this song? I wasn’t even breaking up with anybody the first time I heard it in an Oakland bar and the opening lines cut like a knife: “You’ve been the best at times/You walk me through my darkest days/Why must it turn around?” A few months later I was in New York, on what I thought would be my final rock ’n’ roll tour. I had been playing music since I was 12 and had achieved two goals I’d had since I was a kid: signing to the legendary indie label Sub Pop, and opening for Bikini Kill. My lifelong obsession with music had seemed to reach its logical conclusion. I decided it was time to get a new hobby — like baking, or veganism. I was saying goodbye to a part of my life, and I felt an internal shift: What next? Eventually I ended up in the back of a cab in Bushwick, listening to the song on repeat.Her voice transfixes me because she’s got that element of soul — hell, of singing in general — that one cannot reach by just ‘hitting the right notes.’I have been listening to Nicole Wray (before the “Lady” days) — a California-born soul singer with that kind of irresistible, honey-dipped voice one can only be born with, no doubt — since the 1990s, when Missy Elliott gave her a vote of confidence by rapping on her debut single, “Make It Hot.” But the thing I think I love most about “Piece of Me” — and really about every soul song about heartache, heartbreak or love lost — is that its conviction is all in the delivery. You’ve either lived through loss or you haven’t, and no amount of frenzied vocal trilling can make it otherwise. You can’t fake this: “I’ll let you take a piece of me. … And if that’s not enough/I’ll let you go peacefully.” I tear up as I type it. What Lady Wray did here is both genuine and colossal. Her voice transfixes me because she’s got that element of soul — hell, of singing in general — that one cannot reach by just “hitting the right notes.” That is only a small part; one must also land the character one is invoking. The perfect breakup song must also be a sort of theater, where the singer becomes the character fully. The very cadence of the song, her voice, sonically pristine, still spells out a certain longing and despair. Remember the definition of “soul”: the spiritual part of both human being or animal regarded as simultaneously immaterial and immortal. I am transformed every time I hear “Piece of Me,” which by the end of the night will probably be close to 30 times.“Piece of Me” gives that throwback feel — it’s heavy. The digital world exists in a cloud, and the music itself feels as ethereal. For all our complaints about A.I. “taking over music” (I would like to point out that this was foreshadowed more than a decade ago when autotune became omnipresent, condensing all emotion into that tinny computer sound), “Piece of Me” sits in counterpoise, a song mixed through tape reels and heavy wooden machinery. It feels as if the song were creating its own black hole when it was made. Who can escape the condensed emotional singularity of a breakup song?I grew up in Alabama, and though I defected to punk rock as a teenager, I was a child of the blues. My great-grandfather, Hard Rock Charlie, played the chitlin’ circuits from Chattanooga to Chicago in the 1930s. His son J.J. Malone, who came to California in his youth to play music (much like I did), worked alongside the likes of Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker and Creedence Clearwater Revival. It’s in my blood to understand a very true, very sad and very beautiful song. But who among us has not experienced deep loss yet still found a way to keep going? “Piece of Me” taps into that universal fact, reiterating the troubled paradox of both love and life: We are forever heartbroken, and forever hopeful.Brontez Purnell is a California-based writer whose books include “100 Boyfriends” (FSG, 2021), which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction. More