California

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      California Bill Could Restrict the Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

      by

      The bill, which applies more broadly to other forms of creative expression, has unanimously passed the Senate and Assembly and could become law by the end of September.A California bill that would restrict the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings has unanimously passed both the State Senate and Assembly, and could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The bill, introduced in February by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat who represents South Los Angeles, comes amid national attention on the practice following the indictment of the Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna on gang-related charges. Prosecutors have drawn on the men’s lyrics in making their case.The California measure, however, would apply more broadly to any creative works, including other types of music, poetry, film, dance, performance art, visual art and novels.“What you write could ultimately be used against you, and that could inhibit creative expression,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview. He noted that the bill ultimately boiled down to a question of First Amendment rights.“This is America,” he said. “You should be able to have that creativity.”Mr. Newsom has until Sep. 30 to sign the bill into law. If he neither signs nor vetoes the bill by that date, the measure would automatically become law. The law would then go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, Mr. Jones-Sawyer said.When asked whether Mr. Newsom planned to sign the bill, his office said that it could not comment on pending legislation. “As will all measures that reach the governor’s desk, it will be evaluated on its merits,” it said.Though the bill’s genesis is in preventing rap stars’ lyrics from being weaponized against them, the measure loosely defines “creative expression” to include “forms, sounds, words, movements, or symbols.”It would require a court to evaluate whether such works can be included as evidence by weighing their “probative value” in the case against the “substantial danger of undue prejudice” that might result from including them. The court should consider the possibility that such works could be treated as “evidence of the defendant’s propensity for violence or criminal disposition, as well as the possibility that the evidence will inject racial bias into the proceedings,” the bill says.“People were going to jail merely because of their appearance,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said. “We weren’t trying to get people off the hook. We’re just making sure that biases, especially racial biases toward African Americans, weren’t used against them in a court of law.”The bill would require that decisions about the evidence be made pretrial, out of the presence of a jury. For decades, prosecutors have used rappers’ lyrics against them even as their music has become mainstream, with critics and fans arguing that the artists should be given the same freedom to explore violence in their work as were musicians like Johnny Cash (did he really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?) or authors like Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote “American Psycho.”In other cases, though lyrics were not used as evidence, they were discussed in front of the jury, which “poisoned the well” by allowing bias to enter the court, according to Mr. Jones-Sawyer’s office. It also noted that while country music has a subgenre known as the “murder ballad,” it is only the lyrics of rap artists that have been singled out.Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who has extensively researched the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, said that the way prosecutors have used defendant-authored lyrics in court was unique to rap.The practice, she said, essentially treated the lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts — denying rap the status of art.” The California bill is significant, Dr. Kubrin said, because it would require judges to consider whether the lyrics would inject racial bias into proceedings. “This is bigger than rap,” she said.Among the first notable times the tactic was used was against the rapper Snoop Dogg at his 1996 murder trial, when prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case.” The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.Snoop Dogg entering a Los Angeles court in 1996, where a prosecutor cited his lyrics during a murder trial. He was acquitted.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressMost recently, the charges against Young Thug and Gunna have called national attention to the tactic. Both men, who have said they are innocent, were identified as members of a criminal street gang, some of whom were charged with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, co-wrote the Grammy-winning “This is America” with Childish Gambino and is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s hip-hop scene.In November, two New York lawmakers introduced a similar bill that would prevent lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases unless there was a “factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.” It passed the Senate in May.In July, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced federal legislation, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which they said would protect artists from “the wrongful use of their lyrics against them.”The California bill is supported by several other music organizations and activist groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California, which advocates criminal justice reform.In a statement of support from June, the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization that battles systemic racism in the music business, said that prosecutors almost exclusively weaponized rappers’ lyrics against men of color.“Creative expression should not be used as evidence of bad character,” the organization said, maintaining that the claim that themes expressed in art were an indication of the likelihood that a person was violent or dishonest was “simply false.”Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, said that the bill was intended to protect not only rappers, but also artists across all genres of music, and other forms of creativity.“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mr. Mason said. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Living Wine’ Documentary, Natural Wine Transcends the Clichés

      by

      Forget funkiness. The focus here is farming, culture, the environment, climate change and, yes, great-tasting wine.When the polarizing subject of natural wine arises, the discussion generally spirals to the stereotypes: flawed and funky wines, hippie producers and the debate over definitions. But a new documentary film, “Living Wine,” hopes to change that trite discussion.The film, which opens in selected theaters July 15, focuses on a small group of natural wine producers in California. It examines, with far more nuance than is typical, the myriad reasons they choose to work in natural wine, along with the many rationales for consumers to drink it.In this context, natural wine is presented neither as a trend nor a generational emblem. Involvement is a conscious choice. Though their reasons may overlap, each of the producers in the film has a different point of emphasis.Gideon Beinstock and Saron Rice of Clos Saron in the Sierra Foothills make wine without additives because they believe that method makes the best wines and offers the best expression of their vineyard.“The fact that we don’t add anything is not because it’s natural,” Mr. Beinstock said. “It’s because, why would I add anything? It will not improve the wine.”In the film, all of the producers must deal with the serious consequences of climate change.AbramoramaDarek Trowbridge of Old World Winery in the Russian River Valley believes in the traditional methods embodied by his ancestors, who planted a vineyard in the area almost 100 years ago, before chemical farming became the norm. He wants to express the distinctive terroirs of his vineyards, but he sees himself as a custodian of nature, too, a role that he holds sacred.“I try to work to do good on my farm for the land, for the ecosystem,” he said. “Where I reside spiritually is where I want to reside as a farmer and not separate the two.”For Megan Bell of Margins Wines, who shares a production facility outside of Santa Cruz with James Jelks of Florèz Wines, the reasons are more political, born of her demeaning experiences as a young woman in a male-dominated winery in Napa Valley.“I hated my job,” she said. “I loved what I physically did, but the culture and the way that I was treated, I dreaded going to work every day. Nobody wants to be at work when their abilities are doubted constantly.”She is a minimalist, trying to work efficiently rather than trying to make art, and has chosen to work primarily with grapes and areas that she believes are ignored by the corporate wine world, which she might not have left if she hadn’t felt driven out.“If I worked in a nicer industry, I never would have started my own company,” she said.Megan Bell felt demeaned as a woman in the mainstream industry, so she started Margins Wines.AbramoramaThe reasons to make natural wines are primarily cultural for Dani Rozman of La Onda, in the Sierra Foothills. He wants to wean Americans from the notion that the American wine industry traces directly to modern Europe. Instead, he wants to focus on North and South America, and their centuries of shared grape-growing and winemaking history that began when Spanish missionaries planted the listán prieto, or mission, grape in the Americas.Having worked with farmers in Chile gave him insight into alternatives to mainstream winemaking. “All the equipment is developed to make winemaking easier, but that doesn’t make it better,” he said.Following their personal muses, these producers have all ended up outside conventional winemaking, and have gravitated to styles of farming without chemical fertilizers and sprays, while employing traditional, preindustrial production methods.Looming over all is the climate crisis, which in California has caused intense heat waves, drought and repeated threats of deadly, destructive fires. Over the course of filming, each of these producers was directly affected by the fires.While these winemakers do not say they work specifically to combat climate change, the film addresses the vast harm that conventional agriculture has exacted on ecosystems and the climate. It also holds out hope that, if the world could step away from chemical farming and focus on building soil health and other regenerative methods, agriculture could be an important part of the solution.Lori Miller, the producer and director of “Living Wine,” is now devoted to natural wines.AbramoramaLori Miller, the producer and director of “Living Wine,” said she was drawn to these subjects because they work on the fringe.“I love telling stories about people outside the normal corporate world, people who are not playing the game but are inspired from within,” she said in a phone interview. “This story fell within the mold.”Though Ms. Miller, whose producer credits include “They Came to Play” and “Shakespeare High,” counts herself as a food and wine lover, she knew little about natural wine before beginning this project.Her brother, Ben Miller, and his family had moved into a new home outside of Santa Rosa, which came with a vineyard. They were dismayed to learn that the vineyard had been regularly sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate, which could have seeped into the well that supplied their household water. He was introduced to Mr. Trowbridge, who began the process of weaning the vineyard from chemical treatments.“That was the impetus for learning more about this,” Ms. Miller said. “I started looking into the wines I was buying, and I had no idea.”She said she tries to buy and cook only organic foods, and was shocked to learn that most of the wines she was drinking bore no relation to the foods she was buying.“I had always assumed wine was a natural beverage,” she said. “But if you go to the grocery store and pull something off the shelf, the likelihood is it was farmed with chemical inputs or farmed in a way that was terrible for the environment.”Darek Trowbridge of Old World Winery sees himself as a guardian of nature and tradition.AbramoramaMs. Miller imagines that those who watch the film might be very much like her, hyperconscious about where their food comes from but giving little thought to the wine. The first words in “Living Wine” come from Mr. Trowbridge:“The natural wine movement is about 20 years behind the organic food movement,” he said. “You can’t see the processing, but typically wine is a manufactured, machine-driven product. That means adjuncts to make it work in a timely manner.“People just don’t understand that,” he continued. “I didn’t know that until I got a master’s degree in winemaking.”With the help of two proponents of regenerative agriculture, Elizabeth Candelario and Dr. Timothy LaSalle, the film traces the rise of chemical agriculture to the repurposing of closed munitions factories after World War II. Nitrogen that went into bombs was instead used to make fertilizer, while nerve gas became an ingredient in pesticides.With the support of the government and Big Agriculture, students and farmers were taught an industrialized form of agriculture to increase production. The industrial methods resulted in far more specialized farming rather than in the more natural, complex ecosystems of preindustrial farming, and built a dependency on Big Ag corporations.“Nature only works in whole systems,” Dr. LaSalle said. “She can’t work separated out. When you bring something in, it changes and causes unexpected consequences.”The film never loses the thread between agriculture and wine, which in many people’s minds is simply a product on a supermarket shelf.“Why would I add anything?” said Gideon Beinstock of Clos Saron. “It will not improve the wine.”Abramorama“Every form of agriculture is detrimental to the environment, on any scale, even a garden, but we try to minimize the footprint,” Mr. Beinstock said.Their winemaking facilities are rustic, far from the wealthy tourist outposts in the popular imagination. They are designed for work, and the labor is difficult. The motivation is more personal expression than profit, yet choosing to work outside the mainstream is stressful in its own ways.“I’m at a spot still where I’ve been on food stamps for a year and I still have other jobs,” said Ms. Bell, of Margins Wines. “Because I’m putting all my money into my business.”She and Mr. Jelks, of Florèz Wines, outfitted their utilitarian facility with secondhand equipment and castoffs. It’s not ideal, and not easy, but it’s liberating.“We just stay scrappy and resilient, and we never stop,” Mr. Jelks said.As for natural wines themselves, the film acknowledges that consumers may require time to adjust to them because of expectations that arise from years of drinking commonplace examples, just as a farm-raised tomato might prove shocking to one accustomed to glossy supermarket tomatoes.At a tasting contrasting conventional and natural chardonnays, one consumer described the conventional bottle as “all the things you’re programmed to expect in a chardonnay.” The natural example was different, she said, but was “probably a more true expression of what the actual grape is.”Like a good natural wine, the film is not without some minor blemishes. It’s too black-and-white in its portrait of conventional wine, for one, which offers far more of a spectrum of approaches.Mr. Beinstock is dedicated, he said, to expressing the distinctive character of his vineyard. AbramoramaBut the idealism, selflessness and commitment of the growers and producers is inspiring. Though, as the film states, natural wine accounts for less than one percent of the wine produced in California, they have chosen to act on principle rather than resign themselves in despair.What the film offers in the end is not a formula for the good life, a cliché of California wine country, but a way of living well and reflectively, as Tahnee Shields, a harvest intern at Clos Saron, says about Mr. Beinstock:“His philosophy is, thinking about what a life can look like when you’re in constant cultivation and paying constant attention to something that you’re growing.”Climate chaos can be overwhelming, but Ms. Miller hopes that the film will be motivational.“You can make a difference even if you’re only farming a few acres, or composting in your yard or have a small colony of bees,” she said. “I hope showcasing people who aren’t giving up will be inspiring.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Bill Cosby Loses Sex Assault Lawsuit and Must Pay Damages

      by

      A jury in California sided with Judy Huth, who accused Mr. Cosby of molesting her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16.SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A jury on Tuesday found that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted Judy Huth in 1975, when as a 16-year-old girl she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.The decision by the jury once again tarnished the reputation of a man whose standing as one of America’s most beloved entertainers dissolved as dozens of women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct.As part of its decision, the jury awarded Ms. Huth $500,000 in compensatory damages, but declined to award punitive damages.Beyond its significance to Ms. Huth, who first came forward with her accusations in 2014, the verdict offered a degree of satisfaction for many of the women who for years have accused Mr. Cosby of similar abuse. The Huth case, for them, offered a second chance at getting public vindication of their accounts after Mr. Cosby’s criminal conviction in the Andrea Constand case was overturned by an appellate panel last year on due process grounds.Many of the accusers had been time-barred from filing their own suits because they had not come forward at the time when they said Mr. Cosby had attacked them. But Ms. Huth’s suit was able to move forward because the jury agreed she was a minor at the time, and California law extends the time frame in which people molested as children can file a civil claim.After the verdict was announced, and the jury dismissed, Ms. Huth hugged her lawyers.“I feel good, I feel vindicated.” Ms. Huth said.The verdict was a damaging setback for Mr. Cosby who, upon his release after serving nearly three years in prison, had promoted the appeals court decision as a full exoneration, an overstatement now overshadowed by a finding that reinforces an image of him as a person who wielded his celebrity to take advantage of women.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the accounts of all of the women, asserting that, if he had sexual encounters with anyone, it had always been consensual. He invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and did not attend the trial. But parts of his deposition, which was videotaped several years ago, were played for the jurors and they heard him say he had no recollection of ever meeting Ms. Huth.The 12-person jury was not unanimous in its findings and voted 9 to 3 to award Ms. Huth the compensatory damages. After the jury was dismissed, one juror, Aldo Reyna, 25, explained why he decided in her favor.“Given the time frame, you have to go on somebody’s word,” he said in an interview. “Either you believe them, or you don’t. I believed her on the stand.”Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, claimed some victory in the fact that the jury had decided against awarding punitive damages.“We do feel some relief,” she said. “Finding no punitive damages was a significant win for us.”A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, said the entertainer would appeal.“Mr. Cosby continues to maintain his innocence,” Mr. Wyatt said in a statement, “and will vigorously fight these false accusations, so that he can get back to bringing the pursuit of happiness, joy and laughter to the world.”The jury, which began deliberating Thursday, heard 10 days of testimony during which Ms. Huth, now 64, told of how a chance meeting with Mr. Cosby while he filmed a movie in a local park eventually led her to an isolated bedroom in the Playboy Mansion. In often emotional testimony, she described how a famous man she had once admired, whose comedy records her father collected, tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to perform a sex act on him.“I had my eyes closed at that point,” Ms. Huth said in court. “I was freaking out.”Afterward, she said, she was “mad — I felt duped, fooled. I was let down. I was hurt.”The Playboy encounter occurred several days after Ms. Huth and a friend, Donna Samuelson, met Mr. Cosby as he filmed a scene for a movie, “Let’s Do It Again,” in a park in San Marino, Calif., not far from their homes.Ms. Huth and Ms. Samuelson testified that Mr. Cosby invited them several days later to his tennis club and then to a house where he was staying, where they played billiards, he gave them alcohol and got them to follow him in their car to the Playboy Mansion, where he told them to say they were 19 if anyone asked their age.A snapshot of Ms. Huth and Mr. Cosby at the Playboy Mansion, taken by Ms. Huth’s friend. It was entered as evidence at trial.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMr. Cosby, 84, denied Ms. Huth’s allegations, with his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean describing her account as “a complete and utter fabrication.” Though the jury was shown photographs of Mr. Cosby with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion, taken by Ms. Samuelson, Mr. Cosby said in the deposition that he takes pictures with a lot of people and his lawyer suggested Ms. Huth had made up the assault and coordinated with her friend to make money.Ms. Bonjean pointed out that Ms. Huth, by her own account, had spent hours at the mansion after what Ms. Huth had described as a callous molestation, swimming in the pool and ordering cocktails. And she challenged Ms. Huth’s explanation for why she had not spoken about the episode in the months and years afterward, questioning whether Ms. Huth had really repressed a terrible experience or whether she simply came forward with an accusation to join others who were providing accounts of misconduct by Mr. Cosby at that time.Ms. Huth said she had simply buried the traumatic experience for years.“It’s like trash,” she said. “You dig a hole and throw trash in it.”The jury sided with Ms. Huth. But its decision came after lengthy deliberations punctuated by multiple questions from jurors who sought guidance on how to interpret the language of questions on a verdict sheet they were given as a guide. The process was further complicated when the jury forewoman had to be excused after the second day of deliberations. The panel, which reported it was close to a verdict on Friday, had to take on an alternate and was told to start over.As the trial progressed, Mr. Wyatt increasingly criticized the judge and one of Ms. Huth’s lawyers, Gloria Allred. Mr. Wyatt said the judge had unfairly favored Ms. Huth and he objected when Ms. Allred made an acknowledgment of Juneteenth in court, releasing a statement that she was exploiting the memory of “enslaved people” even as she helped a suit against Mr. Cosby, whom he called “Black America’s Icon.”After the verdict, Ms. Allred congratulated Ms. Huth on persevering through a long legal battle.“She has demonstrated so much courage and made so many sacrifices to win justice,” Ms. Allred said. “She won real change. She fought Bill Cosby and won.”Ms. Huth’s was the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. He had been sued by other women, many of whom said he had defamed them after his legal team dismissed their allegations as fictions. Eleven civil cases ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements having been agreed to by Mr. Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, his spokesman said.Ms. Huth’s case had largely been put on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued Mr. Cosby on criminal charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted Ms. Constand, a former Temple University employee.But his 2018 conviction in that case was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that a nonprosecution agreement made by a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.One remaining civil case was filed last year by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990, when she was 26. Mr. Cosby has denied her account, and the case is still in its early stages.Ms. Bernard was one of several women who have accused Mr. Cosby of abusing them sexually who attended the trial in Santa Monica on some days in support of Ms. Huth. She praised the verdict, saying, it “goes way beyond Cosby survivors.”“Judy Huth is a hero!” she said. “Her coming forward inspired others to find their voices.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Coachella Will Return Without Masks or Vaccines Required

      by

      When the Coachella outdoor music festival returns for the first time in two years this April, performers will be greeted by a sea of unmasked — and potentially unvaccinated — fans, as the struggling concert industry stirs back to life.On Tuesday, organizers said that attendees will not be required to wear masks or be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which drew up to 125,000 fans a day to Southern California and was one of the biggest music festivals of the pre-pandemic era.“There is no guarantee, express or implied, that those attending the festival will not be exposed to Covid-19,” Goldenvoice, a division of the global concert giant AEG Live, said on the Coachella website.Goldenvoice noted, however, that the festival’s Covid policies may change “in accordance with applicable public health conditions.”Goldenvoice also said that Stagecoach, a country music festival in Southern California, also said on Tuesday that there would be no requirements for guests to be masked, vaccinated or tested. The festival was set to run for three days at the end of April and the beginning of May.It has been a turbulent two years for the concert and touring industries, as a number of events were canceled because of the virus. In the last year, since the Covid vaccine became widely available, organizers have grappled with decisions over whether to hold the events at all and whether to require masks, vaccines and testing.Over four days last summer, the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago ran at full capacity, with its 400,000 attendees being required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. According to data released by the city after the festival, infection rates among the concertgoers were very low.Coachella did not run in 2020 or 2021, and was canceled three times over the pandemic, including a rescheduled date in the fall of 2020.Before the pandemic, Coachella, which is widely seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring business, had put on a show every year since 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It typically runs over two weekends in April.The organizers of Coachella announced in January, after weeks of speculation, that the festival would be back this year. It is set to be headlined by Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Bob Wall, Martial Arts Master Who Sparred With Bruce Lee, Dies at 82

      by

      He taught thousands of senseis how to run a dojo, all the while trading kicks onscreen with Lee and Chuck Norris.Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with quick business wits and even fleeter fists propelled disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, along the way making friends and sharing the screen with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.His wife, Lillian Wall, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.For the millions of fans devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was best known for his role in the 1973 film “Enter the Dragon,” in which, as the thug O’Hara, he torments a vengeful undercover agent named Lee, played by Mr. Lee.At 6 feet 1 inch tall, with a full tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the film, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kicking him to the ground and crushing his chest. It’s an indelibly grisly moment, and a sharp contrast to the close bond the two men shared in real life.They had met in 1963, at a kung fu demonstration in Los Angeles’s Chinatown neighborhood, where Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor’s blows without dropping his beer.“At that point reality hit that I’d blown this guy’s demo, so I started walking toward the door,” Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 interview. “I saw this tough-looking guy walking toward me, so I said, ‘This guy, I’m gonna clock,’ and he walks up close to me and says, ‘Hey that was funny. I’m Bruce Lee!’”They ended up talking in the parking lot for three hours.Mr. Lee was still an unknown martial arts instructor in Oakland who, like Mr. Wall, was drawn to Los Angeles’s budding combat-sports scene. Mr. Wall was a student of another instructor, Mr. Norris, an Air Force veteran and martial arts champion.The three became fast friends, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into business together, running a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a part of Los Angeles that two decades later would provide the setting for “The Karate Kid.”Martial arts was an exclusively male domain at the time, fought without padding and producing more than a few broken noses and cracked teeth. But entrepreneurs like Mr. Wall saw an opportunity to make studios more professional and family friendly. Through manuals and seminars that he took around the country, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.“There were a lot of people who would open a school and start teaching and it would all fall into place or not,” Roy Kurban, a taekwondo champion who was inspired by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Worth, Texas, said in a phone interview. “He built a business system.”Mr. Lee, meanwhile, had begun his steady rise to global stardom. An appearance at the 1964 International Karate Championships in Long Beach, where he demonstrated his signature moves like the two-finger push up and the one-inch punch, led him to a role as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s TV show “The Green Hornet,” and later to a series of movie deals.From left, Chuck Norris, Mr. Lee and Mr. Wall. The three became fast friends and Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris ran a series of martial arts studios together.via Wall familyMartial arts movies were huge in Asia but largely unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee decided to change that, in part by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, including Mr. Wall, who won a part alongside Mr. Norris in Mr. Lee’s first major film released in America, “The Way of the Dragon” (1972).Mr. Wall could take a hit, which put him in good stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on doing his own stunts and refused to pull punches during fight scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that before they started filming “Enter the Dragon,” Mr. Lee told him, “Bob, I wanna hit you, and I wanna hit you hard.”Even the broken bottles that O’Hara wields against Lee were real — which presented a problem when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on shooting that part of the scene nine times, with Mr. Wall repeatedly falling back on shards of glass. At another point Mr. Lee kicked him so hard that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a man’s arm.“It’s one thing to get hit that hard once or twice, but try it eight times in a row,” Mr. Wall said. “Let me tell you, about the fourth time, you know what’s coming, you’re going to get popped real hard, and you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m here to do a job. Make it real.’”That commitment to combat vérité paid off. “Enter the Dragon,” made for just $850,000 (about $5.3 million in today’s dollars) grossed $350 million worldwide (about $2.2 billion today), making it one of the most profitable movies of all time. It helped establish martial arts as an indelible part of American pop culture.But Mr. Lee did not get to enjoy the success. He died, at 32, just before the film debuted, of undiagnosed swelling in his brain. By then he had begun filming “Game of Death,” featuring an iconic fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the film, in which Mr. Wall also had a role, was released in 1978). And he was planning even more movies, including at least one with a prominent role for Mr. Wall, who would play a sidekick to Mr. Lee’s hero, a C.I.A. agent.“Hey Bob,” Mr. Wall recalled him saying a few weeks before his death, “you get to be a good guy in the next one!”Mr. Wall in 2008. Later in life, he found a second career in real estate as a residential and commercial developer.AlamyRobert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His father, Ray Wall, worked in construction and his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.He was drawn to martial arts as a young teenager who had suffered beatings at the hands of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in high school and at San Jose State University, where he left without graduating to join the Army. After he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to begin his martial arts education under Mr. Norris.Mr. Wall held an advanced black belt in several disciplines, and he regularly placed first or second at competitions around the country in the late 1960s and early ’70s.After Mr. Lee’s death, he worked as a fight coordinator on several martial arts movies, including “Black Belt Jones” (1974), starring one of his protégés, Jim Kelly, one of the first Black karate champions. He also gave private lessons to celebrities interested in martial arts, including Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had decided to go into acting full time, and he and Mr. Wall sold their business in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his attention to real estate, launching a second career as a residential and commercial developer. He didn’t leave the world of martial arts, though. In addition to writing books and teaching seminars, he had a long-running and very public beef with Steven Seagal, another martial arts expert turned action star.In a series of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who had taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in particular. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a fight; they never came to blows, and eventually they worked it out, but Mr. Wall refused to watch any of Mr. Seagal’s movies.Mr. Wall also remained close friends with Mr. Norris. He took small roles in several of his movies and on the series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.It was just the right amount of fame for Mr. Wall.“I’m famous enough that people who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee films know me,” he said. “But I’m not so famous that I can’t walk down a street. I can go in and out of a restaurant. I don’t lose my privacy.” More

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      From a Burger King to a Concert Hall, With Help From Frank Gehry

      by

      The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ambitious new home for its youth orchestra is the latest sign of the changing fortunes of Inglewood.INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Noemi Guzman, a 17-year-old high school senior, usually has to find a corner someplace to practice violin — the instrument she calls “quite literally, the love of my life.” But the other Saturday morning, Guzman joined a string ensemble practicing on a stage here that is nearly as grand and acoustically tuned as the place she dreams of performing one day: Walt Disney Concert Hall, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.“This is beautiful,” Guzman said during a break from a practice session at the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center, her voice muffled by a mask. “To have a space you can call your own. It is our space. It is created for us.”Inglewood, a working-class city three miles from Los Angeles Airport that was once plagued by crime and poverty, is in the midst of a high-profile, largely sports-driven economic transformation: The 70,000-seat SoFi Stadium, which opened here last year, now the home of the Rams and the Chargers, will be the site of the Super Bowl in February and will be used in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Construction is underway on an 18,000-seat arena for the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball team.But the transformation of Inglewood, historically one of this region’s largest Black communities, is also showcased by the 25,000-square foot building where Guzman was practicing the other morning. The building, which opened in October, is the first permanent home for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, and is the product of a collaboration involving two of the most prominent cultural figures in Los Angeles: Gustavo Dudamel, the artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which oversees YOLA, and Frank Gehry, the architect who designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.Mario Raven, right, led students in a singing and music reading class: “Here we go — one, two, three!”Rozette Rago for The New York Times“This was an old bank,” said Dudamel, who has long been friends with Gehry, a classical music lover who can often be spotted in the seats of the hall he designed. “Then it was a Burger King — yes, a Burger King! Frank saw the potential. What we have there is a stage of the same dimensions as Disney Hall.”The $23.5 million project is a high-water mark for YOLA, the youth music education program that was founded here 15 years ago under Dudamel and that he calls the signature achievement of his tenure. It serves 1,500 students, from ages 5 to 18, who come to study, practice and perform music on instruments provided by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was patterned after El Sistema, the youth music education program in Venezuela where Dudamel studied violin as a boy.And it is one of the most vivid examples of efforts by major arts organizations across the country to bring youth education programs out into communities, rather than concentrating them in city centers or urban arts districts. “You can’t just do it downtown,” said Karen Mack, the executive director of LA Commons, a community arts organization. “If you really want it to have the impact that’s possible with that program you have to bring it out to the community. It has to be accessible.”Gehry called that idea the “whole game.”“It becomes not the community having to go to Disney Hall,” he said, “but the Disney Hall coming to the community.”For Inglewood, the new YOLA Center is a notable addition to what has been a transformative wave of stadium and arena construction, which has spurred a wave of commercial and housing development (and with that, concerns about the gentrification that often follows this kind of development). Until 2016, Inglewood was known mainly as the home of the Forum, the 45-year-old arena where the Lakers and Kings once played before moving to what was known as the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, and Hollywood Park Racetrack, which closed to make way for SoFi stadium.Some instruments cannot be played through masks; those lessons are often held outdoors these days.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“We’ve never been known for cultural enrichment,” said James T. Butts Jr., the mayor of Inglewood. “That is why this is so important to us. What’s happening now is a rounding out of society and culture: we will no longer be known for just sports and entertainment.”Even before Beckmen Center opened, YOLA could be a heady experience for a school-age student contemplating a career in music. Guzman, who joined the youth orchestra seven years ago, has played bow to bow with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the baton of Dudamel. YOLA musicians have joined the Philharmonic at Disney Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and on tours to places including Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City.Christine Kiva, 15, who started playing cello when she was 7, is now studying with cellists from the Philharmonic. “It’s helped me develop my sound as a cellist, and work on a repertoire for cello,” she said.Inglewood is the fifth economically stressed neighborhood where the youth organization has set up an outpost. But in the first four locations, it shares space with other organizations, forced to fit in without a full-fledged performing space or practice rooms. “We were making the project work in spaces that weren’t specifically designed for music,” said Chad Smith, the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.Now, the words “Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center,” named after the philanthropists and vineyard owners who made the largest donation to the project, stretch out across the front of the renovated building overlooking South La Brea Avenue and the old downtown. Dudamel has an office there. Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic regularly show up to observe practice and work with students.This building has plenty of rooms for students to practice. There are 272 seats on benches in the main hall, which can be retracted into a wall, allowing the room to be divided in half so two orchestras can practice at once. The acoustics were designed by Nagata Acoustics, which also designed the acoustics at Disney Hall.YOLA, the youth music education program founded 15 years ago, now serves 1,500 students from ages 5 to 18.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesThe building had been owned by Inglewood, which sold it to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “When we first walked into it, it still had the greasy smell of a Burger King,” said Elsje Kibler-Vermaas, the vice president for learning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gehry, who had worked with Dudamel on projects before — including designs for the opera “Don Giovanni” in 2012­ — agreed to take a look at the building, a former bank that opened in 1965.He said that when they brought him there, he was struck by the low ceilings from its days as a bank.“I said, ‘is it possible to make an intervention?’” recalled Gehry who, even at 92, is involved in a series of design projects across Los Angeles.By cutting a hole in its ceiling and putting in a skylight, and cutting a hole in the floor to make the hall deeper, he was able to create a performance space with a 45-foot-high ceiling, close to what Disney Hall has. “The kids will have a real experience of playing in that kind of hall,” he said.That turned out to be a $2 million conversation; the total price, including buying the building and renovating it, jumped from $21 million to $23.5 million to cover the additional cost of raising the roof, installing a skylight and lowering the floor.The building was bustling the other day. Students had come for afternoon music instruction from elementary schools, most in Inglewood, and after snacks — bananas, apples, granola bars — they raced to their lessons in reading music, percussion and how to follow a conductor.“Pay attention!” said Mario Raven, leading his students in a singing and music reading class. “Here we go — one, two, three!”The brass players were outdoors because of Covid-19 concerns (it’s hard to play a French horn while wearing a mask). As planes flew overhead, they performed High Hopes by Panic! at the Disco, suggesting that a youth orchestra need not live by Brahms and Beethoven alone.Students typically sit through 12 to 18 hours a week of instruction for 44 weeks a year. About a quarter of them end up majoring in music. Smith said that was reflected in the broader aspirations for the program. “Our goal wasn’t we were going to train the greatest musicians in the world,” he said. “Our goal was we were going to provide music education to develop students’ self-esteem through music.”Dudamel said his experience as a boy in Venezuela had been formative in bringing the program to Los Angeles. “I grew up in an orchestra where they called us, in the press, the ‘orchestra without a ceiling,’” he said in a Zoom interview from France, where he is now also the music director of the Paris Opera. “Because we didn’t have a place where to rehearse. We have materialized a dream where young people have the best things they can have. A good hall. Great teachers.”“Look, this is not a regular music school,” he added. “We don’t pretend be a conservatory. Maybe they will not be musicians in the future. But our goal is that they have music as part of their life, because it brings beauty, it brings discipline through art.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Don Maddox, Last Survivor of a Pioneering Country Band, Dies at 98

      by

      In the 1940s, he joined with his three brothers and his sister, Rose, to make exuberant music that anticipated rockabilly and rock ’n’ roll.Don Maddox, the last surviving member of the Maddox Brothers & Rose, a lively sibling band that helped give rise to West Coast honky-tonk, rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll, died on Sept. 12 in an adult care facility in Medford, Ore. He was 98.His death, which was not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by his wife of 11 years, Barbara Harvey-Maddox, who said he had been suffering from dementia.Hailed in the 1940s and ’50s as America’s “most colorful hillbilly band,” the Maddox Brothers & Rose were renowned for their exuberant fusion of barnyard twang and gutbucket R&B, as well as for their uproarious antics onstage. The fringed, embroidered costumes they wore — designed by the Hollywood rodeo tailor Nathan Turk — were equally dazzling, a harbinger of the Western resplendence sported by Buck Owens in the 1960s and later by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers.Mr. Owens’s lean, hard-driving Bakersfield sound owed a debt to the Maddoxes’ rollicking hillbilly boogie, propelled as it was by the instinctive thwacking by Mr. Maddox’s eldest brother, Fred, on upright bass. The early rockabilly of Elvis Presley was also influenced, notably in the slapping technique of his bass player, Bill Black, who idolized Fred Maddox.The Maddox sound “was born from that slap bass,” Mr. Maddox said of his brother Fred’s style in an interview for Ken Burns’s multipart PBS documentary “Country Music” in 2019. “Fred didn’t know what the notes were. He just slapped it for rhythm.“We didn’t call it ‘rockabilly,’” Mr. Maddox went on. “We called it ‘Okie boogie.’”Mr. Maddox played fiddle, in a sawing down-home mode, and provided backing vocals; his sister, Rose, was the lead vocalist. The other members were his older brothers Cliff and Cal on guitars and his younger brother, Henry, on mandolin.Rose Maddox died in 1998, Cliff in 1949, Cal in 1968, Henry in 1974 and Fred in 1992.The account of how the Maddoxes made it to California rivaled the story of their rise within the ranks of West Coast country music — a Depression-era narrative as emblematic as “The Grapes of Wrath.”In 1933, forced by drought to abandon their life of subsistence farming in rural Alabama, Mr. Maddox and his family — his sharecropper parents, Charlie and Lula (Smith) Maddox, and his five siblings — headed west, hitchhiking and riding in the boxcars of freight trains in search of a better life. Mr. Maddox was 10.The family picked fruit in migrant labor camps in California, where they squatted in the large concrete drainage cylinders found in construction yards in the industrial part of Oakland known as “Pipe City.”Quickly fed up with their hardscrabble life, Fred Maddox persuaded the owner of a furniture store to sponsor regular performances by him and his brothers on a radio station in Modesto. The only proviso was that the band, which at the time included only Fred, Cliff and Cal, feature a female singer, a role fulfilled with preternatural command by the 11-year-old Rose.Two years later, having changed their name from the Alabama Outlaws to the Maddox Brothers & Rose, the group won a competition at the California State Fair that included a two-year contract to perform on radio shows broadcast on KFBK in Sacramento. The next year, Mr. Maddox joined the band — managed, with the strictest of discipline, by the siblings’ mother, known as Mama Maddox.Don Maddox in performance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in 2013. He had come out of retirement a year earlier after many years as a cattle rancher.Erika Goldring/Getty ImagesDon Maddox was born Kenneth Chalmer Maddox on Dec. 7, 1922, in Boaz, Ala., in the foothills of Appalachia.As a member of the family band from 1940 on, he toured with his siblings and appeared on the popular recordings they made for the Four Star and Columbia labels in the 1940s and ’50s, including their waltzing rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer.”Other hits, like “Whoa Sailor,” “(Pay Me) Alimony” and “Hangover Blues,” were sung from his sister’s perspective and exuded not just womanly independence and pluck but an incipient feminist consciousness as well.In 1956, after more than a decade of success touring and recording (interrupted only by the military service of Mr. Maddox and his brothers), the act broke up. Rose hired Cal as her accompanist and pursued a solo career. The remaining brothers went on without them, only to call it quits two years later — because, according to Don Maddox, they lacked the talent to make a go of it on their own.For his part, Mr. Maddox went back to school to study agriculture and bought a 300-acre ranch in Ashland, Ore., where he raised Angus cattle for more than five decades.In 2012, Mr. Maddox came out of retirement to participate in an exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville commemorating the Bakersfield sound that he and his siblings had helped establish. He went on to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, on the singer Marty Stuart’s television show and at festivals, including a headlining engagement in Las Vegas.His wife is his only immediate survivor. His previous wife, Nila Bussey Maddox, died in 2002.Besides playing the fiddle and singing backing vocals with his siblings, Mr. Maddox provided the comedic impetus for the group’s gag-laden stage show, particularly through his “Don Juan” persona.“I was shy around girls, so I took Don Juan as a stage name because the Sons of the Pioneers had a song called ‘Don Juan of Mexico,’” he said in a 2008 interview with The Mail Tribune of Medford.“I thought that if I learned that song, the girls would think I was a Don Juan and talk to me. Of course, it didn’t work.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Rose Lee Maphis, Early Star of Country Music TV, Dies at 98

      by

      She and her husband, Joe (“Mr. and Mrs. Country Music”), helped give birth to a West Coast music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.NASHVILLE — Rose Lee Maphis, the singer and guitarist who, with her husband, Joe, was a mainstay of the early years of live country music television, died on Tuesday at her home here. She was 98.Her son Jody said the cause was kidney failure.Billed as “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music,” the Maphises rose to prominence in the 1950s as members of the cast of “Town Hall Party,” a pioneering TV barn dance seen on KTTV in Los Angeles. On the strength of Ms. Maphis’s exuberant stage presence and her husband’s dazzling guitar work, the couple — often in matching Western-wear suits — helped give birth to the unfettered West Coast country music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.The Maphises achieved early acclaim with “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music),” a twanging barroom lament released by Okeh Records in 1953.“Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/It’s the only kind of life you’ll ever understand,” Mr. Maphis (pronounced MAY-fiss) sang, admonishing the song’s wayward wife as Ms. Maphis added sympathetic harmonies on the chorus. “Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/You’ll never make a wife to a home-loving man.”“Dim Lights” became a honky-tonk standard and has been recorded by Conway Twitty, Flatt & Scruggs, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and others. Though credited as one of its writers, Ms. Maphis always insisted that the composition was solely her husband’s. He wrote the song, she said, while driving home one night from Bakersfield’s renowned — and notoriously smoky — Blackboard Cafe.The Maphises recorded throughout the 1950s and ’60s, but given their commitment to performing on regularly scheduled broadcasts, they never really had the chance to promote their releases at radio stations or in live venues across the country. Instead they concentrated on TV and radio work, appearing with country stalwarts like Tex Ritter and Merle Travis and rockabilly insurgents like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson.The couple met when they were both appearing on the WRVA radio show “Old Dominion Barn Dance” in Richmond, Va., in 1948 and had been dating by the time they moved to California in 1951, at the urging of Mr. Travis. They married when Mr. Maphis’s divorce from his first wife became final in 1952.The Maphises later recorded with their son Dale. But they had more success on television than they did on records.Moving to the West Coast proved inspiring for them both. They were especially energized by the differences between the dance halls of California and the venues they had played in the East.“There was a real separation between the music on the West Coast and in Nashville,” Ms. Maphis said in a 1998 interview with Vintage Guitar magazine. “On the West Coast, people danced, and bands had drummers.”“All the people getting up and dancing while you were performing, that was strange to us,” she elaborated. “West of the Mississippi, people danced. East of the Mississippi, they watched and listened.”Doris Helen Schetrompf was born on Dec. 29, 1922, in Baltimore. Her parents, Stanley and Margaret (Schriever) Schetrompf, were farmers.Doris began playing the guitar at 15; two years later, she was hired to play on a local radio show in Hagerstown, Md., where she grew up. She acquired her nickname there, after the show’s announcer introduced her as “Rose of the Mountains” because of her habit of wearing flowers in her hair.After graduating from high school in 1941, she attended business college, worked various jobs and teamed up with three other young women to form the Saddle Sweethearts, a Western-style group that toured with Gene Autry and the Carter Family.Despite their relative success, the Sweethearts had all but called it quits when Ms. Maphis and another member of the group were invited to join “Old Dominion Barn Dance,” where Mr. Maphis was a founding member. Before long he and she had moved to the West Coast and joined its burgeoning live country music TV scene.Known as the “King of the Strings,” Mr. Maphis, who often played a double-neck Mosrite guitar (which he had helped design), also became a first-call session musician. He appeared on recordings by Rick Nelson and on the soundtracks of movies like “God’s Little Acre” and “Thunder Road,” both in 1958.The couple had three children between 1954 and 1957, beginning a period of domesticity that by 1968 would have them moving to Nashville, where they began performing at the Grand Ole Opry.By the early ’70s Ms. Maphis had all but dropped out of the music business. She eventually took a job as a seamstress at the theme park Opryland USA, where her youngest son, Dale, was working as a musician.Besides her son Jody, who is also a musician, Ms. Maphis is survived by her daughter, Lorrie Harris, and a granddaughter. Her son Dale died in 1989 in an automobile accident. Mr. Maphis died of lung cancer in 1986 at 65.In the early 2010s, after five decades out of the limelight, Ms. Maphis volunteered as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Not long after she began, the museum mounted an exhibition on the Bakersfield Sound that she and her husband had helped shape, including a video of them singing “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke.”Few of the museum’s visitors made the connection between their host and the exhibit, which also included Ms. Maphis’s Martin D-18 guitar, until one female patron asked her about it.“She came back downstairs when she was through with her tour,” Ms. Maphis explained to The Hagerstown Herald-Mail. “She asked, ‘The guitar that’s up there, is that your guitar?’“She saw my name tag,” Ms. Maphis went on. “I told her ‘Yes.’ She was the only one who ever did that.” More