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      Brené Brown Resumes Spotify Podcast Amid Joe Rogan Uproar

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      Brené Brown, who had put her podcasts on hiatus last month, returned to Spotify, expressing misgivings about Rogan but noting her contract with the service.The social psychologist Brené Brown said Tuesday that despite misgivings she would resume her two Spotify podcasts, which she had put on hiatus while considering the streaming platform’s policies and responsibilities amid accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.After several prominent recording artists, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, announced last month that they were removing their music from Spotify because they were not comfortable sharing a platform with Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Brown had announced that she was indefinitely pausing her podcasts, “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” to learn more about Spotify’s misinformation policy.“As you may or may not know, I’m under a multiyear, exclusive contract with Spotify,” Brown explained in a message posted to her website Tuesday about her decision to resume her podcast. “Unlike some creators, I don’t have the option of pulling my work from the platform.”Brown continued to express dismay over having to share a platform with Rogan, whom she criticized for past comments, saying that he had made “dehumanizing” comments about transgender people and referring to a 2011 segment in which Rogan laughed as a visiting comedian boasted about “demanding sexual favors from young female comedians wanting to perform onstage” at a club.“If advertisers and listeners support ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ and Spotify needs him as the cornerstone of its podcasting ambitions — that’s OK,” Brown wrote. “But sharing the table with Rogan puts me in a tremendous values conflict with very few options.”Brown is a professor at the University of Houston whose 2010 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the most popular in TED history; her podcasts are produced by Parcast, a studio known for true-crime and mystery shows that Spotify acquired in 2019.After Young and Mitchell removed their music, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, published the service’s platform rules and said Spotify would add “content advisory” flags on podcast episodes about the pandemic. Over the weekend, Ek confirmed that Rogan had removed a number of episodes after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Spotify removed the episodes after the musician India.Arie shared a compilation video showing Rogan using a racial slur in past episodes. That prompted an apology from Rogan, who two years ago signed an exclusive multiyear deal with Spotify reported to be worth $100 million.Brown insisted she was not attempting to censor or deplatform Rogan, but rather was concerned with herself and her own audience, and trying to understand how Spotify sees its responsibilities, adding that she thinks podcasters with a wide reach should vet and challenge their guests.“It doesn’t appear to me that ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ takes any responsibility for the health information that it puts out in the world,” she said, “and I do believe that leads to people getting sick and even dying.”The controversy has moved into the political realm in recent days, with former President Donald J. Trump issuing a statement urging Rogan to stop apologizing.On the latest episode of his podcast, released Tuesday, Rogan called the release of the compilation video “a political hit job” but disputed the notion that comedians should never apologize. “You should apologize if you regret something,” he said. More

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      Syl Johnson, Soul Singer With a Cult Following, Dies at 85

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      He released dozens of records on an array of labels across five decades, and his work was heavily sampled by rappers. He enjoyed a career revival in his 70s.Syl Johnson, a Chicago soul singer and guitarist who built a cult following for his raw sound on 1960s songs like “Is It Because I’m Black” and, decades later, was heavily sampled by rappers, died on Sunday in Mableton, Ga., at the home of one of his daughters. He was 85.The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Syleecia Thompson said.Although never a chart-topping star, Mr. Johnson was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs, and for a versatile vocal style that could match James Brown’s grunting gusto or Al Green’s lovelorn keening. He released dozens of singles and albums on an array of record labels across five decades, and he enjoyed a career revival in his 70s after an exhaustively researched boxed set, “Complete Mythology” (2010), introduced his work to a new generation.Mr. Johnson was also one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside. He proclaimed himself a “multifaceted genius” and compared himself favorably to giants of the genre like Mr. Brown, Mr. Green and Marvin Gaye.Mr. Johnson in an undated publicity photo. Although never a chart-topping star, he was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs and his versatile vocal style.When Mr. Johnson’s performing career began slowing down in the 1980s, he opened a seafood restaurant in Chicago, invested in real estate and found a lucrative side business seeking out his royalties. Grooves and stray growls from tracks like “Different Strokes” (1967) and “Is It Because I’m Black” (1969) had become go-to samples in hip-hop, used hundreds of times by artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Whodini, Public Enemy, Kid Rock and N.W.A; even Michael Jackson used some of Mr. Johnson’s music.For help hunting down unauthorized samples, Mr. Johnson enlisted his children and their friends.“He would tell people in the neighborhood, ‘If you find any rapper who has sampled my music, I will pay you,’” Ms. Thompson told The New York Times in 2010. “And so all the kids, we would go buy cassettes and listen to see if we could hear his ‘wow!’ and his ‘aw!’”Mr. Johnson went after those royalties, sometimes through litigation. In recent years, his targets have included Jay-Z and Kanye West, who settled a case with Mr. Johnson in 2012.“I’m sitting in the house that Wu-Tang built with their money,” Mr. Johnson told The Times.Mr. Johnson was one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside.via The Numero GroupHe was born Sylvester Thompson on July 1, 1936, near Holly Springs, Miss., the sixth child of Samuel and Erlie Thompson, who farmed cotton and corn. Samuel Thompson sang at a local church and played the harmonica, and Sylvester and his older brothers Jimmy and Mack all took up the guitar. By 1950, the family had moved to Chicago.By the late 1950s, Sylvester was accompanying blues players like Junior Wells and Jimmy Reed, and in 1959 his first single, “Teardrops,” with echoes of the R&B crooner Jackie Wilson, was released under the name Syl Johnson on the Federal label. His stage name was chosen by Syd Nathan, the impresario behind King Records, of which Federal was a subsidiary.Mr. Johnson’s brothers also had extensive careers in music. Mack Thompson, a bassist and guitarist, died in 1991. Jimmy Johnson became a prominent blues guitarist in Chicago and died on Jan. 31 at age 93.Syl Johnson released singles on a variety of labels throughout the 1960s, with limited success, before signing with Twilight Records in 1967. Songs he recorded for the label like “Come On Sock It to Me,” “Dresses Too Short” and “Different Strokes,” with their gritty funk grooves and powerful vocals, raised his profile. “Different Strokes” — whose frequently sampled opening features Mr. Johnson’s deep grunts alongside giggles from the singer Minnie Riperton — reached No. 17 on Billboard’s R&B chart. (After learning that another label already owned that name, Twilight Records eventually rechristened itself Twinight.)“Is It Because I’m Black,” written as a response to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., added a note of bitter social commentary. “Something is holding me back,” he sang. “Is it because I’m Black?”In 1971, Mr. Johnson signed to Hi Records in Memphis, Al Green’s home, where he worked with Willie Mitchell, the label’s house producer. Mr. Johnson’s time there — his output included a cover of Mr. Green’s “Take Me to the River” in 1975 — gave him perhaps his greatest exposure, though he later said he wished he had continued to record in Chicago.Mr. Johnson in performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn in 2009.Piotr Redlinski for The New York TimesHe continued recording into the 2000s, including an album with his brother Jimmy called “Two Johnsons Are Better Than One.” But he had mostly retired from music when he was approached in 2006 by the Numero Group, a Chicago label known for its extensive research, about a reissue project. Distrustful of record companies, he rebuffed the company for nearly four years.When he finally agreed, the label produced a six-LP, four-CD monolith with crisp historical photos and detailed liner notes. The boxed set cemented Mr. Johnson’s legacy and established Numero’s credentials as an authoritative outlet.“There is no Numero without Syl Johnson,” said Ken Shipley, one of the founders of the label, which has continued to represent Mr. Johnson as the owner of his music publishing rights and most of his recordings.In 2015, Mr. Johnson was the subject of a documentary, “Any Way the Wind Blows,” directed by Rob Hatch-Miller.In addition to his daughter Syleecia, Mr. Johnson’s survivors include three other daughters, Sylette DeBois, Syleena Johnson and Michelle Thompson; a son, Anthony Thompson; two sisters, Vivian and Marva Thompson; and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Mr. Johnson could be bitter in recounting his experiences with the music industry, but in later years he often expressed gratitude for being given another chance to make his mark.“Back in the day I didn’t get the proper chance, like a lot of people,” he told The Times after “Complete Mythology” came out.“But I didn’t drop out of my dreams,” he added, “and now these people went back and picked it up and said, ‘This is gold right here, man, you missed the gold.’ And I think that once you check it out, you’ll like it.” More

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      Fact-Checking Joe Rogan’s Interview With Robert Malone That Caused an Uproar

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      Mr. Rogan, a wildly popular podcast host, and his guest, Dr. Malone, a controversial infectious-disease researcher, offered a litany of falsehoods over three hours.Spotify has been rocked in recent weeks by the controversy engulfing its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan.Several prominent musicians and podcasters have left the streaming service to protest what they described as Mr. Rogan’s history of promoting misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. There have been calls for boycotts, and Mr. Rogan issued an apology for his past use of a racial slur and took down as many as 70 old episodes of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” without explanation.The catalyst for much of the controversy was a December episode of his podcast that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic. Hundreds of public health officials and professors, citing the promotion of “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” urged the service to take down the episode.For over three hours, Dr. Malone and Mr. Rogan discussed theories and claims about the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines. The conversation included a false equivalence between the vaccine and Nazi medical experiments, baseless conjecture that President Biden is not actually vaccinated and inaccurate interpretations of government data and guidelines.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What was said“Whatever was in those packages was rumored to include ivermectin. But there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which they’re still there, and Uttar Pradesh is flatlined right now.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. Dr. Malone’s suggestion that Mr. Biden urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to conceal the successful use of the drug ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, does not add up.It is not exactly a secret that Uttar Pradesh has promoted ivermectin as a prophylactic. The state issued a government notice in August 2020 recommending the prescription of the drug to those who had come into contact with Covid patients, and officials have publicly acknowledged its use throughout the pandemic. Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi met in September, and officials in Uttar Pradesh have continued to publicize the state’s use of ivermectin since, even as India stopped recommending it.Dr. Malone was also wrong that cases in Uttar Pradesh “flatlined” as the world coped with the Omicron variant. Though the case count in the state remained low during the summer and fall, it began to trend upward by late December, when Dr. Malone spoke with Mr. Rogan, and topped 23,000 daily cases in mid-January.Promoters of ivermectin often cite Uttar Pradesh’s low death toll as proof of the drug’s efficacy, but experts say there is no proof of that causal link. It is also worth noting that researchers have questioned the reliability of data from Uttar Pradesh.What was saidMr. Rogan: “But I saw the shot where Joe Biden got it on TV and they didn’t aspirate them. They just ——”Dr. Malone: “I don’t know what to say ——”Mr. Rogan: “I’ll tell you what to say — that’s not the way to do it.”Dr. Malone: “Yeah, and was that really a vaccine? Right, then we go down that whole rabbit ——”Mr. Rogan: “That’s my favorite rabbit hole because of the fake set, remember.”False. Aspiration refers to pulling back the plunger of a syringe to check that the needle was not inserted into a blood vessel. The practice and its perceived benefits are the subject of debate among medical professionals. Mr. Rogan and others have wrongly suggested that Mr. Biden has not actually received the vaccine since his shots were not aspirated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend aspirating before administering any vaccines, as it could cause additional pain.Mr. Biden received his booster shot on camera in September, in front of a backdrop that looks like the White House but is actually in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some social media posts cited the use of the backdrop as evidence that Mr. Biden had not actually been vaccinated. In reality, Mr. Biden and his predecessors have used the auditorium for events for years.What was saidMr. Rogan: “So, if they had just done what Sweden had done and some other countries where they didn’t institute lockdowns and they sort of let people just live their lives and make their own choices, they were saying that millions of people would have died?”Dr. Malone: “So it would be, so it seems.”Mr. Rogan: “But time has shown that Sweden actually had a more effective take on the virus.”This is misleading. Unlike many other European countries, Sweden did not impose full-scale lockdowns, though it has enacted some restrictions, including limiting the sizes of gatherings and imposing partial travel bans and social distancing requirements. But Mr. Rogan is wrong to say that Sweden has been “more effective” in curtailing the virus.“Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told The Financial Times in November. “We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst.”Compared with those of other countries in Europe, Sweden’s death rate and case count are indeed in the middle of the pack. Among its Scandinavian neighbors, however, Sweden has the highest death rate.What was said“Those surrounding states in the Palestinian territory does not have that level of vaccine uptake at all. The mortality in the surrounding states in the Palestinian Authority is substantially less from this virus than the mortality in Israel.” — Dr. MaloneFalse. About two-thirds of the Israeli population had been fully vaccinated by the end of December, compared with about a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. The case fatality rate and cumulative death rate from Covid are both higher in the occupied territories than in Israel.What was said“The C.D.C. made the determination that they were going to make a core assumption — if P.C.R. positive and you die — that is death due to Covid. And so the extreme example, just to show the absurdity: If the patient comes in with a bullet hole in the head and they do a nose swab and they come up P.C.R. positive, they’re determined to have died from Covid.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. The C.D.C. has issued guidelines on certifying deaths that detail how to track the immediate cause of death, an underlying cause or a significant condition that contributed to the death. The guidelines do not require counting Covid-19 as a cause of death when someone has tested positive but died for unrelated reasons.Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said on a podcast in January that a car crash victim who tested positive and died would not be counted as a Covid fatality in “most cases.”“Maybe the person comes in and they’ve got a very severe injury and they simply test positive for Covid and there are no symptoms that are likely to be incidental to death,” he said. “But if you had somebody who, let’s say, had chest trauma from the car accident and they were, they’re struggling to breathe already. They get Covid in the hospital and they’re showing some symptoms. There, it could contribute.”Understand the Joe Rogan-Spotify ControversyCard 1 of 5A brash personality. More

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda on His 'Encanto' Oscar Nomination and His EGOT Prospects

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      It was just one of those Tuesdays for Lin-Manuel Miranda. The composer, lyricist and actor — known for “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” — had trouble getting his youngest off to preschool, and his older son’s school bus was running late.He sat down with his wife, the attorney and engineer Vanessa Nadal, just in time to catch the Oscar nominations. The real joy in watching, he said, was “how many friends I’m lucky enough to know that made such amazing work this year.”He texted Ariana DeBose when she was nominated for best supporting actress for “West Side Story” and hit up the costume designer Paul Tazewell when he scored a nod for the same film. When Germaine Franco was recognized for best original score on the Disney animated film “Encanto,” which Miranda wrote songs for, he screamed for the whole neighborhood to hear.“Encanto” follows Alma Madrigal, who fled her home years ago while escaping conflict. She saved her three infant children, but lost her husband, Pedro. Devastated, Alma clung to the candle she was using to light her way, which became enchanted — hence the “encanto” — and imbued her family members with magical powers, all except her grandchild Mirabel.Miranda also received a nomination for the film: best original song for “Dos Oruguitas,” a heart-rending ballad at the emotional climax of “Encanto.” To top it off, the film — directed by Byron Howard and Jared Bush and co-directed by Charise Castro Smith — garnered a nomination for best animated feature.Miranda, who lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, jogged across the George Washington Bridge and back in his excitement.Although he has written his fair share of music — his “How Far I’ll Go” for Disney’s “Moana” picked up a best original song nomination in 2017 — “Dos Oruguitas” is the first song Miranda had written from start to finish in Spanish.“I really went pretty far out of my comfort zone to write the tune, so I’m really just thrilled it’s been recognized,” he said. “It just makes you want to push more: lean into the things that scare you and do those things. That’s what’s worth doing, because that’s what makes you grow.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When did you write this song? What did that process look like?It’s probably early last year, like March or April. But I remember the idea came on a brainstorm with Jared and Charise on the phone. Just sort of like, “I think the butterfly metaphor is already there visually. What if this song goes to nature’s original miracle?” And then, when I thought of the idea of two caterpillars in love, it was a wrap.There’s so much that it was able to hold: both Abuela [Alma] and Pedro, and what the family is doing to each other by holding on too tight. I wanted it to feel like a song that always existed. All of my favorite folkloric songs all have nature metaphors embedded in them. I started dreaming in Spanish again while I was writing it. It was like my whole brain was trying to make it happen, even my subconscious.Once you had that idea — caterpillars in love — were you able to write smoothly or did it take awhile to write in Spanish?I think I wrote the first verse and chorus in, like, a week. Sent it to the creative team. They were all sniffling and they were like, “You’re on the right track; keep going.” I needed to reach for a poetic language that is beyond my standard conversational Spanish. I’m pretty fluent in conversational Spanish, but this needed to be elevated. I ran the grammar by my dad. And looked for the words that aren’t in my everyday usage: crisálidas [chrysalises], desorientadas [disoriented]. You do whatever you need to do to get the hook out.Why did it feel like this song had to be in Spanish?Because honestly, all of the words central to the metaphor are more beautiful in Spanish, on a technical level: oruguitas, crisálidas, mariposas [butterflies] are just beautiful words. But also I think there’s a subtle generational play happening with the way we use language in this movie: The younger siblings are all expressing themselves in pretty contemporary genres: reggaeton for Luisa, ’90s rock en español for Isabela [Mirabel’s sisters]. And so it felt like the matriarch of the family and the central, foundational story of this family and this miracle should be in Spanish.How did you choose Sebastián Yatra — a younger, pop-y singer — to voice that sentiment?We went back and forth initially over whether it was a female or male vocal. And we kind of felt like, “Well, if it’s female, it will feel like Abuela is singing it.” It didn’t feel quite right. I tell the story a lot, but a lot of writing the right song is figuring out what is not the right song. It didn’t feel right for Abuela to sing a song to Mirabel, full stop. So that’s what gets you to the male vocalist.When we started working on this together — Jared, Charise, Byron and I — we all sort of made mixtapes for each other. We all did our own deep dives of Colombian music, and Sebastián just popped up in all our mixes. He’s got such a beautiful voice, and he’s around the age of Abuelo Pedro when the film takes place, so it’s just kind of a perfect fit.Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) in a scene from “Encanto.”DisneyWhat specific aspects of Colombian folk music inspired you?First of all, the folkloric music we heard over there, which was so beautiful — basically anything with a tiple on it, I was kind of in love with. But then the other thing I really thought about was, “What are just the Latin songs that live forever?” I was thinking about “Guantanamera” and “Cielito Lindo.” I don’t feel like anyone ever wrote those songs. Although of course they all have incredible songwriters. I just feel like they always existed. So I really listened to those and the shape of them. The verse and chorus of it owes a lot to those hits.The only other song that feels close to it in songs I’ve written is a snippet of a song called “Siempre” in “In the Heights,” where I wanted that to feel like a bolero that always existed. But again, that’s not a full song. It’s like a verse in the chorus for a record-scratch joke.In the scene where we hear “Dos Oruguitas,” golden butterflies are everywhere, which evokes a favorite motif of the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez. Did his butterflies inspire the metaphor in any way, or did they just happen to align once you found the caterpillar idea?Absolutely. The song itself was absolutely inspired by the visual metaphor that the animation team was already playing with. That scene in all of its conception hadn’t existed yet, but I had seen the candle which turned into a butterfly. And that was the inspiration for going to that metaphor. So it’s also of a great example of how much collaboration happens in an animated movie. It’s like writing for theater to the nth power.Like I write a rap section for Dolores in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” and the writers take that and ran that vibe for her throughout the movie, and in turn, the animation department thinks of this butterfly metaphor absolutely inspired by García Márquez. And then I get to run with that as a song idea. You know you’re cooking with gas when you’re all kind of feeding each other.This song makes me cry every time. Did you cry at all while writing it?Oh yeah. I always think of myself as Tita in “Como Agua Para Chocolate” [“Like Water For Chocolate”]: I cry in the recipe.I thought about my first serious relationship and how we were two people who loved each other very much, but the world was bigger and we were going in different directions. I definitely went there in my heart while I was writing it. You pull on all of it. And also moments in your life when you were so scared of change, and you just have to trust that there’s a reason it’s happening. That, to me, strikes a deeper chord than even the themes as they appear in the movie itself.This is your second Oscar nomination, and if you were to win, you’d become the 17th person to attain EGOT status. How does it feel?On one level, it feels totally silly, because that is a term that got popularized by “30 Rock,” which is a hilarious thing for anyone to chase: that you’re chasing something Tracy Jordan chased.But on another level, the thing that always feels special about this is that artists vote on it. My fellow moviemakers, my fellow songwriters, the music branch. I’ve met some of those folks, and they’re like the most incredibly, wildly intelligent folks who have made music that I love. More

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      Norma Waterson, a Key Figure in Britain’s Folk Revival, Dies at 82

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      With her familial singing group, the Watersons, and later as a solo performer, she helped revitalize traditional music from the north of England.Norma Waterson, a vaunted fixture in British folk music for decades whose familial singing group, the Watersons, helped spur the genre’s revival in the 1960s, died on Jan. 30. She was 82.Her daughter, Eliza Carthy, also a highly regarded singer and musician, announced the death on Facebook but did not say where Ms. Waterson died. She said Ms. Waterson had been in ill health for some time and was recently hospitalized for pneumonia.Ms. Waterson had a dynastic influence in British folk, not only for her work with the Watersons but also through her collaborations with the singer she married in 1972, Martin Carthy, himself a pivotal figure in British acoustic music, as well as through her joint albums and concerts with Eliza, their daughter.She formed the Watersons in 1965 with her younger siblings Mike and Elaine (who performed as Lal), along with their second cousin John Harrison. They were driven by a mission to re-enliven overlooked folk music, particularly from the northern Yorkshire region surrounding their home in Hull, England.“Whereas people in other countries are proud of their traditions, somehow here in England we got left behind,” Ms. Waterson once told the British folk magazine Fatea. “I think that England has as good a tradition as anywhere else, and I think that we should keep it alive.”The Watersons did so without vocal fuss or musical adornment. They largely performed a cappella and always took care to keep their harmonies humble.“To bring the audience in to you, instead of projecting your particular personality out to the audience, that’s the point,” Ms. Waterson said in “Traveling for a Living,” a 1965 BBC documentary about her group.Despite her ardor for traditional sounds and styles, she reached well beyond them. Her debut solo album, released in 1996 and titled simply “Norma Waterson,” featured elaborate arrangements of songs by contemporary writers like Elvis Costello and Ben Harper. On her final album, “Anchor,” a joint recording with Ms. Carthy issued in 2018, she followed a cover of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s “Lost in the Stars” with “Galaxy Song,” a whimsical hymn to human irrelevance co-written by Eric Idle of Monty Python.To all her performances Ms. Waterson brought unquestioned gravitas, signaled by her deep register and enhanced by a brandy-rich tone and a vibrato that roiled like a surging sea. In an email, Rob Young, the author of “Electric Eden” (2010), a history of British folk, likened her voice to “a hand-thrown clay pot, full of character and texture.”“It never sounded trained,” he added.Ms. Waterson performing in 1999. Her profile rose in the 1990s, when her debut solo album was nominated  for Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesNorma Waterson was born into a working-class family in Hull, East Yorkshire, on Aug. 15, 1939. Her mother died when Norma was 8. Ten days later, her father died of a stroke. Norma and her siblings were immediately taken in by their maternal grandmother, Eliza, who had belonged to the Irish Travelers, an ethnic group sometimes referred to as Irish Gypsies.Their grandmother’s imaginatively superstitious nature encouraged the children to believe in the sort of supernatural phenomena that can haunt English folk songs. Seven generations of the family had gravitated toward music, and she sang to the children, often and eagerly. “It was in the genes,” Ms. Waterson told NPR in 2001.The first group that Ms. Waterson formed with her siblings and Mr. Harrison played skiffle music, a blend of American folk music, blues and jazz that became hugely popular in Britain in the 1950s. But they soon switched to the kinds of English folk songs they had cherished in their youth.In 1965, the Watersons signed with Topic Records, which included them in a compilation titled “New Voices: An Album of First Recordings” before issuing the group’s debut album, “Frost and Fire: A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs.”The album showcased Ms. Waterson on the song “Seven Virgins or the Leaves of Life,” which she delivered with an authority that seemed almost otherworldly. The British music magazine Melody Maker named “Frost and Fire” folk album of the year.In that same period, the group ran Folk Union One, a club in Hull that contributed to the folk revival by presenting important artists in the genre like Anne Briggs and Mr. Carthy. After releasing their third album, “A Yorkshire Garland,” in 1968, the Watersons split, and Ms. Waterson moved to the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where she worked as a radio disc jockey.By 1972, she had returned to England, and the Watersons reunited (without Mr. Harrison.). Soon after, she fell in love with Mr. Carthy, who had been issuing his own respected folk albums since 1965. He then joined the Watersons and began releasing albums with them when not playing with important electric folk bands of the time, including Steeleye Span and the Albion Country Band. All those efforts made Ms. Waterson and Mr. Carthy British folk’s ultimate power couple.Her profile rose further in the 1990s, when her first album, recorded when she was in her mid-50s, was nominated for Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize, alongside albums by young rock acts at the time like Pulp (which won) and Oasis. She continued to release albums either on her own or with her husband and daughter, together billed as Waterson: Carthy. But she became significantly less active in the last decade, following an illness that at one point left her in a coma, after which she had to learn to walk and talk again.Her sister Elaine died in 1998 and her brother Mike in 2011, both of cancer. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by Mr. Carthy and their granddaughters.Later in life, Ms. Waterson was buoyed by her belief that folk music would last way beyond her, so long as it evolved with the times.“We thought that we’d all get old and gray and there’d be nobody left,” she told The Guardian in 2010. “Then this new generation of young musicians came up and we all said, ‘Thank God.’ If people say traditional music has got to be ‘like that’ or ‘like that,’ you’re going to freeze it. You can’t do that with tradition. You have to hope each generation brings their own thing to it, so it keeps going forever.” More

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      BAM Taps Former Leader of Its Film Program as Its Next President

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      Gina Duncan, who had been working at the Sundance Institute since 2020, will return to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to lead it out of the pandemic.After a turbulent two years that has forced the Brooklyn Academy of Music to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, budget woes and leadership upheaval, the organization said Tuesday that it was turning to a veteran of its film wing to become its next president, filling a position that was left vacant more than 12 months ago.Gina Duncan, who previously served as BAM’s first vice president of film and strategic programming, has been selected as the organization’s new president, the institution announced. She will take over a multifaceted performing arts behemoth with a $50 million operating budget.Ms. Duncan, 41, who has never held the top job at an arts institution, will be tasked with stabilizing and reinvigorating BAM, an important cultural anchor and incubator known for presenting an eclectic array of cutting-edge artists and performers. Her first day as president will be April 11. She returns after a stint at the Sundance Institute, where she worked as its producing director.“Coming back to BAM feels like returning home,” Ms. Duncan said in a telephone interview. “The other day I went down to see Annie-B’s ‘The Mood Room.’ And it was the first time I had been back in BAM since we all fled our offices in March 2020. And I just was overwhelmed.”“I came back for BAM — the artists, the staff, the audience,” she added. “They’re my people.”The selection makes Ms. Duncan the first person of color to lead the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In choosing her, the academy’s board selected a candidate with whom they were familiar, after previously tapping an outsider in Katy Clark — a violinist-turned-arts-executive — who left BAM after less than six years in January 2021. Ms. Clark’s predecessor, Karen Brooks Hopkins, spent 16 years as BAM’s president, and a total of 36 years at the organization.Ms. Duncan joined BAM’s executive team in January 2017 as an associate vice president for film — a newly created role in which she oversaw the organization’s Rose Cinemas and its repertory film program. Under her leadership, BAM’s repertory programming began to focus more on underrepresented voices in cinema.She was promoted in 2019, with her role expanding beyond film to include responsibility for the organization’s archives and its lectures, classes and discussions; she helped integrate programming across the institution. She also helped move programs online during the early months of the pandemic, officials said.She left BAM in September of 2020 for the Sundance Institute, and now will return after roughly 18 months away.The chairwoman of BAM’s board, Nora Ann Wallace, said in an email that Ms. Duncan’s “leadership skills are immediately evident to anyone who works with her.”“Her ability to inspire a group of people — be it staff, audiences, donors, or our board — is vital to this moment in BAM’s history,” Ms. Wallace said. “The board saw those skills when she was at BAM in her previous leadership role.”Ms. Wallace noted that in addition to her background in film, Ms. Duncan has produced theater and arts-centered community programming for many years. “Gina is a gifted strategist who excels at assessing the bigger picture,” Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Duncan said that her vision for BAM involved ensuring it is “vital and visible across Brooklyn and beyond.” During her initial tenure with the institution, she said, she had worked to ensure that its film program both served local audiences and became part of a “larger national conversation.”“I see an opportunity to do that with BAM across all the different art and rich cultural programming that we present,” she said.When Ms. Duncan’s predecessor, Ms. Clark, left BAM, questions were raised about the housing bonus she had received to purchase an apartment in Brooklyn, which she was allowed to keep when she left the position.Ms. Wallace did not disclose Ms. Duncan’s salary, saying only that her pay is “in line with other performing arts organizations of similar size.” Ms. Duncan’s compensation does not include an apartment or housing allowance, Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Clark’s departure created something of a leadership vacuum at BAM; the board’s previous chairman, Adam Max, died in 2020 and an internal team was appointed to lead the institution temporarily as the pandemic created a crisis for the performing arts. With live performances impossible, BAM was forced to slash its operating budget, lay off some employees and furlough dozens more, cut the pay of top executives and dip into its $100 million endowment for special distributions.Ms. Duncan will have the advantage of taking over at a time when cultural institutions, including BAM, are starting to find their footing again. The academy’s first full season since the start of the pandemic focuses on the artists of New York City.“The industry remains really tenuous,” Ms. Duncan said. But at BAM, she said, she has a “strong foundation to start from.”“An institution is its people,” she said. More

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      John Williams in the Concert Hall: An Introduction

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      Listen to five works that Hollywood’s reigning composer has written for symphony orchestras and star soloists like Yo-Yo Ma.John Williams has been Hollywood’s leading composer for over half a century. A keeper of the Golden Age flame of soaring grandeur and indelible melodies, he is the musical mind behind the two-note terror of “Jaws,” the operatic fanfare of “Star Wars” and the mischievous charm of “Harry Potter” — along with the sounds of some 50 other Academy Award-nominated scores.Over the years, Williams has also maintained a robust career in the concert hall. But while his soundtracks are the stuff of cultural immortality, his symphonic works have never found a foothold in the repertory. Even now, as his music is programmed by the storied ensembles of Vienna and Berlin, it’s more likely to be “E.T.” than his “Essay for Strings.”Williams’s concert works tend to be skillful but less imaginative than his film scores. And some — particularly pièces d’occasion like the larky “Soundings,” written for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003 — are understandably obscure. At his best, though, he is a vivid tone painter with a masterly command of orchestration and form. Here are five examples.Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1976)Reminiscent at times of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto and, like it, written in the wake of loss — for Williams, the sudden death of his wife — this entry into the genre moves fluidly, and often unpredictably, in and out of lyricism, volatility and breathlessness. Premiered in 1981 by Mark Peskanov, it found a broader audience when recorded three decades later by Gil Shaham and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with which Williams has a long association.‘The Five Sacred Trees’ (1993)More or less a bassoon concerto, this commission for the New York Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary opens with a long solo that conjures the first (and wisest) of five trees from Celtic mythology. The movements that follow are arboreal portraits in music: a puckish, dancing duet for the bassoon and a violin; a mysterious nocturne; curlicue phrases choked into fragments; and patient brooding.Cello Concerto (1994)Williams composed this for Yo-Yo Ma to inaugurate Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. (Among Williams’s works for the instrument, it has aged better than Three Pieces for Solo Cello, a 2001 meditation on Black history with titles like “Pickin’.”) Tailored to its soloist like a film score to its scenes, the concerto is designed to reflect different angles of Ma’s artistry: as a heroic virtuoso, a nimble genre-hopper and, in the ruminative finale, an expressive communicator.Horn Concerto (2003)Dale Clevenger — the Chicago Symphony Orchestra horn master for whom this was written, and who died last month — once told an interviewer that he had requested an “audience-friendly” concerto from Williams. The result is difficult to play yet often warm, while also being nearly programmatic in its succession of tone poems that verge on the Coplandesque in the third-movement Pastorale.‘Markings’ (2017)If this atmospheric and discursive work seems like the start of something larger, it kind of is. Written at the urging of the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and leaning into her trademark eloquence, it was the first in a series of collaborations that have since included an album of Williams’s film music arranged for her and orchestra, as well as his Second Violin Concerto, which premiered last year and comes to Carnegie Hall in April. More

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      With Little New Competition, ‘Encanto’ Is No. 1 a Fourth Time

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      The soundtrack to Disney’s latest animated film holds at the top of Billboard’s album chart in its 10th week out.Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, tops the Billboard album chart for a fourth time this week, with no major new releases to challenge it.The “Encanto” soundtrack, which has been out since November, had the equivalent of 113,000 sales in the United States in its 10th week on the chart, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total — down only 2 percent from the previous week — included nearly 140 million streams and 16,000 copies sold as a complete package.Last week, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the film’s breakout hit, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, displacing Adele’s “Easy on Me” after its 10th week at the top.The last soundtrack album to notch four weeks at No. 1 was “A Star Is Born,” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, in late 2018 and early 2019.Also this week, the Weeknd’s “Dawn FM” rises two spots to No. 2 in its fourth week out, after the album was released on CD. Gunna’s “DS4Ever” is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4 and YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s “Colors” fell three spots to No. 5 in its second week out. More