Music

The poet, educator and activist will receive a cash award of about $250,000. The prize is for an artist who “has pushed the boundaries of an art form” and “contributed to social change.”The poet and activist Sonia Sanchez, 87, a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement, has been awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the prize trust said on Thursday.The honor, which carries a cash award of about $250,000, is awarded to an artist who “has pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change and paved the way for the next generation.”Sanchez, the author of more than 20 books, is known for melding musical formats like the blues with traditional poetic forms like the haiku and tanka, using American Black speech patterns and experimenting with punctuation and spelling.Her work champions Black culture, civil rights, feminism and peace.“When we come out of the pandemic, it’s so important that we don’t insist that we go back to the way things were,” Sanchez said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We’ve got to strive for beauty, which is something I’ve tried to do in my work.”This year, the five-member selection committee, led by Zeyba Rahman, the senior program officer of the Building Bridges program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, chose Sanchez unanimously out of 50 finalists from various artistic disciplines.Rahman said in a statement that the award recognizes Sanchez’s “extraordinary literary gift and her lifelong commitment to speaking up for social justice.” On Nov. 11, Sanchez will reprise her role in Christian McBride’s “The Movement Revisited,” in which she will recite the words of Rosa Parks, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. More

Una de las bandas con mayor proyección de América Latina le habla a una generación con ansiedades y problemas que, a menudo, vive en un contexto de gran agitación social.El momento decisivo para una de las bandas de más rápido crecimiento en América Latina llegó gracias a un instrumento poco probable: un banjo robado.En 2014, la banda colombiana Morat tuvo una sesión de grabación en Bogotá. Sus cuatro miembros todavía estudiaban en la universidad, eran amigos de la infancia que tocaban en eventos informales y, algunas noches de la semana, se presentaban en bares. Mientras buscaba inspiración, el guitarrista Juan Pablo Villamil tomó un instrumento que no sabía exactamente cómo tocar.“En ese entonces todos sabíamos que queríamos sonar distinto, explorar cosas”, recordó Villamil en una reciente llamada de Zoom cuando sus compañeros de banda Juan Pablo Isaza, Simón Vargas y Martín Vargas se unieron para agregar sus propios aportes. Grabaron una guitarra de 12 cuerdas y una mandolina, luego alguien vio un banjo colgado en la pared. Lo tomaron prestado y nunca lo devolvieron.“En cuanto al proceso de aprendizaje, yo diría que fue principalmente en YouTube”, agregó Villamil. “Porque no hay muchos profesores de banjo en Colombia”.“Mi nuevo vicio”, la canción que estaban escribiendo en ese momento, terminó con un sencillo pero prominente riff de banjo y llamó la atención de Paulina Rubio, la estrella pop mexicana, quien rápidamente la grabó con la banda. El tema se convirtió en una sensación en España y llegó a las listas de éxitos en América Latina y Estados Unidos. Los músicos fueron invitados a Europa para que grabaran más música, y se llevaron el banjo.“No podíamos ser una banda de un solo hit, la canción con Paulina y eso es todo”, dijo Villamil. La canción que llevaban como su “as bajo la manga” era “Cómo te atreves”, que ahora tiene más de 200 millones de vistas en YouTube. Con su banjo acelerado, letras llenas de imágenes y un ambiente alegre de “road trip pop” que se ha convertido en el sonido de Morat, la canción marcó la llegada fulgurante del grupo a la escena de la música latina en 2015. Desde entonces, no han parado de crecer.En julio, el grupo lanzó su tercer álbum, ¿A dónde vamos?, y la semana pasada comenzó la etapa estadounidense de su gira que los llevará a teatros y estadios en California y Texas, con paradas en Chicago, Nueva York, Atlanta y Miami. Con canciones que abordan la angustia, la nostalgia y el enamoramiento, la banda ha forjado conexiones poderosas a través de fronteras y océanos al hablarle a una generación de jóvenes cuyas ansiedades y preocupaciones personales, grandes o pequeñas, a menudo se desarrollan en un contexto de agitación social.“Lo que intenta hacer Morat es usar palabras simples para explicar sentimientos complicados”, dijo Pedro Malaver, el manager de la banda. “No estamos tratando de ser Neruda. Solo tratamos de decirle a la gente: no estás solo”.Las características de lo que Villamil definió como la “firma sonora” de la banda incluyen letras dolidas y nostálgicas sobre el amor no correspondido que recuerdan a los boleros clásicos; coros cantados al unísono; y el uso de instrumentos (como el banjo, el piano eléctrico o la guitarra de acero) que rara vez se escuchan en el pop latino. Han lanzado poderosas baladas, melodías funky de R&B y canciones de rock que se inspiran en el country. “Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Musicalmente, la banda es un poco atípica en un ambiente donde el reguetón recibe la mayor atención. Las influencias de Morat incluyen Coldplay, Bacilos, Mac Miller, el poeta y cantante español Joaquín Sabina, Dave Matthews Band, la banda de rock colombiana Ekhymosis y, por supuesto, los Beatles. Villamil e Isaza también son fanáticos del country (escriben y graban a menudo en Nashville), y los hermanos Vargas eran metaleros antes de incursionar en el folk-rock.“En 2021, no hay un sonido único que defina el pop en América Latina”, escribió Kevin Meenan, gerente de tendencias musicales de YouTube, en un correo electrónico. “En cierto modo, Morat es un microcosmos de esta tendencia que incorpora una amplia gama de sonidos y géneros en su música, y en su caso, suelen usar influencias distintas a la movida más popular del reguetón y el trap latino”.Leila Cobo, vicepresidenta y líder de la industria latina en Billboard, dijo: “Hay muchas suposiciones sobre lo que es la música latina en este momento, pero es un territorio muy amplio”.Y añadió: “Morat demuestra que la música latina no es necesariamente lo que ves en las listas de éxitos en un momento determinado. Escriben grandes canciones pop con buenas letras. Son fieles a sí mismos, y constantemente amplían su base de fans”.MORAT COMENZÓ cuando tocaban en la escuela primaria; sus miembros se conocen desde los cinco años. A medida que se acercaban al final de la escuela secundaria, Isaza, Villamil, Simón Vargas y Alejandro Posada, el baterista original del grupo, formaron una banda. Después del lanzamiento de su primer álbum en 2016, Posada se salió para concentrarse en sus estudios y el hermano menor de Vargas se incorporó.Al principio, los miembros de Morat (que en ese entonces se llamaba Malta) repartían sus discos en los bares de Bogotá hasta que lograron presentarse de manera regular en un local llamado La Tea, donde los fanáticos del grupo eran el personal de seguridad y los mismos músicos mezclaban y hacían los arreglos en las presentaciones en vivo. Pronto, comenzó a surgir su público. “Recuerdo que teníamos un juego: cada vez que tocábamos en La Tea tratábamos de adivinar cuánta gente iba a vernos”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y, por lo general, llegaban más personas de las que esperábamos”.“Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Gianfranco Tripodo para The New York TimesPero no todos veían el potencial del grupo. Villamil recuerda que en la primera reunión que tuvieron con Malaver, que en ese entonces empezaba su carrera como un joven representante artístico, los rechazó después de escuchar una de sus primeras canciones. “Nos dijo: ‘Creo que ustedes son talentosos, pero nunca tendrán una canción en la radio. Deberían haber nacido en Argentina a fines de los setenta, porque su música no es adecuada para lo que está sucediendo en este momento’”.Después de verlos actuar en vivo en La Tea unos días después, Malaver rápidamente cambió de opinión. “Fui con la peor actitud de la historia a ese concierto ¡Pero luego empezaron a tocar!”, recuerda. Esa misma noche decidió representar a la banda.Ya llevan casi una década trabajando juntos, y las colaboraciones de Morat se han extendido por todo el espectro de la música en español: han hecho canciones con la actriz mexicana Danna Paola, con el cantaor de flamenco Antonio Carmona, con el rockero Juanes y con estrellas del pop como Sebastián Yatra y Aitana, entre muchos otros.“El catálogo del grupo realmente habla del poder de la colaboración en la región”, dijo Meenan. “Este éxito no ha estado ligado a un solo país. En YouTube, hemos visto su música en más de 15 países, obteniendo lugares en el Top 40 en lugares como España, México, Bolivia, Argentina, Italia y Ecuador, además de su Colombia natal”. Dijo que Morat ha logrado tener más de 950 millones de visitas en YouTube, solo en los últimos 12 meses.MORAT ESTABA de gira por España cuando hablamos por Zoom, y el grupo se juntó en un sofá frente a la cámara como cuatro hermanos. Se movían cómodamente entre el inglés y el español cuando querían expresar más claramente un punto, hacían bromas y, a menudo, uno terminaba las oraciones del otro. Tampoco dudaron en debatir en voz alta algunas de las preguntas más complejas.Dos temas surgen a menudo en las letras de Morat: el amor y la guerra, que es un tema delicado en un país que ha soportado décadas de conflicto armado.“El contexto en el que hemos crecido y en el que vivimos, tiene esa imagen todos los días, todo el tiempo”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y creo que, aunque no quieras, se nota y te influye”.Aunque la imagen global de Colombia se ha visto afectada por descripciones generales que la ubican como un lugar violento, la realidad, por supuesto, es mucho más compleja. “Bogotá tiene estas montañas enormes y el sol sale detrás de las montañas. Entonces durante gran parte de la mañana el sol no ha salido de las montañas, pero el cielo está azul”, agrega Simón Vargas. “Eso es muy colombiano, en cierto modo es como si estuvieras viviendo al límite. Puedes ver la oscuridad, pero también sabes que hay algo más allí. Y, al mismo tiempo, estás al lado de la luz y justo al lado de una cultura muy hermosa y de gente muy hermosa”.En 2020, Simón Vargas, quien también es escritor y actualmente está terminando su licenciatura en historia en la Universidad de Los Andes, publicó un libro de cuentos sobre Bogotá inspirado en el realismo mágico. “Tal vez fue una forma de tocar temas más intensos y oscuros que los que hablamos en nuestra música”. Lo tituló, apropiadamente, A la orilla de la luz.El último álbum de Morat se compuso casi en su totalidad durante la pandemia de COVID-19 en una de las regiones más afectadas del mundo. “No hay un solo ser humano en este planeta que no haya pensado, ¿a dónde vamos después de esto?”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Decidimos que se llamaría ¿A dónde vamos? literalmente porque pensamos que era una excelente manera de hablar sobre lo que está sucediendo en todos los aspectos. No sabíamos cuándo volveríamos a tener conciertos. No sabíamos cómo es que la pandemia iba a cambiar el panorama social”.Martín Vargas dijo que el título también se refiere al proceso creativo de la banda. “Con la exploración musical que tratamos de hacer, ¿a dónde vamos con nuestros instrumentos?”, añadió. “Es muy evidente durante el álbum: las canciones son diferentes. Hay mucho rock. Y también hay claras referencias a países. Baladas, boleros”.Ninguna de sus letras habla explícitamente sobre la pandemia, pero casi todas las canciones están marcadas por temas de angustia personal, incertidumbre e inquietud que contrastan con melodías optimistas y, a menudo, muy bailables. Juntas, las composiciones muestran la versatilidad de Morat: la eléctrica “En coma” trata sobre una relación atrapada en el limbo; la balada “Mi pesadilla”, con el cantante colombiano Andrés Cepeda, trata sobre la ansiosa espera por la llegada de la persona adecuada; la acústica “Date la vuelta” es una sentida carta a un amigo que vive una relación tóxica.Aunque las canciones representan una variedad de estados de ánimo, todas tienen la estética de la banda que continúa sumando nuevos oyentes. “Siento que lo que hemos hecho hasta ahora ha sido un milagro”, dijo Isaza. “No sé por qué a la gente le gusta un banjo con letra en español. Lo considero un milagro, y el hecho de que todavía lo estemos haciendo, es asombroso para mí”..Aunque el disco comienza con la pregunta “¿A dónde vamos?”, termina con el mensaje esperanzador de “Simplemente pasan”: “Ya quiero decirle que bailemos / Que lo peor que puede pasar es que nos gustemos”, dice la banda. Y remata: “Porque cuando las cosas buenas tienen que pasar / Simplemente pasan”. More

The 22-year-old British-Irish-Bangladeshi musician is releasing a debut album that makes a strong statement about her identity.LONDON — Joy Crookes knew she was making a statement by naming her debut album “Skin.”“It’s one of the strongest parts of our bodies,” the 22-year-old singer-songwriter said. But “in every other sense, socially and externally, it is used against us,” she added in a recent interview at her London apartment, nestled on the sofa with the Kama Sutra and a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri visible on a sparsely filled nearby shelf.“Skin,” due Oct. 15, makes an impassioned statement about her British-Irish-Bangladeshi heritage. “The thing about being mixed race is there’s so much projection,” she said. “My identity is solely my responsibility, and my choice, and I don’t need anyone’s permission.”In her music, Crookes offers listeners a nuanced and candid exploration of her multiracial identity. At a time when many conversations about race in the arts and calls for change have only recently begun, Crookes’s commitment to vulnerability in her storytelling has helped her connect with a growing — and loyal — fan base.Listening to Crookes’s soulful, intimate music can feel like intruding on a private conversation or cracking open a diary, placing her alongside introspective British artists like Arlo Parks and Cleo Sol. “Don’t you know the skin that you’re given is made to be lived in?” she sings, with a plea in her voice on the album’s bare-bones title track, quoting words she spoke to a suicidal friend over simple piano and strings. Other songs explore her experiences with sexual assault, and speak directly to Britain’s Conservative government: “No such thing as a kingdom when tomorrow’s done for the children,” she sings on the sharp-tongued, retro-tinged “Kingdom.”Crookes said she uses her music to learn about herself, as well as for catharsis.  “I think it’s a building block into me as a human being, and learning about myself.”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesGrowing up, Crookes — who turns 23 on Oct. 9 — bought CDs by Marvin Gaye and Kate Nash, and taught herself to play the guitar and piano, and later, to produce. She was first contacted at 15 by a music manager who saw a YouTube video of her and a friend covering “Hit The Road Jack.” At 19 she signed with an imprint of Sony Music.In the last four years, she has released three EPs and several singles, featured in a Beats campaign and landed on the 2020 shortlist for the BRIT Rising Star Award, which is given to the British act tipped to make it big in the coming year.“Every now and then you get someone who’s phenomenally talented, incredibly grounded in their emotions and how they process the world around them,” said Blue May, a producer who worked on “Skin” and believes Crookes has the potential to be “a voice for her generation.”The process of writing “Skin” excavated powerful feelings about her family’s history. Crookes’s Irish father and Bangladeshi mother split, turbulently, when she was two. Navigating their different cultures, she felt she couldn’t “be a byproduct of one or the other” given “how much war that would have caused,” she said.Some traumas left even deeper generational wounds. “All the men in my family were killed in front of my great-grandmother,” Crookes said, referring to Bangladesh’s bloody fight for independence from what was then West Pakistan. “The ramifications of that war live on today.”On the album, Crookes leans into her Bangladeshi roots, singing the colloquial Bangla phrase “Theek Ache” — translated as “it’s OK” — to brush off nightly escapades of drinking and hookups. She also carefully probes her family’s experiences as immigrants living in London. “I’ve seen the things you’ve seen/you don’t speak, you leave the traces,” she sings to her Bangladeshi relatives on the dramatic, soulful “19th floor,” named for her grandmother’s apartment in public housing building in south London, where Crookes spent much of her childhood.The process of writing “Skin” excavated powerful feelings about Crookes’s family’s history. Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesIn her music videos, Crookes also immortalizes her family’s history. The clip for “Since I Left You” is based on a photograph taken in her family’s village in Bangladesh, and features the musician singing tearfully in front of a corrugated metal shelter with clotheslines blowing in the breeze.For the cinematographer Deepa Keshvala, working with Crookes on the video was the first time in her then seven years in the music industry she had seen someone proudly putting their South Asian heritage on display.“She was 19 when we did that,” she said in a phone interview. At that age, “to have a strong sense of who you are is pretty amazing.”Crookes said her music is therapy that keeps paying dividends. “It’s the way that I let things out, and it just so happens to be my job,” she said. “I think it’s a building block into me as a human being, and learning about myself.” More

There has been an am-I-dreaming quality to Aneesa Folds’s life lately. That much she wanted to make clear.Yes, that was her in the glittering gold jumpsuit at the Tony Awards, performing in knockout voice with the troupe Freestyle Love Supreme. But a few mornings later, sitting in a booth at a hotel restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district, she was still doing a mental double take at the memory of Broadway stars saying hello to her backstage “as if I wasn’t a pedestrian.” And meeting a reporter for a profile interview? That wasn’t normal either.“I love that you’re talking to me as if this is regular for me,” she said, and laughed.On the other hand, she is on her way back to Broadway with Freestyle Love Supreme. Founded by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale, the longstanding hip-hop improv comedy troupe got fresh attention with the rise of “Hamilton,” which led to a Broadway run two years ago. Now, it’s back for a limited encore engagement that starts previews on Thursday and opens Oct. 19.Folds, who even offstage has an easy charisma, is a relative newcomer to the group. When she and Kaila Mullady joined in 2019, they were entering what had been all-male territory. Then, as now, they had only a week’s worth of rehearsals to acclimate before stepping in front of the first audience.At the Tony Awards, from left: James Monroe Iglehart, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Wayne Brady and Folds.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“You’re going into this space with all of these people that have been doing a show for 18, 19 years,” said Folds, 28. “They know each other like the back of their hands, and they’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to improvise.’ And then you go to Broadway the next week and they put you onstage.”In 2019, she spent rehearsals in survival mode, trying to soak up as much knowledge as she could about the mechanics of the show. This time feels different — more like “playing with your friends,” she said.But to Kail, the show’s director, it was obvious even in the jam-session audition ahead of the original Broadway run that Folds, with her boldness and talent, belonged.“I was in the session with Chris Jackson and James Iglehart, who have both been in the group for a long time and have both been on Broadway for a long time,” he said in a phone interview. “She was doing her thing, like full Aneesa, and they looked at me and they were like: ‘Bro. Bro.’ I was like: ‘I know! Like, try to be cool. She’s still in the room.’”If Folds could turn back time — the way Freestyle Love Supreme does in one of its signature bits — and tell her child self what she is up to now, it might come as something of a shock. Growing up in Jamaica, Queens, she loved singing and felt safe blending in with a choir, but she was mortified whenever her talent was singled out for praise.“I was afraid of my voice,” she said. “I just was very insecure.”She had teachers who pushed and prodded her, though, and a mother who agreed when they encouraged her to do things like perform in the school musical. Her mother also found programs that helped her daughter blossom, like the Wingspan Arts theater conservatory in Manhattan and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.From left, Chris Sullivan, Christopher Jackson, Andrew Bancroft, Folds and Iglehart during Freestyle Love Supreme’s Broadway run in 2019.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, musical theater — which, when you get right down to it, is what Freestyle Love Supreme does — was a tough sell for Folds as a child, partly because, she said, “it felt very white to me.”“I didn’t really see myself,” she added. “I just didn’t know if I could be in that world, if I was allowed to be in that world, to take up space in that world. And I was a very, very shy kid. I didn’t really speak much.”At Repertory Company High School for Theater Arts, in the Town Hall building on West 43rd Street, Folds emerged from her shell, making jokes and rapping in the cafeteria. (That’s also when she came up with the rapper name Young Nees, which she uses in Freestyle Love Supreme.) And thanks to Miranda’s “In the Heights,” a show she first listened to on a Young People’s Chorus trip to Austria, then saw repeatedly on Broadway, she thought there might be a place for her after all.“That was the show that made me feel like, OK, they’re changing musical theater,” she said.But not nearly fast enough. This spring, Folds told Playbill that most of the racist encounters she has had in her life have been in theater.“When I wasn’t doing Broadway,” she said, “I was doing a lot of regional shows. I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I was the only person of color, so as you can imagine, I’ve heard all sorts of things.”Like comments from wig designers who didn’t know how to work with Black hair — remarks so painful and common that Folds pulled in her shoulders to make herself smaller as she spoke of them.“When I get into a wig chair, I start apologizing,” she said. “Like: ‘I have a lot of hair, this is all mine, I have locs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”Once, she said, she was assigned to actor housing in a home whose white owner had a collection of mammy dolls, and took them out to show her.This season, productions by Black artists are abundant on Broadway, but Folds said she feared those higher numbers will be a mere blip before the industry reverts to its old ways.“I really pray and hope that it doesn’t,” she said. “So that the little girl that’s sitting in Queens, New York, who maybe wants to do musical theater, does see herself.”It was during a visit home, when Folds was a college student at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, that she first saw Freestyle Love Supreme. An instant fan, she wanted to do what they did. “It felt like everything I was good at,” she said.Freestyle Love Supreme, Folds said, “felt like everything I was good at.”Lia Clay Miller for The New York TimesSo in 2019, the year after the troupe started an academy, she applied. And while Kail said the program is not meant to be a training ground for new members, people there quickly told him they had found someone.With the addition of women, Folds said, suddenly the group had a wider pool of topics to talk about onstage. She particularly relishes the memory of a woman shouting “period cramps” when Veneziale was collecting audience pet peeves for the cast to rap about.“He didn’t hear her,” Folds said. “Which men often don’t. And I was like, ‘I’ll take period cramps.’”She did her rap, the crowd screamed with delight, and women came to the stage door and raved about it.“It’s awesome to be one of the women in the group,” Folds said. “We’re here and we’re switching it up.”Freestyle Love Supreme has led to work for her on other projects, including Miranda’s recent animated musical for children, “Vivo,” and his film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” out next month in theaters and on Netflix. In that movie’s recently released trailer, she is in the opening shot.All this contributes to Folds’s pinch-me feeling. A small, doubting part of her wonders if she is where she is because her higher-profile colleagues are also her friends. A more brisk and confident part knows that she didn’t fall into any of her success — though if she’s a pleasure to be around, that doesn’t hurt.“My name does mean friendly and well-liked,” she said. “I try to live up to it. Be nice: That’s the first rule of theater.” More

The Cuban musician’s new album, “El Alimento,” is a fresh take on funk that blends Afro-Cuban and African American rhythms using a cast of international collaborators.A few months ago in a Tallahassee, Fla., recording studio, the Cuban vocalist and composer Cimafunk was engaged in a climactic meeting of the minds with the Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton when they stumbled on a fascinating connection between African American and Afro-Cuban music.Cimafunk, born Erik Iglesias Rodríguez, was scatting out the 1950s smash “Los Marcianos,” which instantly delighted Clinton, who had loved the melody of the song so much that he recorded an anthemic cover of it called “Groovealliegiance” for Funkadelic’s 1978 classic “One Nation Under a Groove.” But Clinton, who had created an Afrofuturist cottage industry with his band’s elaborate costuming and stage props, had no idea that the song was about Martians landing in Havana to dance cha cha cha.“I was saying, brother, you wrote that song talking about the Mothership and that whole connection and you didn’t know that?” Cimafunk, 32, recalled in a video interview last week, standing in front of a South Florida building surrounded by palm trees and lush grass. “All those people like Pérez Prado, Chano Pozo, all that craziness made a mark,” he added, referring to the Cuban musical innovators. “It not only penetrated the instruments, but also the vocal rhythms.”Afro-Cuban rhythms have mingled with African American ones going all the way back to late-19th-century New Orleans — distant siblings that intersected at key moments, like the gestation of jazz, the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie era of Birdland bebop, and the stunning performance of Ray Barretto’s band in Questlove’s recent documentary “Summer of Soul.” But for Cimafunk, whose new album “El Alimento,” out Friday, is filled with star-studded collaborations with Clinton, Lupe Fiasco, CeeLo Green and the pianist Chucho Valdés, the time for fresh Cuban funk is now.“What Erik has done is unite the two tendencies — Afro-Cuban and African American,” Valdés, the founder of the influential 1970s jazz/funk group Irakere, said in an interview. “He has converted this into a new school that until now I haven’t heard done.”“El Alimento” is a frenetic joy ride of freewheeling blasts of percussive funk intercut with pumped-up versions of classic Cuban riffs called tumbaos, and even a nod to Michael Jackson’s famous quoting of Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa.” Yet Cimafunk also explores his compositional abilities and impressive vocal range on the blues ballad “Salvaje” and the Spanish-guitar-tinged “No Me Alcanzas,” featuring the classic Cuban percussionists Los Papines. While he wants to his voice to carry the entire lineage of Cuban music, he reminds me most of Benny Moré, who was also a self-taught vocalist that highly trained musicians pushed themselves to keep up with.“What Cima is doing is like a brand-new funk,” Clinton said in a phone interview. “Tito Puente and that kind of stuff, Tito Rodríguez, all of that was my favorite music back in New York. The mambo and the cha-cha was the same as disco in the ’70s.”Dressed in an African-inspired print shirt, and peering through a pair of oversize sunglasses, Cimafunk showed flashes of amused wonderment, as if he was both surprised by and belonging to the moment. When explaining details about writing and composing, he broke into song, and the birds in the surrounding trees joined him, seemingly inspired.The title “El Alimento” means “The Nourishment.” Cimafunk said he chose it “because making the album was what nourished me spiritually during the whole process of the pandemic.”Akilah Townsend for The New York TimesBorn and raised in Pinar del Río, a town west of Havana, Cimafunk grew up listening to giants like Moré, Bola de Nieve, and Los Van Van and its charismatic singer Mayito Rivera. But he also encountered music from beyond the island, especially on TV programs like “De La Gran Escena,” where he saw Tom Jones, Phil Collins and Sting. On one of the new album’s signature tracks, “Esto Es Cuba,” he describes grooving residents of Guantánamo who were able to see live broadcasts of “Soul Train” because of the U.S. naval base’s antenna nearby.Cimafunk’s conservative family pushed him to study medicine but supported him when he decided to move to Havana and pursue his musical ambitions. “At first I got into reggaeton because of the girls, and the fact that anybody with a sound card and microphone can do it,” he said. “Then I discovered the trova,” referring to an older genre centered on the ballad. “That where I started to write my songs with more structure — very odd songs that no one understood — the stranger songs you wrote, the more exotic you were.”Cimafunk’s first album, “Terapia,” arrived in 2017 stocked with neo-trova exoticism like “Parar El Tiempo” and “Me Voy,” a danceable live favorite inspired by Nigerian Afropop and pilón, an Afro-Cuban carnaval rhythm. “Terapia” contained the seeds of the new album, and a mellower, ’70s soul groove. “El Alimento” (“The Nourishment”) has thoroughly transformed him into an international funk champion.“I called it ‘El Alimento’ because making the album was what nourished me spiritually during the whole process of the pandemic,” Cimafunk said. He said he intends the album as a kind of descarga, a word that in Cuba means both a musical jam and a release of accumulated emotional baggage.“It’s about the connection between the spirit and the body and the importance of release, and loving yourself,” he explained.The album’s producer, Jack Splash (Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Solange), has fronted his own indie funk band Plant Life, and moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Miami, giving him a unique perspective on the Afro-Cuban/African American overlap.“It’s two different sensibilities — even if you’re listening to the same funk, your swing might be a little different,” he said in a video interview. He said Shakira once asked him to add more syncopation to his standard beatbox rhythm track; on the new song “Estoy pa’ eso,” Splash and Cimafunk retool the “Shakira beatbox” to put a new spin on a sample from the American funk band Zapp, with mind-bending results.While some of Cimafunk’s strongest supporters, like Splash, believe his sense of style — tightfitting clothing, Bootsy Collins-esque sunglasses — evokes Fela Kuti, comparisons to the Nigerian Afrobeat king go beyond appearance: Rodríguez is an Africanist who often begins concerts with an a cappella rendition of a poem called “Faustino Congo,” which Cimafunk said is inspired by Miguel Barnet’s “Biography of a Runaway Slave.” The “cima” part of Cimafunk is a reference to cimarrones, runaway slaves whose defiance paralleled that of Jamaican Maroons, an inspiration for Bob Marley’s Rastafarian beliefs.“At first I got into reggaeton because of the girls, and the fact that anybody with a sound card and microphone can do it,” Cimafunk said. He soon moved on to other genres.Akilah Townsend for The New York Times“At first I grew up unaware — my family was Black and educated and felt they had to work twice as hard,” Cimafunk said. “African culture arrived in Cuba and changed everything! It’s the flow, the visuality, the concept, everything, and when I started to connect with that identity it was a relief because I arrived at a place of truth.”Splash noted that funk was more than a sonic touchstone. “People were scared when James Brown said ‘I’m Black and I’m proud,’” he said. “They thought, ‘Does that mean James Brown does not like white people?’ No, that’s not what he means. ‘Let’s lift my people up.’” They found a similar moment in the party anthem “La Noche” from the new album, which features the dancehall rapper Stylo G and the Colombian Afro-funk band ChocQuibTown, whose lead singer Goyo shouts at song’s end, “Afro-Latin power!”While he showcases the power of blending African American and Afro-Cuban music, Cimafunk is also engaging in a cultural mixing that celebrates a kind of Latin American hybridity, on his terms. He sees himself as part of a new generation that is destined to bring change.“Now that we have the internet, you can know what’s happening in the world, and have a million different opinions, and choose the one you want,” Cimafunk said. “We started analog,” he added, “now we’re in a pot that’s boiling.” More

The musical will feature the theatrical debut of the Roots’ Black Thought, who will be writing the music and lyrics and be in a lead role.“Black No More,” a musical with a book by the “12 Years a Slave” screenwriter John Ridley and music and lyrics by the Roots’ Tariq Trotter, a.k.a. Black Thought, will finally get its turn in the spotlight.The musical, originally scheduled to premiere in October 2020, was delayed by the pandemic. The production, from the New Group, will now begin this winter.“Black No More,” based on George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name, will play a limited engagement, Jan. 11 through Feb. 27, 2022, at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Opening night is scheduled for Feb. 8.“The music transcends genre,” Trotter said in a phone interview. “But most of it feels like Black music. I feel like this play, we might be able to break it down and use it as an education in the origins and history of Black music.”“I didn’t feel like I was confined; I didn’t feel like I had to stick to music of the day,” he continued. “I felt like we were able to tell the story, and make it in very many ways a period piece — without only writing jazz music.”Schuyler’s satirical story, a piece of the Harlem Renaissance canon, follows the development of Black-No-More, a scientific procedure for turning Black skin white, created by one Dr. Junius Crookman. (Trotter, in a theatrical debut, will also play Crookman in the show.)The protagonist, Max Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon), decides to undergo the procedure after being spurned by a white woman for being Black. In the meantime, Black-No-More gains popularity nationwide. The more Black people make the transition, the more obvious the economic importance of racial segregation becomes.“I thought it was mind blowing,” Trotter said of Schuyler’s book. “I couldn’t believe that something of this caliber of science fiction and wit and just dark humor and something with so many layers was written at the time that it was.”Apart from Trotter and Dixon (“Hamilton”), the cast also includes Jennifer Damiano (“Next to Normal”), Tamika Lawrence (“Rent”), Theo Stockman (“American Psycho”), Tracy Shayne (“Chicago”) and Walter Bobbie (“Chicago”). Rehearsals begin in November. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.The show will be coming from a Tony-winning team: It will be directed by the New Group’s founding artistic director, Scott Elliott; choreographed by Bill T. Jones; and have music supervision, orchestrations and vocal arrangements by Daryl Waters.“There’s a very serious look that we need to take at history and at the story of this nation and the ways in which it has been told and will be told, moving forward,” Trotter said. “It’s my hope that this work and work like this are going to compel people to continue that examination.” More

The video platform said it was enforcing its terms of service, one week after the singer was convicted on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.A week after R. Kelly’s conviction on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, YouTube has deleted two of the R&B star’s official video channels, but is not banning his music entirely.The two channels — RKellyTV and the singer’s Vevo account, which hosted his music videos — were removed on Tuesday in what YouTube, owned by Google, said was an enforcement of its terms of service.“We can confirm that we have terminated two channels linked to R. Kelly in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines,” Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, said in a statement.According to YouTube’s guidelines, it may shut down the channels of people accused of very serious offenses if they have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes, and if their content is closely related to those crimes.On Tuesday, a news report in Bloomberg quoted an internal memo by Nicole Alston, YouTube’s head of legal, which said, “Egregious actions committed by R. Kelly warrant penalties beyond standard enforcement measures due to a potential to cause widespread harm.”In the past, YouTube has removed the channels of creators like Austin Jones, who made popular a cappella videos and in 2019 pleaded guilty to having underage girls send him sexually explicit videos.YouTube’s stance may be the first significant action taken by a major tech platform to remove Kelly’s content. But it is not a total ban. Kelly’s music is still allowed on YouTube through user-generated content, like cover versions of his songs, and on Kelly’s “topic” page, which allows streaming of his recordings while a static image of his album artwork is displayed.And Kelly’s music remains fully available on YouTube Music, a separate streaming platform that competes more directly with audio outlets like Spotify and Apple Music. Last month, Google said that there are 50 million subscribers to YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, which allows viewers to skip ads on videos.When asked why Kelly’s music remains available on YouTube Music, and why that platform has different creator responsibility guidelines, a YouTube spokesperson said only: “Our creator responsibility guidelines are enforced for channels that are linked to the creator. This is consistent with how we’ve enforced our policies in the past.”The answer may lie in the historical roots of YouTube as a platform for individual creators, who often operate without a corporate intermediary like a record company, and thus maintain more direct control over their video channels. But for most major recording artists, like Kelly, their record companies supply their music videos to YouTube through Vevo, which is jointly owned by Google and the major record companies.In 2018, Spotify briefly instituted a policy banning the promotion of artists — including Kelly — whose personal conduct was deemed “hateful.” The policy was rescinded after objections in the music industry that it was vague and seemed to inordinately affect artists of color.Since then, there has been little attempt to police the content of musicians accused of serious misconduct, to the dismay of many activists. Kelly’s music remains widely available on other major streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music, and has been included on hundreds of official playlists on those services. On Spotify, Kelly’s songs have recently drawn an average of about five million streams each month. More

From Sinatra to Isaac Stern to Sting, she attended to the needs of the star performers in the Maestro Suite and helped calm their nerves.Paparazzi, fans and police officers filled the street outside Carnegie Hall one fall day in 1987, waiting for Frank Sinatra to arrive for a show. Inside, a backstage attendant named Debby King was on edge, worried about Sinatra’s reputation for being difficult.As Carnegie Hall’s artist liaison, Ms. King worked one of the more rarefied jobs in New York showbiz. Like a one-night personal assistant, she was responsible for taking care of the maestros, soloists and artists who performed there, and she doted on everyone, whether Itzhak Perlman or Sting, Audra McDonald or André Previn.When Sinatra arrived, his limousine inching through the crowd, Ms. King went to fetch him. He lowered his car window.“You can’t sing from the limo,” she said. “Do you plan on coming out?”“I’m coming out,” he said.He stepped out.“You’re not that tall,” she said.“Shh,” he replied. “Don’t tell everybody.”They started laughing, and Ms. King escorted him to his dressing room, where she had prepared provisions including a bottle of Chivas Regal, chilled jumbo shrimp and Tootsie Rolls. She escorted him to the stage at showtime. Afterward, he gave her a jacket emblazoned with his name, a generous tip tucked inside.Ms. King died on Sept. 20 at a hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She was 71. Her granddaughter Sonrisa Murray said the cause was liver cancer.Although conductors and soloists receive the standing ovations at Carnegie Hall, their performances are supported by a corps of ushers, doorkeepers and backstage attendants. And for 34 years, Ms. King played her part.Specifically, she was responsible for the needs of the stars who used the Maestro Suite, a regal dressing room on the second floor.“She’s the soul of Carnegie Hall,” the cellist Yo-Yo Ma said in a phone interview. “She enables the transition that takes place between a person backstage getting ready to perform and then going onstage to share everything that is important to them. That transition for an artist is often when they’re at their most vulnerable.”Ms. King called herself a professional nerve-calmer, and made it her business to know the preperformance rituals of her charges.The conductor Riccardo Muti and Ms. King after his final concert at Carnegie Hall as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in 1992. “When he gets here the first thing he wants is his coffee,” Ms. King said of the maestro, “and I must be sure that he drinks it before he goes onstage.”Steve J. Sherman/Carnegie HallShe knew, for instance, that the violinist Kyung Wha Chung liked strongly scented flowers to be placed just outside her dressing room; that the soprano Jessye Norman wanted a thermometer and humidifier in her quarters; and that the conductor Riccardo Muti needed strong coffee waiting for him. When The Wall Street Journal interviewed Ms. King before Mr. Muti conducted a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1990, she stressed this detail.“My honey’s not here yet,” she said. “When he gets here the first thing he wants is his coffee, and I must be sure that he drinks it before he goes onstage.”At what proved to be his last concert at Carnegie Hall, Leonard Bernstein gave Ms. King a pin in gratitude.Ms. King also glimpsed vulnerability.When Sinatra played Carnegie Hall that fall in 1987, in Ms. King’s telling, he kept missing his lines as he struggled to read the teleprompter. During intermission, Sinatra’s handlers were hesitant to approach him, but Ms. King took him aside.“You look like you’re having a tough time out there,” she told him. “But listen, you’re Frank Sinatra. You can do anything. They will always love you out there no matter what. If you’re in trouble again, just smile, or say hello to a pretty lady on the balcony.”Back onstage, Sinatra took her advice, and he crooned with confidence.Ms. King, who raised a daughter on her own, had a second full-time job, far from the bright lights of Carnegie Hall.After the evening’s concert ended, she would rush downtown to the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where she worked until the early morning as an administrator, dealing with matters of the dead. Then it was back to her apartment in Harlem for some sleep before picking up her granddaughters, Oni and Sonrisa, from school and heading down to Carnegie in the late afternoon. She joined the city’s morgue as a clerk in the 1970s, then went to work at Carnegie, initially as an usher, in the mid-1980s. She juggled both jobs for years.In 2004, her jobs collided when the executive director of Carnegie Hall, Robert Harth, died suddenly at 47. A co-worker called Ms. King to tell her that his body was on its way to the morgue, but she already knew.“I’m sitting right here now taking care of him,” she responded. “I’m holding his hand so he’s not alone tonight.”Ms. King with the violinist Isaac Stern at Carnegie for a 2000 screening of the American Masters documentary “Isaac Stern: Life’s Virtuoso.” Ms. King called herself a professional nerve-calmer.Steve J. Sherman/Carnegie HallDeborah King was born on Oct. 4, 1949, in Manhattan and was raised in Harlem. Her father, John, was a deacon. Her mother, Margo (Shaw) King, was a homemaker. Deborah aspired to become a cosmetologist, and in high school she applied for an internship at a salon. But because of a clerical error, she ended up at the morgue instead. In addition to her granddaughters, Ms. King is survived by a grandson and a daughter, Cheryl Leak-Fox-Middleton. Ms. King took pride in putting both her granddaughters through college.She retired from the medical examiner’s office in 2016 and was diagnosed with liver cancer a few years later. She retired from Carnegie Hall last spring.Staff and family members gathered at Carnegie to commemorate the occasion. Cake was served, letters of appreciation from musicians were read out loud, and Ms. King told tales of her backstage adventures. A plaque honoring her was unveiled.Just outside the Maestro Suite, near pictures of greats like Gershwin and Tchaikovsky, her smiling portrait hangs on its very own wall. More