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      in Theater

      What Three Broadway Shows Tell Us About Racial Progress

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      The female protagonists in “Trouble in Mind,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Clyde’s” show the richness that comes from having a multitude of Black voices onstage.Now that Broadway has returned and made it through the fall, and as it deals with a raft of cancellations because of the resurgent pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of progress. Promoted, in large part, by the racial reckoning of 2020, the theater industry has responded to criticisms about its systemic racism by featuring an impressive number of plays by Black writers or with Black leads.In the last few weeks, I’ve seen a handful of these shows: “Trouble in Mind,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Clyde’s.” Individually, their plots and period settings offer great insight into how far we’ve really come. But taken together, they reveal a full range of aesthetic and racial possibilities that exist for their African American characters once the white gaze is diminished or fully removed.My feelings largely align with the points Alice Childress makes in her 1955 play, “Trouble in Mind,” a comedy-drama about a veteran Black actress named Wiletta Mayer who, while preparing to stage an anti-lynching play called “Chaos in Belleville” for Broadway, begins to challenge the racial paternalism through which its white playwright and director insist on depicting Black Southern life. More specifically, the plot follows Wiletta’s mounting frustrations about her role as a mother who does not protect her Black son from a white mob after he tries to vote. It’s an act that seems inconceivable to Wiletta.“Trouble in Mind,” which was originally produced in Greenwich Village, did not make it to Broadway in 1957 after its white producers insisted that Childress provide a more conciliatory ending for her Black and white characters, and she refused. Now, Charles Randolph-Wright, a Black director, is overseeing the Roundabout Theater Company’s Broadway production of the show at the American Airlines Theater.In the play, Wiletta (portrayed brilliantly by LaChanze) initially accepts her character’s subservience and exaggerated Southern drawl, and the problematic messaging about civil rights in “Chaos in Belleville,” as the price she must pay in order to have one of the few parts offered to Black actors at the time. Set backstage, as Wiletta and her fellow cast members begin rehearsing with the director, Al Manners (Michael Zegen), we follow Wiletta’s progression from a woman trying to school a younger Black actor on how to ingratiate himself to white people, like Manners, who can make or break his career to a woman threatening to leave the production if her role continues to traffic in such offensive and absurd racial stereotypes.As she evolves, the audience is exposed to multiple gazes: the intimate conversations that Black performers have with one another beyond the purview of white people; the figurative masks that Black actors wear in front of their white peers and theater power brokers as a matter of professional survival; and the white gaze that Al and the other white characters don throughout the rehearsals in which they slip back and forth between declarations of how liberal they are and their racist insults.These three perspectives collide when Wiletta fully exposes Al’s racism, a climax that not only puts her career at risk but jeopardizes the future of the play. However, in Childress’s deft hands, this potential loss is not a tragedy, but rather a reversal of fortunes for Wiletta: Once Al is no longer able to determine her fate, she is able to give the performance of a lifetime — and live out her dignity in its fullness onstage.Sharon D Clarke, far left, with Nasia Thomas, Harper Miles and Nya in the musical “Caroline, or Change” at Studio 54.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI thought a lot about Wiletta’s limited theatrical options — a mammy, a maid, an emotionally repressed Southern mother — while watching Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical, “Caroline, or Change,” which first appeared on Broadway in 2004, and now is also being produced by the Roundabout Theater on Broadway, at Studio 54. Set in Louisiana in 1963, eight years after “Trouble in Mind” made its debut and when the civil rights movement was reaching full bloom, the musical does not focus on the major events affecting the nation at the time — the assassination of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington, or the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.Instead, “Caroline, or Change” is a semi-autobiographical exploration of how the country’s racial dynamics affected an 8-year-old boy named Noah Gellman, his middle-class Jewish American Southern family, their 39-year-old Black housekeeper Caroline Thibodeaux (played by the breathtaking Sharon D Clarke), and her three children.When we first meet Caroline, she is doing laundry in the Gellman’s basement. Physically alone, her world seems to come alive when the radio (Nasia Thomas, Nya and Harper Miles), the washing machine (Arica Jackson), and the dryer (Kevin S. McAllister) become characters onstage and provide Caroline with a sense of camaraderie and comfort that she does not share with her white employers.Public spaces are even more segregated so she finds community in the moon (N’Kenge) and the bus (McAllister again), who speak to her as well. The richness of Caroline’s life, however, is always illusory: The gaze through which we understand her story is never hers, but rather that of Noah’s as he reminisces on his childhood and his family’s (especially his stepmother Rose’s) fraught relationship with her during this turbulent time in American history.To his credit, Kushner’s script never pretends that Noah’s lens is Caroline’s. One of the musical’s most revealing scenes takes Noah’s myopic vision head-on. After Rose (Caissie Levy) tries to teach Noah a lesson by asking Caroline to take home any “change” that she finds in his pockets before she washes them, Noah imagines Caroline’s children at home, happy to spend their entire evening thinking about him and how they will spend the money. This satirical turn challenges Noah’s nostalgia, putting his racial narcissism front and center. It is also a perfect counterpoint to the professed liberalism of Al Manner’s from “Trouble in Mind” and the unacknowledged white male privilege that he wields over his cast and stage crew.And yet, “Caroline, or Change” still feels incomplete. Not because Noah and Caroline are unable to resolve their conflict or because the unrest driving the civil rights movement is nodded to through the toppling of a Confederate statue, but because for the entirety of the show Caroline remains Noah’s fantasy, and thus unknowable to us. She is not a fully realized character.Such distance, of course, is realistic. Memory is fallible and given their differences, I expected Noah to have very little access to Caroline’s inner life or imagination. But I longed to see her unmediated through his sentimentality, and truly on her own terms. Though Caroline is the protagonist of this musical (and Clarke really does own this stage), Caroline is not fully empowered, her agency limited in the story because it was not really hers in the first place.Kara Young, left, and Uzo Aduba as the title character in Lynn Nottage’s play “Clyde’s” at the Hayes Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis is not to say that I need to have an all-access pass to a Black woman’s interiority in order to appreciate the depth of her humanity. In fact, I found the title character in Lynn Nottage’s comedy “Clyde’s,” played by the ever-perfect Uzo Aduba at the Helen Hayes Theater, to be refreshingly inaccessible.The owner of a truck stop diner in Reading, Pa., Clyde also oversees the kitchen that she only staffs with formerly incarcerated men and women. Not only does she impose her exacting demands on her employees — a direct contrast to the Zen-like style of her head cook, Montrellous (the wonderful Ron Cephas Jones) — but she is the only person whose back story we never learn and who, besides her endless stream of costume changes, has no clear character arc.In other words, she is intentionally flat, a feature that Aduba’s nuanced performance leans into with wit and grit, making Clyde a rarity for a Black woman actress: an antihero. She does not have agency, she has full-fledged power. Her omnipresence is most likely a stand-in for state violence or Satan, or both. Unlike Wiletta, who needs to break free of roles that confine her, or Caroline, who, we assume, feels suffocated by the oppressive conditions of the South, Clyde is the one who traps her employees in a permanent space of unfreedom and social purgatory.“One of the things about where we are today is now we have a multitude of Black voices on the stage,” Nottage said to me during a recent interview at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “I feel the freedom to put someone onstage who isn’t perfect, who isn’t heroic, who isn’t necessarily showing the best of us, but showing an aspect of us.” In other words, Clyde’s villainy is also an aesthetic liberation for Nottage, a character that is neither born out of nor now embattled with the white gaze.Ultimately, such provocative personalities are signs of progress for us all, both on and off stage. We can only hope that such roles continue to exist — not as a one-off or in a vacuum — but as a sister among many. This is the Broadway that Wiletta Mayer really fought for as she longed to celebrate the complexity, diversity and messiness of Black life. More

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      in Movies

      ‘A Journal for Jordan’ Review: Reflections on Love Built and Lost

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      The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams bring a compelling chemistry to the screen as opposites who fall for each other.Jordan Canedy is a wide-eyed baby with excellent lungs at the start of “A Journal for Jordan.” At the movie’s end, he’s becoming a young man, one with traits that his soldier father, Charles Monroe King, had hoped for when he began writing a yet-to-be-born Jordan advice in a notebook while stationed in Iraq.In 2006, while on patrol in Baghdad, First Sgt. King was killed by a roadside bomb. Dana Canedy, King’s fiancé and the mother of their infant son, was then a senior editor at The New York Times. Her 2007 article “From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By,” led to her to write the elegant book about love, loss and legacy upon which this movie is based, and with which it shares its title.So don’t be fooled by that touching title: The journal, in which Canedy added her own stories to King’s writing, is as much the work of a grieving mother driven to make sure her son knows the love story that brought him into the world as it is a devoted father’s guide to decency and manhood.Denzel Washington directs this adaptation (the screenplay is by Virgil Williams) with care, respect and a deep-seated knowledge of the Black love stories that don’t make it to the big screen nearly enough. The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams are similarly attuned, bringing a compelling chemistry as opposites who fall for each other.In the movie, Dana meets Charles on a visit to her parents’ home near Fort Knox, Ky. Charles is chiseled, polite and oh-so good looking. He sends a gentle helping of “ma’ams” her way. She appraises him. He’s a 10-and-2 kind of driver. She reaches from the passenger side to blare the horn. Though different, their attraction is palpable. It also helps that they are both single (sort of). He’s going through a divorce, and she recently ended a relationship.Michael B. Jordan embraces Charles’s rigorous ethos as well as his tenderness. Charles might drop for morning push-ups, but he’ll also bow his head for grace at a restaurant. He travels with push-up bars but also a sketch pad. If Dana sees a flaw, it may be Charles’s single-minded devotion to his soldiers. She has her own doubts about being a military wife.Canedy acknowledged her edges (and curves) in her book, and Adams embodies them in her portrayal. When she begins writing her son, Jordan, her anecdotes can be frank, or frisky. She even shares a doozy of an argument, the kind that either breaks up a couple or makes them stronger.While the movie makes it clear that Dana and Charles are successful, it doesn’t always get at the labor necessary to get them there, both as a couple and as individuals. While it’s easy to rely on the shorthand of countless wartime movies to signal Charles’s ascendancy, Dana’s own story deserves a few more beats.A Journal for JordanRated PG-13 for a loving and passionate congress, salty language and brief marijuana use. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Reopening Night’ Review: The Show Goes On

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      This HBO documentary goes behind the scenes of the Public Theater’s post-shutdown, modern adaptation of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” featuring an all-Black cast.Rudy Valdez’s documentary, “Reopening Night,” takes viewers behind the scenes of “Merry Wives,” the Public Theater’s first production after the coronavirus pandemic shut down Broadway and other venues until earlier this year.The documentary, which is streaming on HBO, shows the difficulties of mounting a show outdoors while contending with the ever-looming threat of coronavirus: A cast member tests positive, the weather leads to cancellations, and the set pieces are constantly at risk of water damage if it rains.“Merry Wives,” a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” was staged last summer as part of the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park program. The play, which was set in South Harlem, included an all-Black cast.So many things can and do go wrong, but this production diary’s most intriguing element is the way it considers the value of art at a time when the country seems to be on fire. Shakespeare feels “frivolous,” says one of the cast members, in the face of a national health crisis, protests against police brutality and calls for racial justice.Interviews with the members of the cast, crew and staff — like the playwright Jocelyn Bioh (who adapted the play), the Public’s managing director, Jeremy Adams, and the “Merry Wives” director, Saheem Ali — reveal complex and deeply personal reasons for such devotion to the theater.There would seem to be “a chasm between people of color and Shakespeare,” but many of the performers find his work particularly suited to experimentations with language and the expression of diverse lineages. “Merry Wives” is a showcase for the possibilities of theatrical adaptation.But there’s nothing fresh about the execution, and Valdez’s inspirational tone can feel overly saccharine. Nevertheless, “Reopening Night” should offer a certain kind of satisfaction for those among us who’ve waited for the return of live theater with jittery anticipation.Reopening NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      in Music

      $50 Million Gift to Juilliard Targets Racial Disparities in Music

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      The renowned conservatory will use a grant from a California foundation to expand a training program focused largely on Black and Latino schoolchildren.For three decades, the Juilliard School has sought to bring more diversity to classical music by offering a weekend training program aimed largely at Black and Latino schoolchildren.Now the renowned conservatory is planning a major expansion of the initiative, known as the Music Advancement Program: Juilliard announced on Thursday that it had received a $50 million gift that it would use to increase enrollment in the program by 40 percent and to provide full scholarships to all participants.“This will be transformational,” Damian Woetzel, Juilliard’s president, said in an interview. “It will broaden the pathway to the highest level of classical music education in such a significant way.”The gift is from Crankstart, a foundation in California backed by the venture capitalist Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, a writer, who are longtime supporters of the program.Heyman, in announcing the gift, pointed to the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in American orchestras, where only about 4 percent of musicians are Black or Hispanic. The Music Advancement Program’s “commitment to recruiting underrepresented minorities will help bring new spirit, as well as superb young musicians, to orchestras, concert halls and theaters everywhere,” Heyman said in a statement.Juilliard aims to expand enrollment to 100 students, up from 70. The initiative will also broaden its reach to include younger students. (It currently serves children ages 8 through 18.) And in addition to full scholarships for all students, the gift will be used to create a fund to help them buy instruments.The program includes ear training, instrument lessons and theory classes for its students, who largely come from New York City public schools. Students can enroll for four years. The program costs $3,400 per year, though many students receive full or partial scholarships, currently funded from a variety of sources.While just seven Music Advancement Program students since 2010 have ended up in Juilliard’s undergraduate program, more have entered other prestigious institutions, including the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. And 61 of the students have gained admission to Juilliard’s prestigious pre-college division.Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinet and the artistic director of the program, said the gift would allow Juilliard to reach students who might have been reluctant to apply because of financial considerations.“We needed to make sure there were no barriers to getting more of the students we want into our program,” McGill said in an interview. “We wanted to open the doors, the pathways, to their success.”The program was founded in 1991 as a way of providing rigorous training for promising young musicians at a time when many New York schools were cutting music education classes. The initiative has at times faced financial difficulties. Juilliard almost suspended it in 2009, citing budget cuts and problems raising money. A group of donors, including Moritz and Heyman, eventually came to the rescue. In 2013, the couple stepped up again, giving $5 million.The program’s expansion comes amid a broader push by artists and cultural institutions to address longstanding inequities in classical music. Weston Sprott, who helps oversee the program as dean of Juilliard’s preparatory division, said being a musician of color was too often a lonely experience, and that ensembles should better reflect the diversity of their communities.“Oftentimes, as musicians of color, the reward that we get for our success is isolation,” Sprott, who is Black, said in an interview. “Classical music can’t be the best it can be without these young people that we’re bringing into our programs.” More

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      in Television

      Jussie Smollett Found Guilty: What Comes Next?

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      The actor who was found guilty of falsely telling the police he was the victim of a hate crime faces a possible sentence of up to three years, but experts disagree on whether the judge is likely to incarcerate him.The discussion in the case of Jussie Smollett, the actor convicted on Thursday of falsely reporting he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, has turned to whether the actor will receive prison time when he is sentenced in several weeks.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case, said on Friday that he had not yet decided on what recommendation he would make to the judge but again emphasized how serious he thought the case was. Mr. Webb has pointed in several settings to the social damage caused by faking a hate crime, about the waste of police resources spent on the case and about the consequences of lying to a jury, which found Mr. Smollett guilty after he spent seven hours on the witness stand standing by his account.“It’s fair to say Mr. Smollett is not repentant at all,” Mr. Webb said. “And he doubled down during our trial. I will emphasize those matters as I should.”But some experts said they would find it surprising if Mr. Smollett were to be imprisoned because he was convicted of the lowest level felony offense and has no prior felony convictions.Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, a former prosecutor who said his client planned to appeal the verdict, echoed that sentiment on Thursday.“I’ve never seen a case like this where the person got jail time,” he said. “And he shouldn’t because he’s innocent.”Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, speaking to reporters after the verdict on Thursday, surrounded by other members of his defense team.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett was convicted of five counts of disorderly conduct, which carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Even Mr. Webb has acknowledged that those charges don’t typically lead judges to incarcerate people.But he said: “There’s never been a case like this. I don’t know any case in Illinois that involves this criminal misconduct and deceiving police for weeks on end about a hate crime and then compounding it by lying to a jury.”Judge James B. Linn, who is presiding on the case, has the option of sentencing the defendant to just probation or a shorter period of prison time. He agreed on Thursday to release Mr. Smollett while he awaits sentencing.“What I could see happening is probation with a ton of community service hours,” said Michael O’Meara, a criminal defense lawyer who has also worked as a prosecutor, “and just to sting him a bit, maybe some jail time.”The judge will certainly consider Mr. Smollett’s prior criminal infraction, though it was 14 years ago and relatively minor. He was convicted in California of misdemeanor driving under the influence, making false statements to the police and driving without a license. (Mr. Smollett pleaded no contest.)In this instance, it was Mr. Smollett who reported a crime, an attack by two assailants who he said beat him up, yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, placed a rope around his neck and poured bleach on his clothing in an early morning assault on a frigid day in 2019. But two brothers told the police that Mr. Smollett had directed them to carry out the attack, and he was ultimately charged by a grand jury with lying to the police, a hoax that prosecutors argued had been orchestrated for publicity.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      in Music

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

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

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      in Music

      ‘The Snowy Day,’ a Children’s Classic, Becomes an Opera

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      Based on the popular 1962 children’s book, the show aims to celebrate Blackness and attract new audiences to the art form.In the first scene of “The Snowy Day,” a new opera based on the popular 1962 children’s book, a Black mother sings an aria as her young son, Peter, prepares to go outdoors alone to explore the snow.“Oh, how Mama’s eyes are watching this world,” she says.The moment conveys the anxiety that every parent feels sending a child into the unfamiliar. But in our times, the scene takes on a more painful specificity, speaking to the fear and trauma experienced by many Black families, in particular.“He’s a Black boy in a red hoodie going out into the snow alone,” said Joel Thompson, the composer of the work, which premieres at Houston Grand Opera on Thursday. “That’s Tamir Rice; that’s Trayvon Martin. And we wanted to focus on Peter’s humanity and his childlike wonder.”“The Snowy Day,” by Ezra Jack Keats, has long been a favorite, celebrated as one of the first mainstream children’s books to prominently feature a Black protagonist. It is the most checked-out book in the history of the New York Public Library.“The Snowy Day” (with McMillon, left, and Karen Slack as Peter’s mother) shows a Black family that is happy and intact, to counter stereotypes of dysfunction and despair in Black communities.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesThis adaptation aims to help change perceptions about Black identity and attract new audiences to opera at a time when the art form faces serious financial pressures and questions about its future.“We are waking up to the idea that opera is for everyone,” said Andrea Davis Pinkney, a children’s book author who wrote the libretto. “We are waking up to the fact that, yes, this is your story, and your story, and my story, and our story.”Since their first meeting about four years ago at a deli near Carnegie Hall, Thompson and Pinkney have been working to recreate the book’s sense of enchantment and its nuanced portrayal of race.The opera, like the book, tells the story of Peter, who awakens one day to see the world outside his window covered in a fresh blanket of snow. He ventures into the cold, making snow angels, watching a snowball fight, meeting a friend and sliding down a hill.McMillon, left, with Andrea Davis Pinkney, the children’s book author who wrote the libretto.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesJoel Thompson, center, the opera’s composer, conferring with Jeremy Johnson, Houston Grand Opera’s dramaturg.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesWhile Thompson and Pinkney tried to stay true to the spirit of Keats’s work, they also took liberties. Several new characters are introduced, including Amy, a Latina friend of Peter’s who teaches him some words in Spanish.The creators wanted the work to show a Black family that was happy and intact to counter stereotypes in popular culture of dysfunction and despair in Black communities. They added a father, who is featured in later books by Keats but not in “The Snowy Day,” to avoid any suggestion that Peter was being raised by a single mother. They reworked the libretto several times, choosing to describe Peter as a “beautiful boy” rather than to explicitly mention his race. (An early draft described him as a “brown sugar boy.”)“It’s about a loving family who happens to be a family of color,” Pinkney said. “That is the universal nature of ‘The Snowy Day.’”Thompson has long had an interest in connecting music to social issues. He is best known for “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” which premiered in 2015. That choral piece sets to music the final words of seven Black men killed during encounters with the police..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The Snowy Day” was a different kind of challenge, giving Thompson a chance to focus on a world of wonder and whimsy. But he also sees parallels to his previous work.The creators added a father (played by Nicholas Newton), who is featured in later books by Keats but not in “The Snowy Day,” to avoid any suggestion that Peter was being raised by a single mother.Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“It has the same mission of centering Black humanity and the complex interiority of Blackness in America,” he said. “I had to let go of all of the lenses of fear that I had sort of put over my eyes as just being a Black man in this world, and really look at the world through Peter’s eyes.”He chose to ground the score in a four-note motif that appears throughout the opera, which lasts about an hour. Some passages evoke hymns; others, like the snowball fight, take a jazzy, irreverent turn.Because there is no dialogue in the book, much of the libretto is invented. When Peter sees the snow outside his window at the start of the opera, he sings:Morning promise, rising.Surprising me with its splendoron the sidewalks and streets.Omer Ben Seadia, the director of the production, said she hoped the work would resonate with people, even if they had never read “The Snowy Day” or seen an opera before.“There are a lot of people who are stepping in for the first time,” she said. “Our challenge is to make the opera as magical as possible.”She added: “If you don’t know the book; if you, like me, didn’t grow up with snow; if you’ve never seen an opera, there are so many things that make this opera so accessible and familiar.”The production is notable for its efforts to showcase Black and Latino artists — especially women — who historically have been severely underrepresented in classical music. The idea to adapt the book originally came from the soprano Julia Bullock, who was set to play the role of Peter but withdrew because of travel restrictions related to the pandemic, which also forced the cancellation of the scheduled premiere last year.Peter is now played by Raven McMillon, and the cast also includes the soprano Karen Slack as Mama, the bass-baritone Nicholas Newton (Daddy) and the soprano Elena Villalón (Amy). Patrick Summers, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, conducts.The effort to bring more diversity to opera has grown increasingly urgent in recent years as companies across the country have seen declining attendance and an aging subscriber base.Omer Ben Seadia, the production’s director, gives notes to the cast.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesKevin Miller, an assistant conductor on the production, leads an ensemble backstage.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesSome institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, have found success with productions like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which debuted at the Met this fall, the first work by a Black composer in the company’s 138-year history. (Following the success of “Fire,” the company said on Tuesday it would stage Blanchard’s earlier opera, “Champion,” next season.)Khori Dastoor, who starts next month as Houston Grand Opera’s general director and chief executive, said that presenting works that reflect a broad range of experiences and perspectives was essential to the future.“Our mission centers on advancing opera as an art form and building the diverse audiences of tomorrow,” Dastoor said.Members of the cast said they were pleased to be part of a work that is challenging stereotypes.“It’s important for Black people to not always have to watch something that is filled with trauma in order to see themselves onstage,” McMillon said. Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“People can see themselves in it,” McMillon said. “It’s important for Black people to not always have to watch something that is filled with trauma in order to see themselves onstage.”Thompson said he has been inspired by Peter’s ability to see the world through a prism of wonder rather than fear.“Fear and wonder are two sides of the same coin,” he said. “If I can stop for a moment and breathe and choose to look with wonder instead of fear, it’s healing for me.” More

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      Drake Removes Himself From Competition for 2022 Grammy Awards

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      The superstar rapper and singer, long a critic of the awards, was nominated in two categories, best rap album and best rap performance.Drake, the chart-topping rapper and singer, has withdrawn his name from competition in the upcoming Grammy Awards, the latest problem involving headlining talent for the embattled awards, which have struggled with the alienation of other top acts like the Weeknd and Frank Ocean.Drake, one of the most popular and influential artists in pop music today, had two nominations for the 64th annual awards, which were announced two weeks ago. His song “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, was up for best rap performance, and “Certified Lover Boy” — one of the biggest hits of the year — was up for best rap album. He was not nominated in any of the top categories, like album, record or song of the year.But Drake and his managers recently asked that his name be removed from the two rap categories, and the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards, honored the request, according to representatives for the rapper.The Recording Academy had no comment, but a page on the Grammys’ official website, listing changes to the nominations, was updated on Monday noting the removal of Drake’s two citations.The news was first reported by Variety.Drake’s withdrawal, which emerged just as the final voting period for the awards was opening, is the latest complication for the Grammys. The academy has struggled for years to prevent an exodus among major artists of color, who have made a litany of complaints against the awards, including a poor record of wins for Black artists in the most prestigious categories, as well as a wider failure by the academy and its voters to recognize and appreciate the cultural heft and intricacies of contemporary Black music..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The Recording Academy has also taken steps in recent years to attract a younger and more diverse voting pool and to prove to the music industry that its processes are fair and transparent.But already this year, the awards have been dogged by questions about what has happened behind the scenes. The day before the nominations were announced last month, the academy’s board approved a last-minute plan to expand the ballot in the top four categories to 10 slots, from eight. Comparing the final ballot to an early version of its nominations list, which circulated throughout the industry, showed that the beneficiaries included Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Abba and Lil Nas X.Drake has been nominated for 49 Grammys in his career — counting the two nods he got this year — and has taken home four. But he has long expressed ambivalence about the awards, even after winning, and has often decided not to attend the ceremony even when he has been widely nominated.After his streaming smash “Hotline Bling” won best rap song and best rap/sung performance in 2017, Drake questioned his genre categorization in a radio interview. “‘Hotline Bling’ is not a rap song,” he said at the time. “Maybe because I’ve rapped in the past or because I’m Black, I can’t figure out why.” He added of the awards, “I don’t even want them, because it just feels weird.”In 2019, when Drake and Kendrick Lamar were the two most-nominated artists, each declined invitations to perform on the show. Drake did appear onstage to accept the best rap song award for “God’s Plan,” but seemed to allude in his speech to the Grammys’ fraught history in recognizing hip-hop — a rocky relationship that dated back to the first-ever rap award in 1989, when some artists boycotted the show because the category was not going to be televised.“This is a business where sometimes it’s up to a bunch of people that might not understand what a mixed-race kid from Canada has to say or a fly Spanish girl from New York, or a brother from Houston,” Drake said. “But the point is, you’ve already won if you have people who are singing your songs word for word — you don’t need this right here,” he added, holding up the Grammy.But as Drake started to continue speaking, the Grammys cut to commercial. Drake later called his words “too raw for TV.” A representative for the show said that producers had mistaken a pause in Drake’s speech for the end.Earlier this year, before the 63rd annual show, the Weeknd, who had been shut out of the nominations despite his album, “After Hours,” being one of the biggest hits of 2020, declared that he would boycott the awards in the future to protest its use of anonymous nominations review committees. Those were blue-ribbon industry panels that sorted through voters’ first-round nomination picks and settled on a final ballot.The review committees had long been a subject of intrigue in the business. A legal complaint by Deborah Dugan, who became the academy’s chief executive in 2019 — only to be ejected just five months later — said that those committees were rife with corruption and conflicts of interest. This year the Recording Academy, led by its new chief, the producer Harvey Mason Jr., eliminated those committees in most categories, though the last-minute rule change has once again put a spotlight on the nominations process.In response to the perceived snubs of the Weeknd last year, Drake wrote on Instagram that “we should stop allowing ourselves to be shocked every year by the disconnect between impactful music and these awards and just accept that what once was the highest form of recognition may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones that come after.”He added, “This is a great time for somebody to start something new that we can build up over time and pass on to the generations to come.”The 64th annual Grammys are scheduled to be held in Los Angeles on Jan. 31. More