Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Remember Emmet Otter and His Jug Band? They’re Back, and Onstage.

      by

      The Jim Henson TV special was a hit in 1978. Now its furry creatures return in a new theatrical production in Manhattan, just in time for the holiday season.Paul Williams — yes, that Paul Williams, the rare singer-songwriter to have collaborated with Barbra Streisand, Brian De Palma and Daft Punk — only had a few tips during a rehearsal back in November, but when he spoke, everybody listened. The squirrels, who had been quite rambunctious seconds earlier, focused. George and Melissa Rabbit were all ears.After all, when the guy who wrote the score gives out notes, even woodland animals pay attention.Williams, spry and impish at 81, had dropped by the New Victory Theater in Manhattan to check on the early stages of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” which boasts an onstage menagerie of puppets from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.Paul Williams composed the score of the original TV special from 1977, with echoes of Randy Newman, Alice Cooper and the Carpenters.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWilliams and Henson went way back, of course: In 1976, the musician was a guest on the eighth episode of “The Muppet Show,” and a few years later he wrote or co-wrote the songs for “The Muppet Movie,” including the Academy Award-nominated “Rainbow Connection.”In between these two projects, Henson asked him to come up with the score for “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” an hourlong TV special that aired in America on HBO in 1978.“I was just thrilled to work with Jim,” Williams said. “He sent me the script and the book, and I just sat there and wrote. I think I was kind of being auditioned for ‘The Muppet Movie,’ which was a huge risk for them at the time.”A scene from the 1977 TV special, which employed the kind of madcap wit that had made “The Muppets” so popular.The Jim Henson CompanyBased on an illustrated children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban, “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” starts off with the title character and his mother barely making ends meet by doing small jobs by the river in Frogtown Hollow. So when they hear of a talent show with a $50 cash prize, they separately decide to enter. Emmet plays the washtub bass in a group with his furry friends, and Ma sings, but they face stiff competition, especially from the naughty Riverbottom Nightmare Band, whose members include a stoat, a snake and a weasel. The 75-minute musical production runs Dec. 11-Jan. 2 at the New Victory, with streaming available Dec. 17-Jan. 2.Ma and Emmet Otter from the new production. In the story, they hear of a talent show with a $50 cash prize, and they separately decide to enter.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe puppeteer Jordan Brownlee with Doc Bullfrog.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesYancy Woodchuck with the puppeteer Matt Furtado.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“What I love about the show, and really appreciate more now that I’m older, is that it has so much heart,” said Christopher Gattelli, who is directing and wrote the book with Timothy Allen McDonald. “At the same time it has that great Muppet madcap wit, those zingers and those really fast takes, and those 30-second acts that are just hilarious. It’s like a ‘Muppet Show’ with a story.”Gattelli and McDonald worked on a first adaptation for Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals in 2008, but they went back to the drawing board for this one, which features four puppeteers and eight actors. “There’s more puppet business going on, and that’s music to my ear,” said Cheryl Henson, Jim’s daughter and an investor in the new show. (John Tartaglia, a Tony nominee for “Avenue Q,” is credited for puppet direction.)While Goodspeed used some original figures from the special, they are now in museums and had to be rebuilt for the New Victory..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“But of course they don’t make the same fur anymore,” said Rollie Krewson, who built Wendell Porcupine and Charlie Beaver for the TV show; she is now a master puppet designer and builder at the Creature Shop. “I had to find furs that mimic more what the Emmet actor is wearing. They also wanted a new Ma, and we built a Pa Otter — there had never been one.”Williams at a rehearsal in Long Island City in November. “There are all these little touches in the script, amazing little clues to who the characters are,” he said.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesVincent Tullo for The New York TimesVincent Tullo for The New York TimesDuring that rehearsal in Long Island City, the felt cast often behaved as if it had a life of its own in between scenes. “I consider it a good run if I forget they’re puppets,” Colin Trudell, who plays Emmet, said of his co-stars. “The puppeteers are also improv masters — the things that come out of their mouths in rehearsal really bring the characters alive.”Trudell, who graduated from Texas State University in May, had not seen the TV show when he auditioned for the stage version, and he watched it for the first time before his callback. You can’t blame him for missing out: “Emmet Otter” stayed under the radar for a long time (it is now available for streaming on Amazon and other platforms); and a proper soundtrack did not come out until 2018, so it does not have the following of more famous Henson properties.Its fans, however, are dedicated and loyal, often passing on the “Emmet Otter” tradition from one generation to the next, as happened in Gattelli’s family.A big reason for the show’s cult following is its rare humor and warmth. Without getting preachy, it’s an ode to friendship and family bonds, as well as the idea of community. Sure, you won’t be able to get the song’s riff from your head after hearing the Riverbottom Nightmare Band snarl, “We take what we want/We do anything that we wish/We got no respect/For animal, birdy or fish.”But it’s Ma Otter’s words you’ll remember: “Some say our world is getting too small,” she sings, “I say, with kindness,/There’s room for us all.”Wendell PorcupineVincent Tullo for The New York TimesLady PossumVincent Tullo for The New York TimesWilliams’s numbers for the original show offer an uncanny mélange of 1970s styles, with echoes of Randy Newman, Alice Cooper and the Carpenters. Except when the rollicking Nightmare Band pipes up, the music is filtered through a rootsy Americana vibe that transcends the decades, and was beautifully captured by My Morning Jacket in an aching cover of “Brothers in Our World” on the tribute “Muppets: The Green Album.”“To me, the music is the heart and the soul of this piece,” Henson said. “What works so well is that it’s delivered by these characters that are creatures — it’s a living storybook.”For Williams, those creatures made the assignment feel effortless: He just got the show’s furry (or scaly, as the case may be) subjects.“There are all these little touches in the script, amazing little clues to who the characters are,” he said. “My wife and I use the line all the time when the Riverbottom Nightmare Band has just been totally rude to all the guys in the tree house, and Charlie says, ‘They seem nice.’ It’s that human element that speaks to me,” he continued, “and it speaks to me at a level where it’s the easiest writing I ever get to do.”One thing that did not fit, though, is a conventional, “Jingle Bells”-type number. Though the story takes place around Christmas, there’s no song specifically about the holiday. Williams just did not see a need for it in “Emmet Otter.”“There are two tasks in writing songs for a film or a stage play or whatever,” he said. “One is to illustrate the inner life of the character, and the other one is to advance the story. When you’re done, you go, ‘What’s missing?’ And it never felt like anything was missing.” More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Rolando Villazón Returns to the Met Opera in Mozart's “Magic Flute”

      by

      Rolando Villazón, a onetime star plagued by vocal issues, is returning to the house after eight years for “The Magic Flute.”It was deep into Julie Taymor’s playful production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost.“Papageno,” Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly “Flute” that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. “Are you still with me?”As he rotated past on a set piece, the tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papageno’s lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, “I’m right here.”Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Met’s mighty stage. Though he was once one of the company’s brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight years. Many — him included — assumed he would never appear at the Met again.Villazón, 49, in rehearsal for “The Magic Flute.” In the mid-2000s he was one of the Met’s brightest rising stars.Jonathan Tichler/Met Opera“We can call it a roller coaster,” Villazón, 49, said in an interview. “A very bumpy career.”Plagued for much of the past 15 years by vocal problems and mental fears, Villazón lost his consistency and his nerve. “Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “At least at the Met. He had some vocal setbacks and disappeared from our radar.”Villazón had reconciled himself to the end of his career, but during the pandemic he stumbled across a new approach to singing — and now believes he isn’t yet finished. Returning to the Met as Papageno, a role almost always sung by a lower voice, might still appear to be an admission of weakness: a tenor losing his high notes and scrambling to the safety of baritone territory.Not so fast.“I’m not a baritone,” Villazón said, noting that Mozart wrote the part for Emanuel Schikaneder, the “Flute” librettist, who was a famed actor and impresario but far from a traditional opera singer. “There are some low notes that aren’t really for a tenor, like B flat. But they’re mostly in the harmony. The lowest when he sings alone is a C, which is very central.”“Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “At least at the Met.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesIt’s true, though: When Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, asked him to sing Papageno for a recording in 2018, Villazón at first demurred. “I mean, in terms of the character, I love the character,” he said, “But, of course, baritone role, ta ta ta. …”In other words, people might take his casting as an admission that the voice that had brought him celebrity was in permanent retreat. It was a fear he soon got over.“To be honest,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I am worried about what people think.”This is still a course few would have predicted when he rose, in the early 2000s, as a lyric tenor, boyish and ardent in “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” — even if there was always a duskiness to his tone, allowing him to be convincing in, for example, the heavier title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” A 2005 profile in The New York Times observed that Villazón was being compared to Plácido Domingo, at whose Operalia competition Villazón got his big break in 1999.“The voice, at this early stage,” the Times profile said, “weighs in on the light side but is tinged like Mr. Domingo’s with the dark shading of a baritone.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That summer, Villazón and Anna Netrebko, also fast-rising at the time, created a sensation in Willy Decker’s spare, vivid staging of “La Traviata” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, and were swiftly anointed opera’s next onstage power couple.“He seemed,” Gelb said, “to be the most exciting tenor in 2005, ’06.” In 2007, Villazón and Netrebko were the stars of a gala celebration of the Met’s 40th anniversary at Lincoln Center.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesBut while Netrebko’s career continued to skyrocket, calamity struck Villazón: He began to crack on some high notes, a tenor’s lifeblood. Cancellations piled up, including a Live in HD broadcast of “Lucia di Lammermoor” from the Met alongside Netrebko.A cyst was eventually discovered inside his vocal cords; after a delicate operation in 2009, he couldn’t speak for some time, let alone sing. He gingerly re-emerged on opera and concert stages, including a Met run of “Eugene Onegin” in 2013. (“Despite some initial cautiousness in the first act, in which he sometimes sounded underpowered,” the Times review said, “he sang with confidence and poise.”)“It was for me very important to reestablish myself, to reposition as a tenor,” Villazón said. But the long period of uncertainty and tweaks to his technique had left their mark, and he began to lose confidence in himself and his instrument.“Around 2015, 2016, that’s when I started to develop stage fright, because I was afraid of getting something else,” he said. “I was hitting nine out of 10 high notes. When you are in this business, and at this level, you hit 10 out of 10. They might not be all beautiful, but you hit all of them. If you’re not hitting one of those 10, you start thinking, Is this the one? And then you start hitting eight out of 10, and seven out of 10.”He worked with sports coaches, and tried taking a small amount of anti-anxiety medication before performances. That helped with his fear, but took away the internal fire that he felt fueled his best work.“How do I stop it being hell to go on and perform?” he recalled thinking. He re-embraced the Baroque repertory that he had done earlier in his career under the conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, moving away from the high notes that had turned perilously unreliable. Then he developed what he called “uncomfortable sensations,” even in the middle of his voice.With a breakthrough during the pandemic, Villazón believes he has mastered some of the vocal problems that have plagued him.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn 2017, 10 years after headlining the Met’s 40th-anniversary gala, Villazón dropped out a few days before his appearance at its 50th. He felt basically done: “I thought, Let me reach 50 and I can call it quits as a singer.”It helped that singing wasn’t all he was doing by that point. He had some success as a television personality, was directing productions and had been named the artistic leader of the Mozartwoche festival in Salzburg. He had even started writing novels.But he wasn’t yet ready to give up performing entirely, and discovered that acid reflux was causing his new round of problems. He had another operation, at the end of 2018, and slowly his vocal steadiness, though not his high notes, came back.Then, practicing during the pandemic, he hit a note — an F — and immediately knew something had shifted in the way he produced sound. Working with coaches, he revised his approach to his voice; even some of his older, higher-flying roles felt possible again.“The way it feels, I’m entering the greatest moment of my career,” he said. “I have no ambitions. I don’t need to achieve, professionally, anything else. It’s all artistic achievements.”So his coming seasons will include Mozart’s Tito and Idomeneo; Edgardo in “Lucia”; even Loge, the trickster fire god in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” which Villazón was working on when he had his pandemic breakthrough.“I certainly plan to sit with him and discuss other roles with him,” Gelb said. “I don’t want this to be a drive-by appearance. But it’s up to him, and what he feels comfortable with.”Papageno, then, is hopefully not the beginning of the end for Villazón, but a delightful lark — a part for which he doesn’t feel the need to apologize, and on which he can lavish his fascination with the figure of the clown.“They never lose, they never die, and they never quit,” he said. “The clown goes on.” More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      N.Y.C. Arts Organizations Awarded $51.4 Million Dollars in Grants

      by

      The Department of Cultural Affairs is awarding $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts and cultural groups that are seeking to rebound from the pandemic.As New York City’s arts and culture sector seeks to rebound from the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, the Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Thursday that it would award $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations.The grants, for the 2022 fiscal year, represent the largest-ever allocation for what is known as the Cultural Development Fund. Some of the grants will broadly increase funding for organizations that need a financial shot in the arm; other grants will offer more targeted support of disability arts, language access, arts education and more.Officials also said that a chunk of the money — about $5.1 million — is being sent to more than 650 groups working in underserved communities that were hard hit by the pandemic.“This improved funding will encourage artists, creators and producers across the city to continue to express their insights and stories on their own terms,” Vicki Been, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in a statement.A survey of the effects of the coronavirus commissioned by the Department of Cultural Affairs in the spring of 2020 found that overall, about one in 10 arts organizations thought they would not survive the pandemic. Smaller organizations in particular were some of the hardest hit, according to the survey.Some of the grants, of less than $10,000, have been awarded to small theater companies, choirs and museums. And to further help ensure that modestly sized groups and even individual artists receive a share of the funding, almost $3 million will be given to five local arts councils serving each borough. Those councils, in turn, will distribute the money to local constituents, city officials said.But large organizations will also benefit. Some of the city’s most recognizable arts institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 92nd Street Y are among the organizations that will receive some of the largest grants, in excess of $100,000 each.The grants — $45.5 million in mayoral funds and $5.9 million in City Council member items — are part of what officials said was a roughly $230 million annual budget for the Department of Cultural Affairs.“Culture is essential to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods, and there is no recovery for New York City without our cultural community,” Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, said.Sarah Bahr More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      ‘The Little Prince’ to Land on Broadway With Dance and Acrobatics

      by

      This international production, an adaptation of the novella that is described as “a theatrical experience with musical elements,” will run for five months.An international stage spectacle, adapted from “The Little Prince” and combining elements of acrobatics and dance, is planning a five-month run inside a Broadway theater next year.The show, called “The Little Prince,” is the creation of the director and choreographer Anne Tournié, and had previous runs in Paris, Dubai and Sydney. It is scheduled to start performances March 4 at the 1,760-seat Broadway Theater, and to run until Aug. 14.The production is not a traditional play or musical, but a show that uses dance and circus arts, along with video projections, to retell the story of “The Little Prince,” an enduringly popular 1943 novella, written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, about a young boy from another planet who visits Earth and tells his story to a marooned airman.A spokeswoman described the production as “a theatrical experience with musical elements,” and said it would be up to the Tony administration committee to determine whether it is a play or musical eligible to compete for awards or not. The show has a libretto by Chris Mouron, who also appears in the show as the narrator, and music by Terry Truck. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Greg Tate, Influential Critic of Black Culture, Dies at 64

      by

      His writing for The Village Voice and other publications helped elevate hip-hop and street art to the same planes as jazz and Abstract Expressionism.Greg Tate, a journalist and critic whose articles for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone and other publications starting in the 1980s helped elevate hip-hop and street art to the same plane as jazz and Abstract Expressionism, died on Tuesday in New York City. He was 64.His daughter, Chinara Tate, confirmed the death. No cause was given.Mr. Tate exploded onto the New York cultural scene in the early 1980s, soon after graduating from Howard University, when he began contributing freelance music reviews to The Voice. Although he didn’t join the weekly newspaper’s staff until 1987, he almost immediately became its pre-eminent writer on Black music and art, and by extension one of the city’s leading cultural critics.New York at the time was an ebullient chaos of cultures, its downtown scene populated by street artists, struggling writers, disco D.J.s and punk rockers living in cheap apartments and crowding into clubs like Paradise Garage and CBGB. The Village Voice was their bible, and Mr. Tate was very often their guide.His tastes varied widely, as did his style; his whirlwind sentences might string together pop culture, French literary theory and the latest slang. He was equally at home discussing Chuck D or assessing the latest work of the theorist Edward Said, all deployed with a casual candor that left readers wanting more.He quickly graduated from reviews to cultural criticism. Among his most famous articles was “Cult-Nats Meet Freaky Deke,” an incisive attempt, published in The Voice in 1986, to find a middle ground between the austere aesthetics of Black nationalist intellectualism and the emancipatory pandemonium of artists like James Brown.Mr. Tate could be both generous and exacting: He praised Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as one of the best albums ever made but called the follow-up, “Bad,” one of the worst. He eviscerated Jackson’s “blanched skin and disfigured African features” as the sad, inevitable result of white America’s ongoing appropriation of Black culture.“Jackson was the under-weaned creation of two Black working-class traditions,” Mr. Tate wrote in The Voice in 1987: “That of boys being forced to bypass childhood along the fast track to manhood, and that of rhythm and blues auctioning off the race’s passion for song, dance, sex and spectacle.”But he was less interested in castigation than in celebration and exploration. A single, clear thread ran through all his work: a belief that Black culture was fresh and innovative but at the same time deeply rooted in history, and that its disparate forms could be understood as emanations from a common heritage.“I marvel at hip-hop for the same reasons I marvel at Duke Ellington, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X and Michael Jordan: a lust for that wanton and wily thing called swing and an ardor for Black artists who make virtuosic use of African-American vernacular,” he wrote in The New York Times in 1994.Mr. Tate’s first book catalyzed a generation of young writers of color with its vivid language, easy erudition and kaleidoscopic range.Mr. Tate’s first book, “Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America,” was published in 1993. A compendium of his articles from The Voice, it catalyzed a generation of young writers of color with its vivid language, easy erudition and kaleidoscopic range.“His best paragraphs throbbed like a party and chattered like a salon,” one of those young critics, Hua Hsu, wrote in 2016 in The New Yorker, where he is now a staff writer. “They were stylishly jam-packed with names and reference points that shouldn’t have got along but did.”Some critics like to remain aloof from their subjects; not Mr. Tate. He palled around with the rapper Fab Five Freddy and the guitarist Vernon Reid, a founder of the band Living Colour, and he went out of his way to promote rising young Black artists, especially women.After a series of meetings in 1985 to discuss the racial disparities in New York’s music scene, he joined Mr. Reid and several others to form the Black Rock Coalition, which promotes Black musicians. Mr. Tate wrote the group’s manifesto.“Rock and roll,” he wrote, “like practically every form of popular music across the globe, is Black music, and we are its heirs. We, too, claim the right of creative freedom and access to American and International airwaves, audiences, markets, resources and compensations, irrespective of genre.”He wrote as both a music fan and a musician; he played guitar, and in 1999 he formed Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, a genre-blending band of indeterminate size. Anywhere from 12 to 40 members might be onstage at a time, with Mr. Tate often playing the role of conductor.He left The Voice in 2005, became a visiting professor at Brown and Columbia and wrote a series of books, including a sequel to “Flyboy” and a critical assessment of Jimi Hendrix. Both the pace and the style of his writing slowed down and became more deliberate as he shifted his attention to visual art and national politics.“When you’re younger, it’s all about expressionism, it’s all about trying to make as much noise as possible,” he told The L.A. Review of Books in 2018. “You realize, after a while, your thoughts are incendiary enough; the language doesn’t have to also be on fire all the time.”Mr. Tate in 2014. After he left The Village Voice in 2005, both the pace and the style of his writing slowed down and became more deliberate.Alan NahigianGregory Stephen Tate was born on Oct. 14, 1957, in Dayton, Ohio. Both his parents, Charles and Florence (Grinner) Tate, were active in the city’s civil rights movement as members of the Congress of Racial Equality, and their home served as a gathering place for fellow organizers.On weekends, as the family cleaned the house, his father would play jazz albums and his mother would play recordings of speeches by Malcolm X, followed by Nina Simone.Mr. Tate’s omnivorous nature emerged early on. His family moved to Washington when he was 13, and among their new friends was the playwright and poet Thulani Davis. In an interview, she remembered Greg coming to her apartment to listen to records and grilling her about music, art and literature. He read Amiri Baraka and Rolling Stone in equal measure.“When he discovered a new sound or set of ideas,” Ms. Davis said, “he would listen to or read them obsessively.”In addition to his daughter, Mr. Tate is survived by a brother, Brian; a sister, Geri Augusto; and a grandson, Nile.He studied journalism and film at Howard, where he also hosted a radio show and began trying his hand at music criticism. Eventually Ms. Davis recommended that he submit something to The Village Voice, whose music editor, Robert Christgau, she knew.Just before moving to New York permanently, Mr. Tate struck up a friendship with Arthur Jafa, another Howard student, who was at the beginning of his own illustrious career as a video artist. A chance encounter outside the Howard library, just before Mr. Tate moved to Harlem, turned into an eight-hour conversation, ranging over Greek drama, avant-garde film and the latest sounds coming out of New York.The two remained close, bouncing ideas off each other and becoming famous for their public gab sessions. When Mr. Jafa needed an essay for an exhibition catalog, Mr. Tate wrote it in a night. On another occasion, Mr. Jafa joined Mr. Tate for an event in Minneapolis, where they ended up talking for 10 hours, becoming a sort of accidental performance art.“He didn’t accept false boundaries,” Mr. Jafa said in an interview. “It’s hard to describe what it’s like having the voice of a generation as your friend.” More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      The Peerless Imagination of Greg Tate

      by

      For four decades, he set the critical standard for elegantly intricate assessments of music, art, literature and more, writing dynamically about the resilience and paradoxes of Black creativity and life.There are sentences, and then there are the writings of Greg Tate, who died on Tuesday at the age of 64. A critic and historian of music, art and so much more for over four decades, he was a singular voice, a fount of bravura essays on the fantastical creativity, determined resilience and wry paradoxes of Black creativity and life.His writing froze and shattered time, supercharged neurons, unraveled familiar knots and tied up beautiful new ones. It contained uncanny, elevated descriptions of sound and performance, offered grounded philosophical inquisitions and sprinkled in wink-nudge personal asides. It could have the cadence of smack talk, or a conspiratorial whisper. And it was patient, unfurling at exactly the pace of gestation, while somehow containing turns of phrase that appeared to be moving at warp speed.It doesn’t matter which page you open to in his crucial 1992 anthology “Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America” — just open it. Eruptions of style — of pure intellectual vigor and unhurried swagger — are everywhere.Page 123, leading into a review of Public Enemy: “Granted, Charlie Parker died laughing. Choked chicken wing perched over ’50s MTV. So? No way in hell did Bird, believing there was no competition in music, will his legacy to some second-generation be-boppers to rattle over the heads of the hip-hop nation like a rusty sabre.”Page 221, on Don DeLillo: “DeLillo’s books are inward surveys of the white supremacist soul — on the run from mounting evidence that its days are (as the latest in Black militant button-wear loves to inform us) numbered.”“When you’re younger, it’s all about expressionism, it’s all about trying to make as much noise as possible,” Tate said in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2018. “I was trying to literally approximate music on the page.”To read Tate was to be awed by a gift that verged on the extraterrestrial. But he was as meaningful and influential for the words he wrote as for the possibilities he made room for. Aspiring critics, this one included, understood: You almost certainly could not do what Tate did, but what a revelation nonetheless to learn about all the available space between the ground where mortals pecked away at keys and wherever he resided. There were whole galaxies of possibility to explore, so many fertile places you might land.Fearless isn’t exactly the word for how Tate approached his subjects — that would imply that to honor one’s own intellectual truth was in some way contingent on, or mindful of, the acquiescence of others. Maybe boundless is better. He rightly understood that the scope of criticism extended far beyond the borders of the subject work. The subject was the pretext, the intro, the foyer to a whole house.Tate began writing in the late 1970s, and began contributing in The Village Voice in 1981. He moved to New York from Washington, D.C., soon after, and sought out the city’s creative spasms: jazz, art, literature, newly emergent hip-hop.In that era, the alt-weekly was the medium most comfortable publishing writing with high stakes, open ears, indelible flair, infinite possibility. And in that ecosystem, Tate was the lodestar. Take “Cult-Nats Meet Freaky-Deke,” a visionary essay which appeared in The Voice in 1986 that called for a “popular poststructuralism — accessible writing bent on deconstructing the whole of Black culture.” It was a call to critical arms to rise to the “postnationalist” output of the time — in short, Tate wanted peers as ambitious and wild-minded as the culture he was covering..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}When he loved something, he was bracing. On Miles Davis: “‘Bitches Brew’ is an orchestral marvel because it fuses James Brown’s antiphonal riffing against a metaphoric bass drone with Sly’s minimalist polyrhythmic melodies and Jimi’s concept of painting pictures with ordered successions of electronic sounds.”When he was frustrated by something, he was bracing. In a roasting of Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” and in a way, of Jackson himself: “Jackson’s decolorized flesh reads as the buppy version of Dorian Gray, a blaxploitation nightmare that offers this moral: Stop, the face you save may be your own.” (When Jackson died, in 2009, Tate’s memorial tribute loudly affirmed Jackson’s place in the soul pantheon while still agonizing over the personal choices Jackson made, especially in his later years.)And he planted flags early. Critics before Tate had written about rap music, of course, but his early pieces on Eric B. & Rakim, Public Enemy, De La Soul and others stand as the definitive critical engagements of their day. They also made the case not just for a hip-hop canon but for hip-hop as canon.Not long after “Flyboy” came out in 1992, Tate brought his pen to Vibe magazine, which in its infancy was underpinned by a downtown New York cosmohemian sensibility that he helped shape with his mere presence.His column, “Black-Owned,” was a staple and a megaphone trumpeting the most progressive creators across disciplines. In the October 1993 issue, one of the magazine’s first, he wrote a dynamic full-page poem called “What Is Hip-Hop?”: “Hip-hop is inverse capitalism/Hip-hop is reverse colonialism.”In 1995, he sat with Richard Pryor: “You literally have to go to Shakespeare, James Joyce, or James Baldwin to find readings of human folly as incisive as Pryor’s. Yet Pryor has it one up on those masters of the word: He didn’t need exclamation points — his body movement was his punctuation.”On D’Angelo’s “Voodoo,” in 1999: “There are times when the music on this disc sounds so raw, so naked and exposed, you’ll be tempted to throw a blanket over its brittle, shivering bones.” On TV on the Radio, in 2006: “Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe has a wandering tenor wail that seems undecided between Catholicism’s four-part chorales, doo-wop’s street-corner symphonies and New Wave’s girly-man blues.”Full disclosure — I assigned the TV on the Radio review, one of my first decisions when I joined the magazine as music editor. The opportunity to bring Tate back into those pages was a gift. (He also was a relentless mentor and connector — he introduced me to one of the first people I hired there.) By that point, Tate’s sui generis brilliance was widely acknowledged in our circles, and still barely touched by others. Showcasing his critical pirouetting was meant to serve as a beacon, and also a simple acknowledgment of the way he affected every writer I cared about and learned from — we’re all Tate’s children. I still buy “Flyboy” every time I see it in a bookstore. I never want to be too far away from it, lest I forget how vast the cosmos is. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      The Sublime Spectacle of Yoko Ono Disrupting the Beatles

      by

      In Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” Ono is a performance artist at the height of her powers.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Early in “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary about the making of the album “Let It Be,” the band forms a tight circle in the corner of a movie soundstage. Inexplicably, Yoko Ono is there. She perches in reach of John Lennon, her bemused face oriented toward him like a plant growing to the light. When Paul McCartney starts to play “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap. When the band starts into “Don’t Let Me Down,” Ono is there, reading a newspaper. Lennon slips behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering above his shoulder. Later, when the group squeezes into a recording booth, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of chewing gum and working it between Lennon’s fingers. When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.At first I found Ono’s omnipresence in the documentary bizarre, even unnerving. The vast set only emphasizes the ludicrousness of her proximity. Why is she there? I pleaded with my television set. But as the hours passed, and Ono remained — painting at an easel, chewing a pastry, paging through a Lennon fan magazine — I found myself impressed by her stamina, then entranced by the provocation of her existence and ultimately dazzled by her performance. My attention kept drifting toward her corner of the frame. I was seeing intimate, long-lost footage of the world’s most famous band preparing for its final performance, and I couldn’t stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing.From left, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon play as Yoko Ono arranges some papers.Apple Corps“The Beatles: Get Back” is being read by some as an exculpatory document — proof that Ono was not responsible for destroying the Beatles. “She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing,” Jackson, who crafted the series out of more than 60 hours of footage, told “60 Minutes.” “She’s a very benign presence and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.” Ono, also a producer on the series, tweeted an article without comment that claims she is merely performing “mundane tasks” as the band gets to work. In the series, McCartney himself — from the vantage of January 1969, more than a year before the band’s public dissolution — pokes fun at the idea that the Beatles would end “because Yoko sat on an amp.”Her presence has been described as gentle, quiet and unimposing. Indeed, she is not the set’s most meddlesome interloper: That is Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the hapless director of the original documentary “Let It Be,” who keeps urging the band to stage a concert in an ancient amphitheater in Libya or perhaps at a hospital for children suffering from reassuringly minor ailments.And yet there is something depressing about the recasting of Ono as a quiet, inconspicuous lump of a person. Of course her appearance in the studio is obtrusive. The fact that she is not there to directly influence the band’s recordings only makes her behavior more ridiculous. To deny this is to sap her of her power.What to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.From the beginning, Ono’s presence feels intentional. Her gauzy black outfit and flowing, center-parted hair lend her a tent-like appearance; it is as if she is setting up camp, carving out space in the band’s environment. A “mundane” task becomes peculiar when you choose to perform it in front of Paul McCartney’s face as he tries to write “Let It Be.” When you repeat this for 21 days, it becomes astonishing. The documentary’s shaggy run-time reveals Ono’s provocation in all its intensity. It’s as if she is staging a marathon performance piece, and in a way, she is.The Beatles play their final public performance as Yoko Ono looks on.Apple Corps/Disney+Jackson has called his series “a documentary about a documentary,” and we are constantly reminded that we are watching the band produce its image for the camera. Ono was, of course, already an accomplished performance artist when she encountered Lennon, seven years her junior, at a gallery show in 1966. She was a pioneer of participatory artwork, a collaborator of experimental musicians like John Cage and a master at coyly appearing in spaces where she was not supposed to belong. In 1971, she would stage an imaginary exhibition of ephemeral works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the catalog, she is photographed in front of the museum holding a sign that says “F,” recasting it as the “Museum of Modern [F]art.”The idea that Ono doomed the band was always a canard that smacked of misogyny and racism. She was cast as the groupie from hell, a sexually domineering “dragon lady” and a witch who hypnotized Lennon into spurning the lads for some woman. (In 1970, Esquire published an article titled “John Rennon’s Excrusive Gloupie” that promised to reveal “the Yoko nobody Onos,” featuring an illustration of Ono looming over Lennon, who is rendered as a cockroach on her leash.) These slurs would spiral into an indefatigable pop-culture meme that has haunted generations of women accused of intruding on male genius.Ono did not “break up the Beatles.” (If Lennon’s distancing from the band was influenced by his desire to explore other pursuits, including his personal and creative relationship with Ono, that was his call.) But she did intrude. In the documentary, McCartney politely complains that his songwriting with Lennon is disrupted by Ono’s omnipresence. For her part, she was vigilant about escaping the typical role of the artist’s wife. In a 1997 interview, she commented on the status of women in rock in the 1960s: “My first impression was that they were all wives, kind of sitting in the next room while the guys were talking,” she said. “I was afraid of being something like that.” Later, she would dedicate her barbed 1973 song, “Potbelly Rocker,” to the “wives of rockers who are nameless.”The Beatles record the album that will become “Let It Be.” Yoko Ono is also there.Apple CorpsIn her 1964 text project “Grapefruit,” a kind of recipe book for staging art experiences, she instructs her audience “not to look at Rock Hudson but only Doris Day,” and in “The Beatles: Get Back,” she skillfully redirects the eye away from the band and toward herself. Her image stands in contrast to that of other Beatles partners — modelesque white women in chic outfits who occasionally swoop in with kisses, nod encouragingly and slip unobtrusively away. Linda Eastman, McCartney’s future wife, lingers a little longer, occasionally circulating and photographing the band. Eastman was a rock portraitist, and one of the film’s most fascinating moments shows her in deep conversation with Ono — as if to prove Ono’s point, it is a rare on-set interaction with no recovered audio.Ono simply never leaves. She refuses to decamp to the sidelines, but she also resists acting out stereotypes; she appears as neither a doting naïf nor a needling busybody. Instead she seems engaged in a kind of passive resistance, defying all expectations of women who enter the realm of rock genius.The Barenaked Ladies song “Be My Yoko Ono” compares Ono to a ball and chain (for the record, Ono said of the song, “I liked it”), but as the sessions go on, she assumes a weightless quality. She seems to orbit Lennon, eclipsing his bandmates and becoming a physical manifestation of his psychological distance from his old artistic center of gravity. Later, her performance would grow in intensity. The “Let It Be” sessions were followed by the recording of “Abbey Road,” and according to the studio’s engineer, when Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a bed to be delivered to the studio; Ono tucked herself in, commandeered a microphone and invited friends to visit her bedside. This is a lot of things: grotesquely codependent, terribly rude and iconic. The more Ono’s presence is challenged, the more her performance escalates.Ono wailing inchoately into Harrison’s microphone during his absence from the recording sessions.Apple CorpsAll of this was used to crudely fashion Ono into a cultural villain, but it would also later establish her as a kind of folk hero. “It all comes down to YOKO ONO,” the drummer Tobi Vail wrote in a zine connected to her riot grrrl band Bikini Kill in 1991. “Part of what your boyfriend teaches you is that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles,” she writes. That story “makes you into the opposite of his band.” It relegates women to the audience and ridicules them for attempting to make their own music. In Hole’s 1997 song “20 Years in the Dakota,” Courtney Love summons Ono’s powers against a new generation of whining fanboys, and says that riot grrrl is “forever in her debt.” Vail called Ono “the first punk rock girl singer ever.”In Jackson’s film, you can see the seeds of this generational shift. One day, Eastman’s young daughter, Heather, a bob-haired munchkin, whirls aimlessly about the studio. Then she spies Ono singing. Heather observes her with scrunch-faced intensity, steps up to the microphone and wails. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Michael Hurley, an Original Folk Iconoclast, Turns 80

      by

      For six decades, the folk singer has chronicled his woes and loves on records he’s mostly made himself. His new album celebrates that independence — and the community it fostered.When the singer-songwriter Michael Hurley was 24, Moe Asch handed him $100 and told him to go make his second album. They never spoke again.It was 1965, and Asch was a 60-year-old impresario of New York’s folk revival. As the founder of the label Folkways, Asch had released records by Pete Seeger and Lead Belly, plus foundational collections from Harry Smith and Alan Lomax. Hurley, however, was a scrappy itinerant from the rural Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. He had just issued his first home-recorded, noise-pocked set of tunes about wine, tea bags and werewolves on Folkways. Asch ordered him to take the money and cut his follow-up in proper studios.“Now that was a different situation,” Hurley, 79, said in a recent interview, scoffing into his cordless phone as he puttered around the cluttered kitchen of his home near Astoria, Oregon. “I’m still uncomfortable with booking a studio, the mood. If you can record at home, you live there.”Hurley used Asch’s cash to pay bills; five years later, he recorded his second LP in his bedroom for another label. “I was always very practical,” he said, laughing.This reluctance to work by anyone else’s code epitomizes the recalcitrant idealism of Hurley, one of American folk music’s longest-running survivors and visionaries. For six decades, Hurley has chronicled his passions, problems and curious predilections on several dozen albums, often self-made or self-released. His dependable strangeness and self-reliance cast him as a spiritual forebear and elder ally for songwriters at the country and folk fringes of indie rock. Cat Power, Hiss Golden Messenger and Yo La Tengo have covered Hurley; others have called him “our Bob Dylan.”“The refrain is, ‘What would Michael Hurley do?’” the songwriter Will Oldham said by phone from his Kentucky home. “His amount of aspiration seems sustainable.”After a five-year absence, Hurley will release “The Time of the Foxgloves” on Friday, less than two weeks before his 80th birthday. A careworn clutch of country odes to booze or wildflowers and trickster warnings about lust or death, it is a fitting capstone for an artist who rarely cared if he sang only for himself. “I never thought of a career in music,” he said. “What I do is goof off — and try to get away with it.”Hurley’s mischievous relationship with music predates his memory. When he was a toddler, his older sisters hoisted him onto a 78-r.p.m. turntable and spun him while he squealed. He wrote his first song at 5 while standing atop a board at the bottom of a rope swing, fantasizing he was an airplane that a passenger named Butch struggled to catch. He still sings it upon request.The family sang at picnics and gathered around a hulking AM console. When Hurley was 16, one of his sisters’ boyfriends left behind a guitar when he headed to college. Hurley leafed through songbooks, learning what he could without understanding tuning.“I started making up stuff right away,” said Hurley, who speaks softly and slowly until he happens upon something of interest. “If you don’t know the proper way, you do it your way. Sometimes, that gives you a better song.”“I never thought of a career in music,” Hurley said. “What I do is goof off — and try to get away with it.”Will Matsuda for The New York TimesThis guitar indoctrination coincided with the start of the ’60s and New York’s folk renaissance. While still a teenager in Bucks County, Penn., Hurley made frequent liquor runs 90 minutes northeast to the city, crashing in friends’ apartments. Often credited in that famous revival, he bristled at the idea six decades later. He was more interested, he insisted, in sitting on an abandoned outdoor sofa and people watching with a quart of beer and a salami sandwich than joining that scene.During the summer of 1962, Jesse Colin Young and a cadre of other “Bucks County Boys,” Hurley included, shared a home in Pennsylvania. Young paid the rent with his restaurant job; Hurley, meanwhile, shimmied through a hole in the ceiling into the stifling attic, where he reused Tetley tea bags. His ode to his diet, “The Tea Song,” convinced Young that a peculiar talent roosted upstairs.“We were all coming alive, all in different directions,” Young said from his home in South Carolina. “What came out of the attic was a fully formed songwriter with a wonderfully quirky perspective, so different than mine.”Young and Hurley’s paths soon diverged drastically. Young became famous with his rock band the Youngbloods. Hurley promoted his Folkways debut by decamping to Mexico with his then wife, Pasta Hurley. (He was there when The New York Times panned it.) “I had no inkling that, if you have a record, you should tour,” he said.For years after taking Asch’s money, Hurley hopscotched odd jobs near Boston. As the ’70s began, Young arrived unannounced at his small apartment, recording gear in tow. Warner Brothers had given the Youngbloods a label, Raccoon, and Hurley was Young’s priority. “They thought it would be hilarious if I got famous — not a bad idea,” Hurley said, chuckling.Hurley cut two albums for Raccoon, but the label folded before he could finish a third. Those LPs became de facto business cards for ski-town gigs in Vermont, where he lived off and on until 1986. There were other brushes with a proper career, like a stint on Rounder Records that included a joyfully demented collaboration with his cronies, the Holy Modal Rounders.Still, Hurley balked at music executives who suggested he recruit rock virtuosos as a backing band or a German promoter who implored him to portray an American hobo for the European press. Every couple of years throughout the ’80s and ’90s, he released another record on his label, Bellemeade Phonics. He festooned the LPs with surrealist paintings of characters he’d drawn for years in his own comics, like wolves named Boone and Jocko or smiling tugboats.Hurley’s sounds have always danced along the continuum between the blues and bluegrass, resistant to trends. Characters and entire songs recurred. He compared the process to jazz groups that recombine basic elements into novel results.“If I liked something as a kid, I still like it,” he said boastfully. “There is a routine, but you pull up the blanket and shake off the dust. It’s an exercise in possibilities.”Around the start of the millennium, just as Hurley settled in Oregon after time in a dozen states, a genre revival so strange it was christened “freak-folk” accepted him as its forerunner. A spate of reissues, exhaustive interviews and even a short documentary earned him young audiences. Devendra Banhart, a scene flag-bearer, remembered ordering records directly from Hurley and being stunned by comics stuffed inside. The connection between Hurley’s life and work was clear.“He hasn’t created a character just to sell records,” Banhart said by phone. “He has created his own world for the sake of enjoying making it come to life.”Mike Quinn was a Hurley convert of that moment, too. While working in a Philadelphia record store, he heard a 2002 reissue of Hurley’s debut and began buying more. In Hurley’s songs, he recognized that sincerity and silliness could share space. As Quinn’s label No Quarter grew, Hurley climbed the wish list.When the No Quarter guitarist Nathan Salsburg mentioned that Hurley hoped to record with him and Oldham in Kentucky, Quinn offered help. When lockdown scuttled their plans, Hurley wondered if he’d missed one studio session too many. “I could sense his frustrations,” Quinn said.But Hurley bided his time with hobbies he’d acquired over eight decades — fermenting homegrown apples, studying antique radios, tending his 1973 Dodge Coronet, growing mustard greens. In June of this year, while trimming blackberry bushes that threatened to overrun his two acres, he began longing for music festivals. He’d played Ohio’s Nelsonville Music Festival a dozen years running, after all, even meeting Merle Haggard there. Young musicians who played there for joy, not their job, reminded him of his blissful early days.An entire new song — his ode to Nelsonville, “Are You Here for the Festival?” — flashed into his head. He raced inside and pressed record on his reel-to-reel. He took the tape to an Astoria studio weeks later and asked friends to play along. His neighbors’ twin fiddles felt so right that the song begins “The Time of the Foxgloves,” like Hurley had waited all lockdown for the tune to cross his door.“At home, you can record at optimum times — instantaneously,” he said, as if he’d just taken Moe Asch’s money. “That’s how I caught it.”A Michael Hurley PrimerDigging into any discography that is six decades deep can be intimidating, especially when it’s scattered among labels. Try starting with five songs about five of his favorite subjects: booze, breaking up, sex, wolves and art for everyone.“Werewolf” (1971)Hurley ended his first album and began his second with this radical expression of empathy for the monster inside everyone. He’s included it on so many of his LPs it’s become his own tragic anthem. Bonus: Cat Power’s devastating take was a millennial boon for Hurley.“I Think I’ll Move” (1980)When Hurley is ready to leave, “the floorboards are coming up at me,” he said. This breakup song grows bitter and mean, with any good feeling he’s ever had curdling in about three minutes.“I Paint a Design” (1987)One of the most guileless tunes in Hurley’s catalog, this feels like the hymn for his personal religion. Find a relationship that feels right, and the whole world can become your canvas.“The Time Is Right” (2009)For fear of self-incrimination, Hurley doesn’t say much about the subjects of his love songs. This one isn’t shy about its desire to push past the platonic once and for all. It’s a jingle for what comes after courting.“Beer, Ale and Wine” (2021)Rolling Rock, hard cider, orange Curaçao: Name it, and Hurley likely has a tale about drinking it. The soft harmonies of this ode to alcohol of all tastes and temperatures have the sedative charms of a nightcap, nice and neat. More