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      How Pop and Jazz Wrapped Up the Past in 16 Boxed Sets

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Pop and Jazz Wrapped Up the Past in 16 Boxed SetsReissues and deluxe editions of albums by PJ Harvey, Lil Peep, Charles Mingus and others provide fresh looks at familiar works, and the creative processes that birthed them.Iggy Pop’s “The Bowie Years” revisits the two albums David Bowie produced for the Stooges frontman, “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life,” with a host of extras.Credit…UMeJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Giovanni Russonello and Dec. 23, 2020Neneh Cherry, ‘Raw Like Sushi (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Virgin/UMC; three CDs, $63.89; three LPs, $75.98)Alive with isolated, collagelike layers and exuberant ad-libs (“Now, the tambourine!”), the Swedish pop artist and rapper Neneh Cherry’s cult classic debut album, “Raw Like Sushi,” is a remixer’s dream. This 30th-anniversary set contains a vibrant remastered version of the original LP, along with two entire discs of imaginative remixes: Massive Attack transforms the synth ballad “Manchild” into a snaking, meditative groove, while the early hip-hop producer Arthur Baker reworks two different extended club mixes of Cherry’s ebullient hit “Buffalo Stance,” furthering its eternal cool. LINDSAY ZOLADZCredit…UMeCream, ‘Goodbye Tour Live 1968’(Polydor; four CDs, 66-page book, $69.98)Cream — Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass, Ginger Baker on drums — was a power trio of flashy virtuosos with big egos; it lasted only from 1966 to 1968. While its studio work was disciplined and cooperative, marrying blues to psychedelia, its live sets were improvisatory free-for-alls, with all three musicians goading one another and grappling for attention. This collection gathers three full California concerts from October 1968 along with Cream’s last show, Nov. 26 at the Royal Albert Hall; half of the tracks, including an entire San Diego concert, were previously unreleased. The nightly set list barely varies, but the performances are explosive jams — tempos shift (listen to the assorted “Crossroads”), vocal lines swerve and stretch, guitar solos take different paths each night. The California shows were carefully recorded, but with historic stupidity, the BBC filmed Cream’s last shows yet only captured the music in muddy, low-fi mono. Cream’s members didn’t think they played well at their farewell, and through the murk, that final show is full of wailing excess and rhythm-section overkill. But it deserved better preservation. JON PARELESBela Fleck, ‘Throw Down Your Heart: The Complete Africa Sessions’(Craft; three CDs, one DVD, $49.99)The banjoist Bela Fleck visited Africa in 2005 with a film crew for a five-week trip to Mali, Gambia, Tanzania and Uganda, tracing the banjo’s African origins and collaborating with African musicians. The results were a documentary, “Throw Down Your Heart,” two albums of collaborations recorded in Africa and, in 2009, a tour with Toumani Diabaté, a Malian master of the harplike kora. Live recordings from the 2009 tour were released earlier this year as “The Ripple Effect,” a showcase for tradition-bridging melodies, flying fingers and shimmering plucked-string counterpoint. This box gathers them all, including a newly expanded version of the documentary. The whole project shows Fleck learning from every encounter and figuring out countless ways that his bright, speedy, bluegrass-rooted picking and runs can intertwine with African tunes and rhythms. PARELESCredit…UMePJ Harvey, ‘Dry — Demos’(Island; one CD, $13.98; one LP, $24.98)When a 22-year-old Polly Jean Harvey and her band released their sensual, earth-rumbling 1992 debut album, “Dry,” some listeners and critics regarded its songs as almost feral outpourings of spontaneous intensity. A recently released collection of demos proves, once and for all, they were remarkable and carefully constructed achievements of songcraft. Available for the first time as a stand-alone album, “Dry — Demos” is sparse, often consisting of just Harvey’s mesmeric voice and rhythmic stabs of guitar. But the bones of enduringly sturdy songs like “Dress,” “Sheela-Na-Gig” and “O Stella” are, impressively, already locked in place. As a finished product, “Dry” was hardly overproduced or polished, but the incredible artistic confidence of these demos brings the album’s elemental power, and Harvey’s songwriting gifts, into even greater clarity. ZOLADZElton John, ‘Jewel Box’(UMe/EMI; eight CDs in hardcover book, $109.80; four LP set “Deep Cuts Curated by Elton,” $89.98; three LP set “Rarities and B-Side Highlights,” $59.98; two LP set “And This Is Me…” $35.98)Elton John’s “Jewel Box” is at least three projects side by side; its vinyl versions make them available separately. For two CDs of “Deep Cuts,” John selects non-hit album tracks; he likes sad songs with dark lyrics, collaborations with his idols (Leon Russell, Little Richard) and music that evaded his usual reflexes. Three CDs of “Rarities 1965-71” — with five dozen previously unreleased songs — detail his songwriting apprenticeship with the lyricist Bernie Taupin, a good argument for Malcolm Gladwell’s proposition that expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice. At first they tried to write potential hits that were generic enough for others to cover; John once called them “pretty horrible.” The duo learned by obvious imitation, with near-miss mimicry of both British and American approaches: the Beatles, Motown, Phil Spector, country. They made and scrapped “Regimental Sgt. Zippo,” an album of pop psychedelia. Gradually, they homed in on a distinctive Elton John style: openhearted, big-voiced storytelling backed by two-fisted piano. Two more discs are housekeeping — an archive of B-sides and non-album tracks — and the final pair, “And This Is Me …” is a playlist of songs mentioned in John’s memoir, “Me” — which gives him a chance to end with his 2020 Oscar winner, “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again.” PARELESLil Peep, ‘Crybaby’ and ‘Hellboy’(Lil Peep/AUTNMY; streaming services)Platforms change, their overlords get finicky, they get sold to conglomerates that might not respect the historical legacies they contain. Which is why it is crucial for artist catalogs that live in only one place online to be spread as far as possible. It’s a relief that the two key early Lil Peep albums, “Crybaby” and “Hellboy” (from 2016), have finally made it up from SoundCloud to other streaming services (fully cleared, with only minor tweaks). Lil Peep — who died in 2017 — was a critical syncretizer of emo and hip-hop: He was swaggering, dissolute and deeply broken, a bull’s-eye songwriter and a rangy singer and rapper. During this era, he finally figured out how all of those pieces fit together, especially on “Hellboy,” a pop masterpiece that pop just wasn’t ready for yet. JON CARAMANICACredit…Photo by Jochen Mönch, Design by Christopher Drukker‘Charles Mingus @ Bremen, 1964 & 1975’(Sunnyside; four CDs, $28.98)Charles Mingus was stubborn, self-righteous — and open to just about anything. When this bassist and composer gave his first concert in Germany in 1964, at the Radio Bremen studios, he was leading one of the finest bands of his career: a sextet that could carry a ton of weight while turning on a dime, like a dump truck made by Maserati. With Johnny Coles on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on reeds, Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, Jaki Byard on piano and Dannie Richmond on drums, the band followed Mingus’s plucky lead, leaping between Ellingtonian miniatures, bluesy hollers and extended avant-garde improv. The group’s now-legendary performances on that tour might well have represented a high-water mark. But when he returned to Bremen 11 years later, with a quintet, his penchant for misdirection and ludic sophistication had only grown stronger. Both shows are presented side-by-side in this four-CD set, which features remasters of the original radio source tapes. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCredit…UMeCharlie Parker, ‘The Mercury & Clef 10-Inch LP Collection’(Verve; five LPs, 20-page booklet, $69.99)By the end of the 1940s, the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker was only a few years into his recorded career as a bandleader but he’d already turned jazz inside-out, contouring the next frontier in American modernism as one of bebop’s lead architects. The impresario and producer Norman Granz recognized Parker’s brilliance — and he saw the potential to broaden his appeal, by shining a softer spotlight on his lemon-cake tone and his richly coiled melodies. The 10-inch LPs that Parker recorded with Granz between 1949 and 1953, for the Mercury and Clef labels, offer portraits of the artist from many angles, including the steaming “Bird and Diz,” the only studio session to feature the Big Three of bebop (Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk); the gauzy orchestral fare of “Bird With Strings”; and “South of the Border,” mixing big-band jazz with Mexican and Afro-Caribbean styles. This boxed set features five newly remastered albums from that period, most of which have been out of print on vinyl since the ’60s. Faithful to their original format, the albums come on 10-inch discs, packaged with David Stone Martin’s now-classic artwork, while the booklet includes new essays from the pianist and jazz historian Ethan Iverson and the Grammy-winning writer David Ritz. RUSSONELLOCredit…UMeIggy Pop, ‘The Bowie Years’(Virgin; seven CDs, $99.98)In 1977, David Bowie restarted Iggy Pop’s career by producing two albums for him — “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life” — and joining Pop’s band on tour. Bowie admired Pop’s pure-id approach to songwriting and performing, but smoothed him out just a little — supplying some glam-rock-tinged backup — and spurred him onward, suggesting concepts and approaches. And the punk rock that Iggy and the Stooges had presaged nearly a decade earlier was taking hold in the United States. The alliance was fertile for both of them; Bowie would have a 1980s hit remaking their collaboration, “China Girl,” a song about acculturalization, imperialism and lust from “The Idiot.” This box includes the two studio albums, the howling 1978 live album “T.V. Eye” (with Bowie in the band on keyboard and backup vocals), a disc featuring rawer alternate mixes from the albums and three live Iggy concerts from 1977. Two of the live discs are low-fi and redundant, but a fierce 1977 set from the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland documents a telling rock moment. PARELESCredit…New West RecordsPylon, ‘Box’(New West; four LPs and 200-page hardcover book, $149.99; four CD version to be released in March 2021, $85.99)Formed in 1978 by art-school amateurs in Athens, Ga., Pylon made hardheaded, pioneering, danceable post-punk. Bass and drums staked out sinewy, deliberate, unswerving riffs. The guitar poked into interstices with pings or echoey chords or scratchy syncopation or dissonant counterpoint. Laced through the instrumental patterns, riding or defying them, were vocals by Vanessa Briscoe Hay: declaiming, rasping, chanting, confiding and yelling while she sang about daily life as a pragmatic revelation — and, onstage, moved like no one else. “Box,” on vinyl, includes Pylon’s first two albums, “Gyrate” (1980) and “Chomp” (1983), plus a disc of extras including Pylon’s brilliantly decisive first single, “Cool”/“Dub,” and a find: the band’s first recording, a vivid 1979 rehearsal tape that shows Pylon already fully self-defined. Pylon was very much of its time, akin to Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Bush Tetras and Pylon’s Athens predecessors and supporters, the B-52’s. But Briscoe Hay’s arresting voice and the music’s ruthless structural economy have made Pylon more than durable. PARELESCredit…Rhino RecordsLou Reed, ‘New York (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino/Warner Bros.; three CDs, two LPs and one DVD, $89.98)Three decades after its release, Lou Reed’s midcareer 1989 opus, “New York,” retains a haunting present-tense resonance: “Halloween Parade” mourns West Village neighbors lost to an epidemic, “Last Great American Whale” frets about environmental collapse, and Trump and Giuliani even cavort through the appropriately titled “Sick of You.” This deluxe edition, released a year after the record’s 30th anniversary, features both a live album and a previously unreleased concert DVD. But its most revelatory additions are the small scraps of Reed’s “work tapes,” capturing such intimate moments as Reed figuring out the chord progression that would become the album’s hit “Dirty Blvd.,” or humming what the bass should sound like on a demo of “Endless Cycle.” Despite his shrugging exterior, these tapes show how deeply Reed cared about the details. ZOLADZCredit…Rhino RecordsThe Replacements, ‘Pleased to Meet Me (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino/Warner Bros.; three CDs and one LP, $64.98)Like their beloved Big Star, the Replacements were never quite in the right place at the right time — or maybe, whenever either band was on the brink of mainstream rock stardom, their self-destructive tendencies kicked in. Regardless, the Mats’s fifth album, “Pleased to Meet Me” from 1987, was at once their record company’s last push for success (see the echoing “Jimmy Iovine Remix” of the great single “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which, apparently, even the Midas-like producer couldn’t turn into a radio smash) and a spiritual communion with their underappreciated heroes (the group recorded the album at Big Star’s former Memphis stomping ground Ardent Studios, with their sometime producer Jim Dickinson). The resulting LP, naturally, was caught in the middle: It was too polished to ascend to the cult status of “Let It Be” from 1984, but too snarling and strange to be a hit. This fantastic and exhaustive deluxe edition (featuring 29 never-before-released tracks), though, finally puts it in its proper context: Raw and unvarnished demos (including the final recordings made with their original guitarist, Bob Stinson) restore these songs’ barbed, punk energy, while a rich spoil of melodic leftovers reassert this period as a golden age of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting. ZOLADZCredit…Janette BeckmanStretch and Bobbito, ‘Freestyle EP 1’(89tec9/Uprising Music; streaming services)For some mid-90s New York rap obsessives, the ne plus ultra collaboration is “The What,” by the Notorious B.I.G. and Method Man. For others, it’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” from the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. The connoisseur’s choice, however, might be traced back to the night in February 1995, that Big L brought Jay-Z up to the Columbia University radio station WKCR-FM for “The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show,” then the definitive proving ground for the city’s MCs. The result is startlingly good — an excellent showing from Jay-Z, still shaking loose of the twisty syllables he leaned on in his earliest recordings. But Big L — who was killed in 1999 — is the radiant star here, delivering left-field boasts in ice-cold arrangements. Previously available only on hard-to-find cassette releases and online rips, it appears here in an official release for the first time (though sadly without the between-verse banter). It’s one of three unearthed freestyles on this EP — the others are a Method Man and Ghostface Killah team-up, and also the Notorious B.I.G.’s first radio freestyle, a hellacious rumble from 1992. CARAMANICACredit…Cash MoneyVarious Artists, ‘Cash Money: The Instrumentals’(Cash Money/UMe; two LPs for $24.98 or streaming services)The beats used for many of the late 1990s breakout hits of New Orleans’s Cash Money Records were head spinners, one after the next — Juvenile’s fleet, squelchy “Ha,” B.G.’s prismatic “Bling Bling,” Lil Wayne’s chaotic “Tha Block Is Hot.” This compilation gathers those and many others — made mostly by the in-house maestro Mannie Fresh — for a set that lands somewhere between bounce futurism and avant-garde techno. It’s an expanded version of the label’s “Platinum Instrumentals” compilation from 2000, but a less disciplined one, too — the sleepy funk of “Shooter” is wildly out of place here, one of a few more straightforward Lil Wayne tracks that would have been better left off, inconsistent with the pure digital esoterica that made the label impossible to emulate. CARAMANICAVarious Artists, ‘Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World’s Music’(Dust-to-Digital; 100 MP3s and liner notes, $35)Excavated Shellac is a website created by Jonathan Ward, a collector of 78-rpm recordings of global music who shares his finds and his research. The digital collection “Excavated Shellac” unearths 100 of his previously unavailable discoveries from nearly as many countries, most released only regionally and long ago. They are extensively annotated, translating lyrics and delving into musicians’ biographies and each country’s recording history. It’s a trove of untamed three-minute dispatches from distant places and eras, full of raw voices, rough-hewed virtuosity and startling structures. Try the ferocious fiddle playing of Picoglu Osman from Turkey, the blaring reeds and scurrying patalla (xylophone) momentum of Sein Bo Tint from what was then Burma, or the accelerating, almost bluegrassy picking and singing of Tiwonoh and Sandikola, from Malawi. Nearly all the tracks are rowdy; as Ward’s notes explain, disc recording favored performers who were loud. PARELESCredit…David GahrGillian Welch, ‘Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs’(Acony; three CDs and 66-page book, $49.99; three LPs and 66-page book, $79.99)The four dozen songs on this collection were all unreleased until this year — they were recorded by the modern folk hero Gillian Welch and her longtime partner, David Rawlings, in a fevered stretch to fulfill a publishing contract in 2002. And yet these are the sketches of a patient perfectionist. Like most of the music Welch put out in that essential era, these songs are marked by the omniscience she builds with small details and her studiously unhurried voice (bolstered by Rawlings’s sturdy sweetness — see especially “I Only Cry When You Go”). It is a torrent of material from an artist who’s long communicated by trickle. And given the music’s elemental beauty, it seems absurd that it languished for all this time, all but unrecorded by others. CARAMANICAAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      With a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a Show

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a ShowFans in the theater world, including Matthew Broderick and Debra Messing, will appear in a Christmas Day telethon to try to save the West Bank Cafe.Janet Momjian performs for a GoFundMe video for the West Bank Cafe at the restaurant in Manhattan.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Updated 1:29 p.m. ETWhen Tom D’Angora got the news that the West Bank Cafe — a popular show business hangout whose basement theater hosted the first “Sunday in the Park With George” rehearsals and Joan Rivers’s final performance — was in danger of closing, he sprang into action.“You’re not closing,” D’Angora, a theater producer, told the restaurant’s owner, Steve Olsen, in an early December text. “Over my dead body.”But Olsen could see no way out: His outdoor dining revenue had dropped to almost nothing since Thanksgiving as temperatures plunged, and, even before the city moved to ban indoor dining, his new air filters and constant cleaning efforts had failed to draw many eaters into the 42-year-old restaurant. He was already thinking about how to empty out the space, and considering where to put the artwork.D’Angora wouldn’t hear of it. He and his husband, Michael, a fellow producer, put their heads together about trying to save the restaurant, a Hell’s Kitchen mainstay on 42nd Street just west of Ninth Avenue.Broadway stars have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“I was like, ‘Between the six billion famous, talented, brilliant people who also love this place, we’re going to figure this out,’” D’Angora said.The actor Tim Guinee overheard their conversation while picking up an order of chicken enchiladas at the restaurant, and together they came up with the idea for a virtual Christmas Day telethon that would feature musical performances, skits and West Bank Cafe stories from as many actors as they could find. In the meantime, D’Angora created a GoFundMe page, and within 10 days, more than 1,400 donors had raised more than $168,000 of the $250,000 goal.“We’d seen ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” D’Angora said, referring to the film in a which a community comes together to save an endangered family banking business. “And we just told Steve, ‘OK, it’s your George Bailey moment.’”The telethon, which will begin streaming at noon on Friday, will include appearances by around 200 artists, among them Matthew Broderick, Pete Townshend, Debra Messing, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, Isaac Mizrahi and Alice Ripley. Joe Iconis, the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical “Be More Chill,” is producing the fund-raiser, which he said would last at least five hours.Broderick, the star of “The Producers” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and a cafe regular, said he was sad to see another New York City business with a rich history on the verge of closing forever.“There are whole swaths of places that have closed since March, not just in Hell’s Kitchen or Times Square, but everywhere,” said Broderick. “It’s terrifying. These places are what make New York New York.”Broadway stars including André De Shields and Nathan Lane have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses, and Bruce Willis, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller all dined there.The cafe’s 100-seat basement theater, which opened in 1983, a few years after the restaurant, has had its own memorable moments: Warren Leight’s Tony Award-winning play “Side Man” had its debut there, Lewis Black spent more than 10 years as its playwright in residence, and it staged early Aaron Sorkin plays and occasional drag shows.Olsen, 66, has spent his entire adult life running the restaurant, which he opened in 1978 in a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that was still considerably grittier, and more dangerous, than it is today. “This location was considered Siberia,” Olsen said. “42nd Street and Ninth Avenue was as far west as anyone was willing to venture.”Members of an Irish gang, the Westies, were among the fledgling restaurant’s clientele. He resisted pressure to hire one of their men as a bartender, and to bring in their female friends as waitresses. “Everyone said it was because I was courageous,” he said, laughing. “But I just didn’t know. I was in my early 20s. I was immortal.”The empty bar at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan. Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWhen Broadway theaters shut down in March, D’Angora remembered, Olsen was the one worrying about his clientele. “He was concerned about how I was holding up,” D’Angora said. “He’d hand me a bottle of champagne or wine. He was never worried about himself.”Now that clientele wants to return the favor. After closing the second week of March and laying off all but six of his 53 employees, Olsen reopened with outdoor dining last summer. The restaurant also began delivering out of the neighborhood, which brought in a few thousand dollars a week. “I was making deliveries down to TriBeCa in eight minutes,” Olsen said. “There were no cars on the streets. I racked up four speeding tickets from the cameras in the first three months.”“But after Thanksgiving, business went down to nothing,” he said. “I don’t know very many people who can put up $10,000 a week indefinitely to keep a business going out of their own pocket.”Olsen said the $250,000 goal for the GoFundMe campaign would pay off the debt the restaurant has taken on because of the pandemic, and make a dent in some of their future expenses to help them get back on their feet in the spring. “At first, I was a little bit embarrassed to admit I needed help,” he said. “But my family and friends have stepped up, and I’m grateful.”He’s given himself some homework. “I owe the 1,400 people who’ve donated so far thank you letters,” he said. “Those will come out — individually — after the holidays.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      2020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and More

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle Podcasts2020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreAnswering your questions about the year’s biggest stars, and also some of its curious flops.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastDecember 23, 20202020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020  •  More

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      Meet the People Who Can’t Bring You ‘Messiah’ This Year

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMeet the People Who Can’t Bring You ‘Messiah’ This YearListen as nine performers guide you through the emotional arc of Handel’s classic, from comfort to grief to jubilation.Dec. 23, 2020, 11:46 a.m. ETEvery year, Handel’s “Messiah” is a communal ritual — a glittering parade of recitatives, arias and choruses that binds listeners and performers together in a story of promise, betrayal and redemption.But not this year. In 2020 the oratorio, if you listen to it at all, will be by necessity a private matter. And many artists for whom it is a beloved (and remunerative) staple remain almost entirely out of work.In this context, the emotional arc of “Messiah” — from comfort to grief to eventual relief — can feel more powerful than ever. Here, listen along as seven singers and two conductors offer a behind-the-music guide through the work.Brian Giebler, tenor: ‘Comfort ye’When you step up to the stage at the beginning of “Messiah,” every eye in the room turns to you. For the next three minutes you have complete command over everyone’s emotions.“Comfort ye” is my moment to take everyone’s anxiety, and pause for a second to reflect on why we’re here. You come after the overture, which is this almost chaotic moment, like everybody bustling about trying to get presents, or running to Carnegie Hall after a busy day of work. And then the beginning of “Comfort ye” is so solemn.What I’m after is a sense of calm. It’s all about long lines. Baroque ornamentation is fun, but here, it’s about taking time and not doing anything too flashy.Luthien Brackett, mezzo-soprano: ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’It’s a bubbling up of excitement, this secret you can’t wait to tell.It starts with exuberant champagne bubbles in the strings, and by the time you’re ready to sing you almost can’t contain your excitement. It’s like you’re addressing a friend who’s been grieving and maybe has been home alone for a while, and you come over and say, OK, get your coat on, we’re going to have a great time: “Get thee up into the high mountains!”There’s healing, as well. Those exuberant string notes with that wonderful contrast between the high and the low feel like a weight is being lifted. You have this energy you didn’t know you possessed. The aria goes straight into a chorus and everybody joins in.Joélle Harvey, soprano: ‘Rejoice greatly’The soprano performs in the Handel and Haydn Society’s 2020 version of “Messiah.”CreditCredit…Handel and Haydn SocietyThe music sounds like skipping through a meadow. I don’t know how you can say the words “rejoice greatly” without smiling. But the challenge is how to make the joy last so it doesn’t feel false or overdone. In the da capo section — on the words “Shout! Shout!” — instead of letting them get louder, I now make it more internal. Something to rev yourself up.Straight from the beginning, the phrases expand with each iteration. And the melismatic passages are exciting, almost like a game. Once you’re past the technical part of it, it’s very easy to find the playfulness in this aria. The da capo is ecstatic, with ornaments on top of ornaments.Reginald Mobley, countertenor: ‘He was despised’With its limited range and simple placement of notes, this is a piece that needs more than a park and bark. This is an aria that needs more than a big-haired Texan soprano spinning some tone for an expanse of quite a bit of an hour. You as the artist are the conduit: You have to be a prism for this incredibly heavy emotion that sets the stage for the Passion portion of “Messiah.”If you speed up the “A” section and slow down the “B” section — which usually sounds like a cavalry charge — then you can hear the flagellation, you hear Christ being tortured. My job is to transmit the personal horror and shame of being responsible.In 2014 I was singing the aria in Kansas City. This was the year of the Ferguson riots following the killing of Michael Brown. As I was singing, I thought of him and all the others who have been murdered by an unjust system. I thought, I get to be a survivor and tell the story of my brothers, my sisters, who were scorned and shamed and spited and spat upon. And I have to carry that shame: of what Americans should feel allowing the system to go on as long as it has.Joe Miller, conductor: ‘All we like sheep’What Handel is good at doing is creating amazing emotional contrast. At the very end of this piece is the crux of humanity: The iniquity of everyone is going to be laid on this one person. Up until then you have this comedy of sheep turning around and running away — I always think of an English sheepdog trying to round everyone up — and all of a sudden it comes down to this very profound moment.In the runs, everyone in the choir gets to weave and turn away. And then people sing “Everyone to his own way” over and over, and it’s all on one note, like everyone running into a fence and not knowing what to do.Jonathan Woody, bass-baritone: ‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together’I performed “Messiah” in Kansas City in December 2016. The recent election was on everyone’s mind. In between the dress rehearsal and the concert I read about a politician who, speaking about the Obamas, said something about Michelle returning to the Serengeti to live as a man. I read it on my phone and it broke my heart. In performance that day, what I was really doing was asking the people in the audience: Why do we hate each other, mistrust each other, dehumanize each other?I look around the world that we live in where we continue to treat people terribly. When Handel sets these rage arias, I get the sense that he understood that also. The world he lived in was not any less tumultuous than the one we live in today. I hear it in the music, in the intensity of the string figures, those 16th notes. I hear that angst.Kent Tritle, conductor: ‘Hallelujah’So much of the magic is the sheer jubilation that Handel conjures. The “Hallelujah” chorus sets out a firm, memorable exposition and then takes us to what is a short but extremely touching section about transformation. Then, through a sequence of sequentially rising pedal points on the words “King of kings,” he creates a sense of uplift, followed by a compaction of “Hallelujahs” as they barrel toward that cliff’s edge before the final absolute affirmation. It’s an incredible structure.When everyone in the hall rises from their seats it’s an amazing moment. You feel the energy shift in the house. And I see the glow on the faces of the choir as though they are a mirror reflecting what the audience is doing. Because of that choreographic moment, you get the sense that we are really on the same level. It’s magical and hair-raising.Jolle Greenleaf, soprano: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’I see this as an opportunity to share a message of hope and love during a season when it’s getting darker, when people are looking for meaningful connections and ways to manage their emotions through the holidays. I try to look out at the audience and make as many personal connections with the people there so that they can feel that there truly is hope, that I’m a vessel for that hope.The tune feels very expansive. It just glides in a way that you can add ornaments to it. Those ornaments help create the gold filigree that you would see in a tapestry. Of course there is acknowledgment of darkness: “Though worms destroy this body.” I was 35 when I was diagnosed with cancer. It made everything related to death feel more fresh and raw and scary. But there’s power in reclaiming that and singing about hope despite that fear.Dashon Burton, bass-baritone: ‘The trumpet shall sound’This aria is about awe in every possible form. There’s the reverent awe of someone shocked into paying attention, hearing this mystery that says that no matter who you are, you are going to be raised after death, and no matter what trials you’ve gone through, you will have everlasting life.And then it’s the amazing sense of awe you get from hearing a rare trumpet solo. I just love that sense of grandeur: Even though it is a triumphant piece there is such mystery and quietude.The “B” section is a moment for reflection. As if shocked by this awesome presence, you need to take a moment: What have I just experienced? It’s a joy to sing those lines in one breath, to heighten the drama and really cinch these incredibly long phrases together. And to come back to the “A” section, now highly ornamented with all the regalia of your own vocal prowess and the entire emotional experience of having gone through this story. Not only to see, but to share. It’s the greatest moment onstage to be able to say to the audience: This is for you and this is with you.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Molchat Doma Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It's Serious.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThis Band Is Fun on TikTok. In Belarus, It’s Serious.Molchat Doma, a synth-pop trio, has become an unlikely social media star. Back home, its music was the soundtrack to a traumatic year.Members of the band Molchat Doma in Minsk, Belarus, on Dec. 5. From left: Pavel Kozlov, Egor Shkutko and Roman Komogortsev.Credit…Yahuen Yerchak for The New York TimesJulia Vauchok, Alex Marshall and Dec. 23, 2020Updated 10:20 a.m. ETMINSK, Belarus — On a recent Saturday night, Hide, a trendy nightclub in Belarus’s capital, was packed. More than 600 clubgoers were jostling for a view of the stage in the tiny venue, hidden in an inner-city courtyard.Social distancing was impossible, but none of the crowd seemed worried about the coronavirus. Instead, they just looked happy to have gotten in to see Molchat Doma, a moody local synth-pop trio that this year became a lightning rod for younger people in Belarus, and an unlikely internet phenomenon abroad.Since August, when President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who has been called Europe’s last dictator, claimed an implausible election victory, mass street protests and a brutal police crackdown have put a spotlight on the former Soviet country.But even before that, Molchat Doma was bringing Belarus some international attention. In February, one of the band’s tracks, “Sudno” (“Vessel”), started appearing in clips on TikTok, the social media app. A TikTok spokesman said that he believed the first use was by a man promoting his tattooing business; that video got a few hundred likes. But the gloomy yet danceable song’s popularity grew, and, within a few months, it had been used in more than 150,000 clips.In one, the music plays while a woman dyes her armpit hair blue; in another, someone tries on dozens of outfits. One short video, in which a dog wearing sunglasses runs around to the frenzied tune, has been liked more than 1.4 million times.Most of the app’s users seem unconcerned — or unaware — that the song’s lyrics, in Russian, are about a poet contemplating suicide: “Living is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s comfortable to die” goes one line.Word of Molchat Doma soon spread beyond TikTok, and now more than two million people stream the band’s music each month on Spotify, many of those in the United States. In November, the band released its latest album, “Monument.”At Hide, few were talking about Molchat Doma’s social media success. Instead, fans spoke about how important the band had been to young Belarusians through this turbulent year. Some chanted slogans associated with the protests while they waited for the band to come onstage, such as “Long live Belarus!” and “We believe! We can! We will win!”“If Belarus were music, it would sound like Molchat Doma,” said Polina Besedina, 20, waiting to get a drink at the bar. Another clubgoer, Aleksandra Shepelevich, 20, said, “These guys feel what we live in right now.”Other fans agreed that Molchat Doma’s music had captured the atmosphere in Belarus. It may sound depressing, but it was also upbeat, said Yegor Skuratovich, 32, adding that it reflected young people’s “hope that everything will turn great.”In a Skype interview, the band’s members — the singer Egor Shkutko, 25, and the instrumentalists Roman Komogortsev, 26, and Pavel Kozlov, 27 — said they did not make a conscious effort to address Belarus’s political situation in their music, but, naturally, the circumstances in which they live were reflected.Molchat Doma performing in Warsaw in October 2019. “These guys feel what we live in right now,” one fan in Belarus said.Credit…Michal Najdzik“Monument,” the new album, was finished before the disputed presidential election in August, and the band said that its songs were about failed relationships, rather than current affairs. In fact, they preferred not to talk about the protests at all.“Any hasty word that was said too loud can result in a loss of freedom,” Kozlov said of daily life in Belarus. “In a good situation, that would mean 15, 30 days of arrest; in a worst case, two to three years behind bars,” he added. “So, as a band, we don’t talk about politics and our music doesn’t touch upon it.”“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t concern us,” said Komogortsev. “It does.”The band’s success on TikTok has taken them by surprise, they said: They only found out that “Sudno” had become a hit on the app when friends started sending them clips. It was odd to see people “doing silly things to such existential lyrics,” Kozlov said, but the band quickly saw the upside, given that the pandemic had stopped them playing shows.“I was worried that we could wither away,” Shkutko said, “but this thing kept us afloat.”Kozlov said that he thought an idealized view of the post-Soviet world had contributed to the band’s international appeal. Its album covers and music videos feature some striking examples of communist architecture, including heroic monuments and huge concrete housing blocks.“We make it look romantic,” Kozlov said, adding that the reality was quite different. “Just send an American to live in our apartment,” he said. “They would be shocked.”Not everyone using the band’s music on TikTok seemed interested in Brutalist aesthetics. Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, got more than 1.2 million likes for the clip in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to “Sudno.” She said she had used the song because she had heard it in other clips on the app, and “just thought it was cool,” she said in a telephone interview. She hasn’t listened to the band since, she added.Kaya Turner, a psychology student at the University of Central Florida, posted a clip on TikTok in which she dyed her armpit hair blue to the soundtrack of a Molchat Doma song. The video was liked more than 1.2 million times.Credit…via TikTokBut others have been converted into fans. Liana Gareeva, 29, a Russian customer service representative who lives in the Netherlands, said in a telephone interview that she had listened to everything Molchat Doma had released since coming across them on TikTok.“It is really nice poetry,” she said, “and a really nice old vibe, like vintage music.”In August, she decided to use the band’s popularity on the app to raise awareness of the situation in Belarus. She posted a clip of protesters being beaten, with “Sudno” playing as a soundtrack, overlaid with the message “Belarus we are with u!” It got about 4,000 likes.“Young people don’t read the news, so they look at TikTok,” Gareeva said. “I know a lot of people think this app is stupid, but I’ve learned so much from it.”Back at Hide, the crowd clapped and whistled for Molchat Doma to come onstage. When the musicians finally arrived, dressed all in black, everyone surged forward for a better view.For nearly two hours, the band played and the audience danced to songs that might be about heartbreak, or maybe protest.“I don’t give a damn about what will happen to me later,” Shkutko sang toward the end of the show, his voice booming over a bouncy, ’80s-inspired beat. “I dance like a God, because tomorrow will not be the same,” he sang.A few days after the show, Molchat Doma posted a clip from the show on TikTok. The video showed Shkutko bathed in blue light, writhing to the beat, his eyes closed as he sang. The song was “Sudno” and the clip soon amassed 5,600 likes. It was a respectable number — but a lot less than the blue armpit hair got.Julia Vauchok reported from Minsk, Belarus; Alex Marshall from London; and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Megan Thee Stallion Thinks Men Are Against 'WAP' Due to 'Fear and Insecurity'

      by

      This is not the first time for either Megan and Cardi B to defend the hit song from criticism with the ‘Bodak Yellow’ femcee weighing in on the matter during her appearance on Australia’s ‘The Kyle and Jackie O’ show.

      Dec 23, 2020
      AceShowbiz – Megan Thee Stallion is weighing in on the criticism over her and Cardi B’s collaborative song “WAP”. In a new interview for British GQ magazine, the “Good News” artist revealed that people, especially men, oppose the raunchy song because they “just don’t know what to do when a woman is in control and taking ownership of her own body.”
      She went on saying, “I feel like for a long time men felt like they owned sex and now women are saying, ‘Hey, this is for me. I want pleasure. This is how I want it or don’t want it,’ it freaks men the hell out.” The Houston raptress also noted that “it just comes from a place of fear and insecurity, like why would anyone be mad about my WAP? It belongs to me.”

        See also…

      This is not the first time for either Megan and Cardi to defend the hit song from criticism. During her interview on Australia’s “The Kyle & Jackie O” show, the “Bodak Yellow” femcee weighed in on the matter, saying, “The people that the song bothers are usually conservatives or really religious people. But my thing is…I grew up listening to this type of music. To other people it might be vulgar, but to me, it’s almost really normal.”
      Cardi was also aware that the song is not for children, noting that she didn’t want her 2-year-old daughter Kulture, whom she shares with rapper Offset, to listen to it. “Of course I don’t want my child to listen to the song. But, it’s like, it’s for adults!” she said. “It’s what people want to hear. If people didn’t want to hear it, if they were so afraid to hear it, it wouldn’t be doing so good.”
      Among those who publicly criticized the song was hip-hop vet Snoop Dogg. The “Mac and Devin Go to High School” actor shared his two cents on “WAP” during his virtual interview with host Julissa Bermudez for Central Ave on Thursday, December 10. Alluding that the song is too raunchy for his taste, Snoop opined, “Oh my God. Slow down. Like, slow down. And let’s have some imagination. Let’s have some, you know, privacy, some intimacy where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him.”
      He went on saying, “To me it’s like, it’s too fashionable when that in secrecy, that should be a woman’s…that’s like your pride and possession. That’s your jewel of the Nile. That’s what you should hold onto. That should be a possession that no one gets to know about until they know about it.”

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      Stanley Crouch Was a Critic Who Didn’t Hold Back Punches

      by

      I.

      He is 73, with a long, woolly beard, like someone’s version of Father Time. He lives in a hand-built shack with no electricity or running water, nearly eight miles up a forgotten dirt road in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, a mile from a creek named for a long-ago settler — Waddell — who was killed by a grizzly bear. They call him a hermit, a holy man, the Unabomber. He could care less. On the night of Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020, a heat wave with temperatures well above 100 degrees brings a rolling cloud from the ocean as the old man sleeps under a canopy of redwood trees. When the lightning comes, it sizzles and snakes, consummates with dry earth.

      II.

      We all start somewhere — and end somewhere too. But how did he come to be here, feeding the jays and squirrels each day, under the redwoods? His vow of silence, one he takes in his early 30s, makes him an enigma to others, for silence is one of our great American fears. But still, he hasn’t annulled himself. He has a history too, born a middle child, to a mother of blighted artistic ambitions and a father who was a traveling salesman, with two sisters, living in a comfortable Sears Roebuck house in Columbus, Ohio. He loved camping and fishing with his father. He loved animals, rabbits first. Patiently played with his younger sister, Jill. Was gravely ill at one point and probably concussed himself after hitting a tree with his sled. He went to college and rambunctiously flunked out. He went into the military, in 1967, and was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam, growing to hate authority figures and command chains. His inheritance was an anger that kept growing; almost a substance: even now it smolders and ignites.

      III.

      By the next day — Monday, Aug. 17 — the lightning has set the grasses and underbrush on fire in the mountains around Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Within miles of these growing fires lives the old man in the remote enclave of Last Chance, in a gully beneath the ridge. He has no plumbing and stores his supplies in plastic barrels. Once a month, he rents a car in town, in Santa Cruz, to procure his supplies, including 800 pounds of seed to feed the animals, and to visit Windy, a friend’s 43-year-old daughter whom he helped raise. Until recently, she had never heard his voice as he took the vow of silence back when Jimmy Carter was president, communicating by chalkboard and jottings on paper. She has only ever known him as that wise, constant presence in her life. “The Bay Area is made up of many microclimates, and the one I am living in is particularly nice,” he tells Windy in one of his letters. “I don’t have the heat of inland or the fog of the coast. So I’ll stay here as long as possible.” The spot fires, left unfettered, now grow and begin to converge. In some places there is 50, 100 years’ worth of fuel on the ground. Though there has been no call for evacuation yet, you can smell the smoke. The forecast projects more heat and wind.

      IV.

      Booze, weed, the Sixties. Tad Jones, for that’s his name when people use it, lives in a school bus, on Sanibel Island in Florida, with a girlfriend. After they split, he lives for a time with his other sister, in her barn. His skin turns a green pallor perhaps because of “alcohol mixed with pharmacology,” as Jill puts it today. But at some point, he lifts himself up and turns himself into a seeker. He finds yoga, which helps with his scoliosis, and a guru: Baba Hari Dass, an Indian yoga master he follows to California. Like his guru, he renounces all but essential material possessions — and seemingly sex too — and takes a vow of silence. Baba Hari Dass wrote: “One who doesn’t want to possess any thing possesses every thing.”

      V.

      At first it’s hard for the Jones family to understand this retreat, his wanton rejection of American society, but he keeps repeating his mantra: He doesn’t want to inflict his anger on the world. Or his growing paranoia. “How uncalm he was,” Jill recalls. “If he was outside his realm, he was overwhelmed.” He carries a knife for protection; he’s careful to wear neutral clothing so as not to be confused for a gang member. He lets his beard grow out, until eventually it reaches his knees. He braids it and often rolls it up, then unfurls it to the surprise of new acquaintances. He lives inside the trunk of a redwood tree, in time with it, in opposition to industrial time, replicating those happy camping trips with his father. In the 1980s he moves out to Last Chance, a back-to-the-land community fed by cold springs and an August barn dance. His work here is to become part of the fauna, to enter the understory, to encode himself in nature. He writes in a letter that the skunks brush up against his legs, not once thinking to spray.

      VI.

      We could use more contemplation, more self-reflection. America — us — we could use more silence. As radical as it seems to subtract yourself from society, to cancel your own voice, and add yourself to the forest floor, the old man, it turns out, is not really radical. He likes the band Rush and the movie “The Big Lebowski.” He reads National Geographic, articles about faraway places and these extreme changes to our environment. The wind direction shifts now from the northwest to the northeast, and the fire leaps into alignment with the topography, lighting duff and branches: More than 43,000 acres are about to burn in a matter of hours.

      VII.

      Windy, who adores him, saves all his letters, which are full of advice written in his big loopy handwriting: here’s how to interact with your grandparents, here are the pros and cons of having children. (“[T]he earth doesn’t need any more people, so if you do give birth you want to give the child a reasonable chance to succeed.”) He tells her about the Mexican radio station he listens to, with the woman’s voice singing so lovely. He cracks slightly profane jokes about Donald Trump. He says he has set redwood trunks in ascending order to a little pet entrance to the shack so the cat can keep safe from predators. When he’s overrun by arthritis — his knees and shoulders and hips, walking with two metal canes — he goes to town to see the doctor, to stay with Windy. “Word is the crabs are meaty and good,” he writes her. “I am including a hunny B” — a hundred-dollar bill — “to buy the dinner.” Guinness beer too. He writes, “Remember I am speaking/talking now so don’t be shocked.”

      VIII.

      After nearly 40 years of silence, the old man starts talking again, at first to communicate with the doctors. It’s 2017, and he still swears like a sailor. Jill, his sister, speaks to him over Windy’s cellphone, and the first words out of his mouth are “How do you make this goddamn thing work?” It’s as if they’ve never missed a beat: he still has that mellifluous, bemused voice, that Midwestern accent. And that hair-trigger temper. As the fire encroaches, on that Tuesday, he buys feed for the animals in town — then returns to Last Chance. The wind is blowing, harder now, created by the fire itself, it seems. A community is its own ecosystem — like a forest — connected through pulses, half aerial, half subterranean. Every person, every cell, communicates in a chain. Still, almost no one here knows the old man’s last name. The fire conjoins and rages, from oak to oak, redwood to redwood. In the mesmerizing face of it, your own anger isn’t much. Even by 8 p.m. no evacuation order has been issued by the state. The residents of Last Chance, over 100 in all, think they’re safe. Only when the smoke blows clear does the fire marshal see wild flames from the ridge, the fine, dry leaf matter catching hot. By the time the conflagration jumps Waddell Creek, she take matters into her own hands, no longer waiting for state officials to raise the alarm, and the evacuation plan goes into effect.

      IX.

      By about 9:30 p.m., all but three people are accounted for at the gate that leads out of Last Chance. The old man — the hermit, the holy man, Unabomber — tries to drive the road out in his rented minivan, but fire suddenly blocks his way. He turns, and drives back, but now more fire blocks the back way. It’s as if napalm has been dropped on the forest, everything lit and storming. Fire personnel are nowhere to be seen. One resident spends the night in a field, fighting off rivers of sparks; another takes to a pond in his backyard, breathing out of a hose to escape the inferno. By 10:30 p.m. Last Chance has mostly burned to the ground. In the days after, only one person remains unaccounted for.

      X.

      Later comes the recovery mission. People with chain saws, an incursion to reclaim what’s left of home. Many of the redwoods are still burning inside and will die later. The old man is found — his bones, his ashes — near his two metal canes and the minivan not far from his shack, next to a scorched ravine, the fire so hot the van’s windows have been vaporized. Jill says there’s a way of seeing her brother’s demise as “terrifying” but “glorious.” “A slow, rusty death — that wouldn’t have been good for him,” she says. “It would have been awful.” After 70,000 people evacuate and nearly 1,500 structures are lost, Tad Jones ends up the only casualty of what comes to be called the CZU Lightning Complex in the most rampant fire year California has ever seen. “He burned on the ground of the place he lived,” Windy says, “the land he loved, the forest he walked through thousands and thousands of times, and he became part of it.”

      [Read an article about Tad Jones’s death.]

      Michael Paterniti is a contributing writer for the magazine and is working on a book about the discovery of the North Pole. More

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      Bill Withers Was a Working Man Who Became a Star

      by

      I.

      He is 73, with a long, woolly beard, like someone’s version of Father Time. He lives in a hand-built shack with no electricity or running water, nearly eight miles up a forgotten dirt road in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, a mile from a creek named for a long-ago settler — Waddell — who was killed by a grizzly bear. They call him a hermit, a holy man, the Unabomber. He could care less. On the night of Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020, a heat wave with temperatures well above 100 degrees brings a rolling cloud from the ocean as the old man sleeps under a canopy of redwood trees. When the lightning comes, it sizzles and snakes, consummates with dry earth.

      II.

      We all start somewhere — and end somewhere too. But how did he come to be here, feeding the jays and squirrels each day, under the redwoods? His vow of silence, one he takes in his early 30s, makes him an enigma to others, for silence is one of our great American fears. But still, he hasn’t annulled himself. He has a history too, born a middle child, to a mother of blighted artistic ambitions and a father who was a traveling salesman, with two sisters, living in a comfortable Sears Roebuck house in Columbus, Ohio. He loved camping and fishing with his father. He loved animals, rabbits first. Patiently played with his younger sister, Jill. Was gravely ill at one point and probably concussed himself after hitting a tree with his sled. He went to college and rambunctiously flunked out. He went into the military, in 1967, and was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam, growing to hate authority figures and command chains. His inheritance was an anger that kept growing; almost a substance: even now it smolders and ignites.

      III.

      By the next day — Monday, Aug. 17 — the lightning has set the grasses and underbrush on fire in the mountains around Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Within miles of these growing fires lives the old man in the remote enclave of Last Chance, in a gully beneath the ridge. He has no plumbing and stores his supplies in plastic barrels. Once a month, he rents a car in town, in Santa Cruz, to procure his supplies, including 800 pounds of seed to feed the animals, and to visit Windy, a friend’s 43-year-old daughter whom he helped raise. Until recently, she had never heard his voice as he took the vow of silence back when Jimmy Carter was president, communicating by chalkboard and jottings on paper. She has only ever known him as that wise, constant presence in her life. “The Bay Area is made up of many microclimates, and the one I am living in is particularly nice,” he tells Windy in one of his letters. “I don’t have the heat of inland or the fog of the coast. So I’ll stay here as long as possible.” The spot fires, left unfettered, now grow and begin to converge. In some places there is 50, 100 years’ worth of fuel on the ground. Though there has been no call for evacuation yet, you can smell the smoke. The forecast projects more heat and wind.

      IV.

      Booze, weed, the Sixties. Tad Jones, for that’s his name when people use it, lives in a school bus, on Sanibel Island in Florida, with a girlfriend. After they split, he lives for a time with his other sister, in her barn. His skin turns a green pallor perhaps because of “alcohol mixed with pharmacology,” as Jill puts it today. But at some point, he lifts himself up and turns himself into a seeker. He finds yoga, which helps with his scoliosis, and a guru: Baba Hari Dass, an Indian yoga master he follows to California. Like his guru, he renounces all but essential material possessions — and seemingly sex too — and takes a vow of silence. Baba Hari Dass wrote: “One who doesn’t want to possess any thing possesses every thing.”

      V.

      At first it’s hard for the Jones family to understand this retreat, his wanton rejection of American society, but he keeps repeating his mantra: He doesn’t want to inflict his anger on the world. Or his growing paranoia. “How uncalm he was,” Jill recalls. “If he was outside his realm, he was overwhelmed.” He carries a knife for protection; he’s careful to wear neutral clothing so as not to be confused for a gang member. He lets his beard grow out, until eventually it reaches his knees. He braids it and often rolls it up, then unfurls it to the surprise of new acquaintances. He lives inside the trunk of a redwood tree, in time with it, in opposition to industrial time, replicating those happy camping trips with his father. In the 1980s he moves out to Last Chance, a back-to-the-land community fed by cold springs and an August barn dance. His work here is to become part of the fauna, to enter the understory, to encode himself in nature. He writes in a letter that the skunks brush up against his legs, not once thinking to spray.

      VI.

      We could use more contemplation, more self-reflection. America — us — we could use more silence. As radical as it seems to subtract yourself from society, to cancel your own voice, and add yourself to the forest floor, the old man, it turns out, is not really radical. He likes the band Rush and the movie “The Big Lebowski.” He reads National Geographic, articles about faraway places and these extreme changes to our environment. The wind direction shifts now from the northwest to the northeast, and the fire leaps into alignment with the topography, lighting duff and branches: More than 43,000 acres are about to burn in a matter of hours.

      VII.

      Windy, who adores him, saves all his letters, which are full of advice written in his big loopy handwriting: here’s how to interact with your grandparents, here are the pros and cons of having children. (“[T]he earth doesn’t need any more people, so if you do give birth you want to give the child a reasonable chance to succeed.”) He tells her about the Mexican radio station he listens to, with the woman’s voice singing so lovely. He cracks slightly profane jokes about Donald Trump. He says he has set redwood trunks in ascending order to a little pet entrance to the shack so the cat can keep safe from predators. When he’s overrun by arthritis — his knees and shoulders and hips, walking with two metal canes — he goes to town to see the doctor, to stay with Windy. “Word is the crabs are meaty and good,” he writes her. “I am including a hunny B” — a hundred-dollar bill — “to buy the dinner.” Guinness beer too. He writes, “Remember I am speaking/talking now so don’t be shocked.”

      VIII.

      After nearly 40 years of silence, the old man starts talking again, at first to communicate with the doctors. It’s 2017, and he still swears like a sailor. Jill, his sister, speaks to him over Windy’s cellphone, and the first words out of his mouth are “How do you make this goddamn thing work?” It’s as if they’ve never missed a beat: he still has that mellifluous, bemused voice, that Midwestern accent. And that hair-trigger temper. As the fire encroaches, on that Tuesday, he buys feed for the animals in town — then returns to Last Chance. The wind is blowing, harder now, created by the fire itself, it seems. A community is its own ecosystem — like a forest — connected through pulses, half aerial, half subterranean. Every person, every cell, communicates in a chain. Still, almost no one here knows the old man’s last name. The fire conjoins and rages, from oak to oak, redwood to redwood. In the mesmerizing face of it, your own anger isn’t much. Even by 8 p.m. no evacuation order has been issued by the state. The residents of Last Chance, over 100 in all, think they’re safe. Only when the smoke blows clear does the fire marshal see wild flames from the ridge, the fine, dry leaf matter catching hot. By the time the conflagration jumps Waddell Creek, she take matters into her own hands, no longer waiting for state officials to raise the alarm, and the evacuation plan goes into effect.

      IX.

      By about 9:30 p.m., all but three people are accounted for at the gate that leads out of Last Chance. The old man — the hermit, the holy man, Unabomber — tries to drive the road out in his rented minivan, but fire suddenly blocks his way. He turns, and drives back, but now more fire blocks the back way. It’s as if napalm has been dropped on the forest, everything lit and storming. Fire personnel are nowhere to be seen. One resident spends the night in a field, fighting off rivers of sparks; another takes to a pond in his backyard, breathing out of a hose to escape the inferno. By 10:30 p.m. Last Chance has mostly burned to the ground. In the days after, only one person remains unaccounted for.

      X.

      Later comes the recovery mission. People with chain saws, an incursion to reclaim what’s left of home. Many of the redwoods are still burning inside and will die later. The old man is found — his bones, his ashes — near his two metal canes and the minivan not far from his shack, next to a scorched ravine, the fire so hot the van’s windows have been vaporized. Jill says there’s a way of seeing her brother’s demise as “terrifying” but “glorious.” “A slow, rusty death — that wouldn’t have been good for him,” she says. “It would have been awful.” After 70,000 people evacuate and nearly 1,500 structures are lost, Tad Jones ends up the only casualty of what comes to be called the CZU Lightning Complex in the most rampant fire year California has ever seen. “He burned on the ground of the place he lived,” Windy says, “the land he loved, the forest he walked through thousands and thousands of times, and he became part of it.”

      [Read an article about Tad Jones’s death.]

      Michael Paterniti is a contributing writer for the magazine and is working on a book about the discovery of the North Pole. More