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      25 Years After ‘Titanic,’ Quebec’s Love for Céline Dion Will Go On

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      The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Céline fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.MONTREAL — It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Céline Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Céline—She’s The Boss!”; a recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Céline Dion” explored her appeal to millennials, and Céline Dion drag competitions have been surging.Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone upcoming tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premiere, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Céline, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Céline is famous around the world, but here she is family.”A sold-out Céline Dion tribute party in Montreal drew fans who dressed like her, gawked at Dion-inspired wigs, and danced and sang along to her music. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Céline fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.From the Archives: Dion achieved international stardom in the 1990s after charming audiences in French Canada and France. Here is what The Times wrote about her in 1997.During a recent visit to Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during these uncertain times.Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the same high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of French fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, her hometown.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesOlder residents in Charlemagne still call her “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesAnd her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of The Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast, “Céline, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman. “It wasn’t cool to love Céline when I was in high school — kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. The younger generation of Québécois, he said, seems less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.“We used to roll our eyes — now we think she’s pure genius,” Mr. Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said that his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was eight years old. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said that he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Céline’s singing,” he said.Bennett’s Dion collection is extensive.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesHe even has a custom Dion sport coat.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger Off Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Céline.” And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. The youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer. At the age of 12, she co-wrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to the impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-mast across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open coffin for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.Nearly every inch of Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment is decorated with Céline Dion memorabilia. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesIn the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins. Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Céline Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, Ms. Dion’s powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Céline doll, wearing a mini version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, “Crystal Slippers” out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.After years of mimicking Ms. Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her. “She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said. More

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      in Theater

      Shakespeare or Bieber? This Canadian City Draws Devotees of Both

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      For nearly 70 years, Stratford, Ontario, has attracted legions of theater fanatics to its Shakespeare festival. About a dozen years ago, a very different type of pilgrim began arriving: Beliebers.STRATFORD, Ontario — It’s a small city that practically shouts “Shakespeare!”Majestic white swans float in the Avon River, not far from Falstaff Street and Anne Hathaway Park, named for the playwright’s wife. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while young students attend Hamlet elementary. And the school’s namesake play is often performed as part of a renowned theater festival that draws legions of Shakespeare fans from around the world, every April to October.Stratford, Ontario, steeped in references to and reverence for the Bard, has counted on its association with Shakespeare for decades to dependably bring in millions of tourist dollars to a city that would otherwise have little appeal to travelers.“My dad always said we have a world-class theater stuck in a farm community,” said Frank Herr, the second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.Then, about a dozen years ago, a new and typically much younger type of cultural enthusiast began showing up in Stratford’s streets: Beliebers, or fans of the pop star Justin Bieber, a homegrown talent.William Shakespeare Street in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesA star dedicated to Justin Bieber outside the Avon Theater where he would busk as a child.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesResidents don’t have much trouble telling the two types of visitors apart. One clue: Look at what they are carrying.“They’ve got the Shakespeare books in their hands,” Mr. Herr said of those who are here for the love of theater. “They’re just serious people.”Beliebers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at the ready to excitedly document the otherwise humdrum landmarks connected to the pop star: the site of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, the diner where he was rumored to eat.Unlike Shakespeare — who never set foot in this city, named after his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England — Mr. Bieber has genuine and deep connections: He grew up here and is familiar to many.“I know Justin,” Mr. Herr said. “He was always skateboarding on the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,” he added, referring to a World War I memorial in the gardens next to Lake Victoria.A cutout of Justin Bieber in the Stratford Perth Museum. The setting is meant to replicate the steps of the city’s Avon Theater. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesDiane Dale, Mr. Bieber’s maternal grandmother, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive away from downtown Stratford, where the fledgling singer, now 28, could often be found busking on the steps of Avon Theater under their supervision, collecting as much as $200 per day, she said in a recent interview.Those steps became something of a pilgrimage site for Mr. Bieber’s fans, especially those vying to become “One Less Lonely Girl” during his teen-pop dreamboat era.Another popular stop on the pilgrim’s tour was Ms. Dale’s doorstep. After fans rang her doorbell, she would assure them that her grandson was not home, though that didn’t stop them from taking selfies outside the red brick bungalow.“Justin said, if you don’t move, we’re not coming to visit you anymore,” Ms. Dale, a retired sewer at a now shuttered automotive factory in town, recalled. She has since relocated.Businesses in Stratford that benefited from this second set of tourists began speaking of “the Bieber Effect,” a play on the “Bilbao Effect” in reference to the Spanish city revitalized by a museum.Justin Bieber’s grandparents’ former home in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesBut one of the problems with pop fame is that it can be fickle. As fans have aged out of their teen infatuation with the musician, “Bieber fever” has cooled and the number of pilgrims has dropped.The issues that have long afflicted other Canadian cities, like increased housing prices and drug addiction, are more often peeking through the quaint veneer of Stratford, a city of about 33,000 people bordered by sprawling fields of corn in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario.But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s magnetic force remains fully intact.The theater festival, which draws over 500,000 guests in a typical year and employs about 1,000 people, features Shakespeare classics, Broadway-style musicals and modern plays in its repertoire.Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging a limited run of shows outside under canopies, as it did during its first four seasons, starting in 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building opened with a summer performance of “Hamlet,” with the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the titular role.The Tom Patterson Theater, a new addition to the Stratford Festival.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThis year’s production stars a woman, Amaka Umeh, the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.While it’s unknown how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, the appeal of someone who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone doesn’t dissipate overnight.And Stratford has taken steps to permanently memorialize his youth here.Mr. Bieber’s grandparents had hung on to boxes of his belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for the by the community in a crowdfunding effort — until a local museum presented them with an opportunity to display the items.“It’s changed the museum forever, in a myriad of ways,” said John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum.After informing the local newspaper that the museum was opening an exhibition, “Justin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,” in February 2018, Mr. Kastner said, he was flooded with calls from international media.“We were going to do one room, like one 10-by-10 room,” Mr. Kastner said. He called his curator. “I said, ‘We have a problem.’”Angelyka Byrne walking through the Bieber exhibit at the Stratford Perth Museum.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThey cut the agricultural exhibition that had been planned for the adjoining space, which proved helpful in accommodating the 18,000 visitors in the first year of the Bieber show, a huge jump in attendance from the 850 who visited the museum in 2013.The Bieber show, on view through at least next year, has brought in thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, Mr. Kastner said, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.Mr. Bieber has also made a handful of visits, marking his name in chalk on the guest blackboard and donating some more recent memorabilia, including his wedding invitation and reception menu, featuring a dish called “Grandma Diane’s Bolognese.”But even before the Beliebers descended on the town, young people had been coming to Stratford by the busload thanks to organized school visits, with 50,000 to 100,000 students arriving from the United States and around Canada each year.With the exception of the pandemic border closures, James Pakala, and his wife, Denise, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week every year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Ms. Pakala traveled to Stratford with her high school English literature class from Ithaca, N.Y., and the trip has since become a tradition.The Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“I love Shakespeare and also Molière,” said Mr. Pakala, 78, who was studying his program outside the Festival Theater before a recent production of Molière’s comedy “The Miser.”Other guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. The traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking and most major attractions are a short walk from one other, with pleasant views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.“It’s easy to attend theater here,” said Michael Walker, a retired banker from Newport Beach, Calif., who visits each year with friends. “It’s not like New York, where it’s burdensome, and the quality of the theater here, I think, is better than what’s in Los Angeles or Chicago.”Here for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened during the pandemic and plays to audiences of no more than 50, enjoys a “symbiotic relationship” with the festival, said its artistic director, Fiona Mongillo, who compared the scale of their operations as a Fiat to the festival’s freight train.Performing “Take Care” at the Here for Now Theater in August.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times“It’s an interesting moment for Stratford because I think it’s growing and changing in a really lovely way,” said Ms. Mongillo, citing the increased diversity as Canadians from neighboring cities have relocated to a town that was formerly, she added, “very, very white.”Longtime residents of Stratford, like Madeleine McCormick, a retired correctional officer, said it can sometimes feel like the concerns of residents are sidelined in favor of tourists.Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the pluses of the vibrant community of artists and creative people, one that drew her musician husband into its orbit.“It’s a strange place,” she said. “There’s never going to be another place that’s like this, because of the theater.”And Mr. Bieber. More

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      in Theater

      The Times’s Theater Critic Reviews Stratford’s New Theater

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      The Stratford Festival in Ontario opened a glamorous new theater last month that prioritizes the theater itself, not just what surrounds it.Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, has just returned from the Stratford Festival in Ontario, where the 2022 season started with the opening of a new theater.Leaving aside the plays themselves, the most dramatic presences at the new Tom Patterson Theater may in fact be absences. The usual whir of swiveling lights and the endless whoosh of moving air that infiltrate most theaters are undetectable here. Likewise, the blackouts are fully black — just the kind of inky dark to set the mood for “Richard III,” the play that opened the glamorous new building at the Stratford Festival in June.I got a tour of the theater, which cost 72 million Canadian dollars, during a six-day, five-show visit last week. Greg Dougherty, the Patterson’s technical director, led me from the depths of the traps beneath the stage — useful for drownings, burials and the like — to the catwalks high above it. The various noise abatement measures, most notably air handlers that look like space capsules and take up a room the size of a playing field, reduce the ambient sound to 10 decibels, Dougherty told me, similar to that of a recording studio.That’s a lot of silence. I understood its real value at that evening’s “Richard III” performance, in which Colm Feore, as the title character, delivered the play’s famous first line — “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York” — in what he later told me had been a whisper. No need to project, let alone overact, here; I heard him as clearly as if he were sitting next to me.Next to me is not a place I would usually want to find the evil king — except for dramatic purposes. But that kind of intimacy is part of the inheritance of the new Patterson, built on the site of the old one, a building that had previously been a curling rink, a dance hall and a badminton club, with all the charm of a Quonset hut. Despite that, its long thrust stage was much beloved, at least by actors, bringing them uncommonly close to audiences. To create that intimacy, though, the 480 seats (575 when configured in the round) were so steeply raked that finding mine when I first saw shows there in 2017 felt like an Alpine event.By 2019, the old Patterson was gone. That summer, Antoni Cimolino, the festival’s artistic director, took me on quite a different tour, of a campus under construction. Though it was the only time I’ve worn a hard hat on the job, it wasn’t the only time I could have used one.Jesse Green, left, at the work site for the Stratford Festival’s new theater in 2019, with Antoni Cimolino, right.Andrew MirerThe building, then a skeleton, was already mammoth. The auditorium, a kind of enclosed fortress, was beginning to take shape, but the surrounding public foyers and event facilities, which mimic the eddies and bends of the Avon River directly across Lakeside Drive, were as yet difficult to discern among the girders. I was concerned that, like so many new performance spaces built in the last half-century, the new Patterson would be blandly luxurious, deferring more to art donors than to art.I planned to find out in 2020, but by then the coronavirus pandemic had shut down almost all theater in North America, including Stratford. When I finally returned last week, I was wearing a mask instead of a hard hat. (Masks are strongly encouraged but not required.) I saw both shows running then at the Patterson — “Richard III” and “All’s Well That Ends Well” — and participated in five discussions and interviews in Lazaridis Hall, one of the event spaces. I admired the sensuous materiality of the undulating brass-and-glass facade, the riverine expanse of white oak floor, the roughness of the pale brick girdling the auditorium. I noted the whiz-bang electronic screens as well as the sparkling and seemingly infinite bathrooms.But those you can get anywhere. What makes the Patterson the best new theater I’ve seen in years is the clear prioritization of the theater itself, which sits like a treasured heirloom in a custom case. The silence and the dark are part of that, creating a plush space that is paradoxically full of emptiness, exerting a pressure of expectation as you sit in one of its 600 rust-colored seats. Watching a play there, you are always watching your fellow audience members as well, who sit across the thrust watching you. Because the seating is relatively compressed, you feel them, too.In an event at Lazaridis Hall on Saturday — part of what Stratford calls New York Times week at the festival — I talked to Mr. Cimolino and to Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the Toronto firm that designed the building. We of course nerded out on details like where the rippling glass had been obtained and how the sound was tuned so that no microphones are needed.Yet we kept returning to something more abstract: the seemingly opposing feelings of intimacy and community that theater as a human endeavor, and this theater in particular, were designed to encourage. It’s an approach that acknowledges the art form as a palimpsest: a text that has been revised and overwritten for thousands of years. (In that sense, the choice to open with “Richard III” was no accident; the play, in a production starring Alec Guinness, opened the first Stratford festival, in 1953.) If we go to the theater in part to commune with the ghosts of our human past, we also go to feel a deeper connection to people living and breathing right now, in the seats immediately to our right and left.Trans CanadaThis week’s Trans Canada section was compiled by Vjosa Isai, a news assistant for The New York Times in Canada.Laylit, or “the night of” in Arabic, is a party based in New York and Montreal that spotlights music from the Middle East and North Africa.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesDance floors in New York and Montreal are ground zero for Laylit parties, which highlight music from the Middle East and North Africa and their diaspora. Laylit, which translates from Arabic as “the night of,” was co-founded by a Montreal-based music duo from Lebanon.Sean Kelly, the Quebec-born writer who helped infuse sharp-edged humor in the National Lampoon magazine, has died at the age of 81.In Nunavut, the discoveries of fossils of giant fish that had evolved limbs for walking around 375 million years ago, and then reversed course to become swimmers again, are challenging one of the biggest myths of evolution.Last summer, the Canadian women’s soccer team enjoyed a thrilling victory over the U.S. national team. This week, their rivals made a comeback in the Concacaf Women’s Championship final.Kinkcorn. Confloption. Sish ice, slob ice, nish ice. Duckish. You’ll find these words in “The Dictionary of Newfoundland English,” and if you happen to be traveling there, check out these book recommendations from a local author, Michael Crummey.In Ontario, the Shaw Festival is another draw for theatergoers besides Stratford. Here’s a preview of the ambitious reboot of the play “Gaslight.”Inflation in Canada has hit 8.1 percent, according to Statistics Canada, the national census agency, and is climbing at the fastest pace since 1983. Central banks in the U.S., Europe, Canada and parts of Asia are rapidly lifting interest rates to try to bring inflation under control.Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The New York Times. His latest book, “Shy,” with and about the composer Mary Rodgers, will be published this fall. Follow him on Twitter at @JesseKGreen.How are we doing?We’re eager to hear your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      in Music

      Blue Jays Manager Charlie Montoyo Moonlights at Salsa Clubs

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      The salsa band was 45 minutes into their first set at Lula Lounge on a recent Saturday when Charlie Montoyo showed up at the front door. An owner of the music club spotted Montoyo and led him and his group to a table reserved for them closest to the stage.Montoyo, 56, took off his jacket and waved to the band members he knew. Moments later, Montoyo, the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays — one of the top teams in Major League Baseball — was up there with the band and was handed a güiro, a staple of Latin American music. A smile remained on his face for the next two and a half hours.“Tonight, we’re accompanied by our great manager of the Blue Jays,” Luis Franco, the lead singer of his self-titled band, told the audience in Spanglish. He signaled for Montoyo to join him at the front of the stage and continued, “This guy is doing an impeccable job with our team. A round of applause, please.”Montoyo stepped forward, embraced Franco, smiled and waved to the crowd. But he quickly returned to his preferred position: with the band members, among the instruments.Montoyo, in white shirt, played the güiro with the Luis Franco Worldwide Salsa band on a recent night in Toronto.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesBaseball may be the driving force of Montoyo’s life, but music has been the underlying beat. His stadium office is cluttered with bongos, congas, timbales, maracas and records. He plays salsa music to relax before games. And sometimes, he spends weekends during the season accompanying bands in night clubs with a güiro, an instrument which produces sound by rubbing a stick against a notched hollow gourd.“Charlie jumping onstage has been a thing our whole relationship,” Montoyo’s wife, Sam, said in a recent phone interview. “I remember looking up during our wedding after talking to people, and he’s onstage with the band.”On the field, the Blue Jays are a diverse and vibrant bunch. After a player homers, his teammates rush to get him a blue jacket, which features the names of the many countries represented on the team, from Canada to the Dominican Republic to Cuba to South Korea.Montoyo is from Puerto Rico and his vibrant team celebrates home runs with a jacket that honors the countries where players on the roster were born.John E. Sokolowski/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMontoyo is their boisterous leader, though it took him a long time to reach this point. After 18 highly successful years of managing in the minors for the Tampa Bay Rays and four years of coaching in the majors, he finally got his chance to manage Toronto in 2019.The 2022 M.L.B. Season“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”An Ace Seeks a New Title: Dave Stewart has been a star player, a coach, an agent and an executive. To truly change baseball, he wants to own a team.Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good. Smell Good?: For numerous players, a heavy dose of cologne or women’s perfume is the unlikeliest of performance enhancers.The Third Baseman’s Gambit: Manny Machado is the hottest hitter in baseball, and he is coming for your Queen.King of Throws: Tom House has spent his life helping superstars get even better. With a new app he wants to fix young pitchers before they develop bad habits.He took over a promising but rebuilt roster and guided it to the playoffs in 2020. The Blue Jays fell one win shy of another postseason appearance last season but entered 2022 as a popular preseason World Series pick. Through Wednesday, they were 33-23.Every step of the way for Montoyo, the soundtrack has been salsa.“He’s been phenomenal,” Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins said of Montoyo. “His experiences have always been attractive to me, personally. His minor league experiences, his playing experiences, his cultural experiences. He’s been exactly what we had hoped for in hiring him and then some.”From the small town of Florida, Puerto Rico, Montoyo was raised around salsa and baseball. After a four-game call-up with the Montreal Expos in 1993 and 1,028 games in the minors, Montoyo retired and began his coaching career.“I always wanted to be a baseball player,” he said sitting in his office at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. “I never thought I’d be a musician. But little by little, I played more. And I love salsa. But now, yes, I’d love to be a musician.”Unlike his brothers, Montoyo never took music classes or joined the school band. Growing up, he learned music organically. At parrandas, a Puerto Rican tradition that is like Christmas caroling at night, he helped play the maracas, güiro or tambourine as they went door to door. At gatherings on the beach, he watched others play the congas and picked it up himself.Montoyo has a large collection of instruments at his permanent residence in Tucson, Ariz., and at his office at the Rogers Centre, which is also a shrine in equal parts to Puerto Rico and salsa. His wife surprised him with an autographed painting of his favorite musician, Herman Olivera, and a new set of congas for the office after he was hired by Toronto.Montoyo’s love of music has led to him keeping records on hand to play along with in his office.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesThe office is like a shrine both to Puerto Rico and to salsa music in general.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesMontoyo said meeting or getting to know some of his musical heroes — such as Roberto Roena, Oscar Hernández, Eddie Palmieri and Olivera — has meant more to him than meeting many famous baseball players.During spring training in 2019, Montoyo hosted an impromptu performance in his office in Dunedin, Fla., with the singer Marc Anthony, whose entertainment company has a baseball agency that represents the Blue Jays star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Anthony sang “Aguanile,” the salsa classic by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, while Montoyo handled the bongos. Other members of the Blue Jays coaching staff from Puerto Rico joined in.(The night of Montoyo’s recent visit to Lula Lounge, he texted Anthony a video of his performance. “Wow,” Anthony wrote back. “What swing, papito. I love it. Made my day.”)Montoyo holds jam sessions often. He once invited a few musicians from the club to his office, and they played until 4 a.m. But most of the time, Montoyo is by himself, cuing up music videos on the TV hours before a game and playing along.“We’re in a competitive sport, and the position he’s in comes with a lot of pressure and attention from the moment he walks in the clubhouse,” said Hector Lebron, 44, an interpreter for the Blue Jays who played for Montoyo as a Tampa Bay minor leaguer. “He uses the music to relax a little bit and to think.”Montoyo first played at Lula Lounge in 2019. During pregame batting practice in May, he met some of the musicians from the club who had heard about his musical ability through mutual friends. In their conversation, Luis “Luisito” Orbegoso, a well-known local artist, said he could tell Montoyo knew what he was talking about and invited him to the club that night. Montoyo came and played, and that started their friendship.Brought on stage at Lula Lounge, Montoyo was handed a güiro and asked to play along with the band. Brendan Ko for The New York Times“Whenever he’s in Toronto, he calls me to ask, ‘When are we going to play? When are we going to rumbear?’” said Orbegoso, 51, who was born in Peru and moved to Canada when he was 12. “Including in the winter, the off-season, he contacts me and sends me videos. We’re pure salsa.”Lula Lounge was among the things Montoyo missed most about Toronto from 2020 to 2021, when Canada’s pandemic border restrictions forced the Blue Jays to play a majority of their home games in Buffalo and their spring-training facility in Florida.“He’s got a home here,” said Jose Ortega, a co-owner of Lula Lounge who began hosting salsa dance lessons at his apartment in Toronto in 2000 before that grew after two years into the permanent restaurant and club that he co-owns with Jose Nieves. “We see him as almost another band member.”Montoyo has played at Lula Lounge six times in all, including twice this season after Saturday afternoon home games. He often goes with team officials or coaches and has brought his wife when she was visiting from Arizona, where she stays during the school year with their youngest son. Montoyo was tired the day of his most recent visit — the Blue Jays were in the middle of a stretch of 20 straight days of games — but the club is his escape.“If Sam knows it’s Saturday and we lost a tough game and I’m at the apartment alone, she tells me to go there and enjoy,” Montoyo said.Montoyo stayed on stage until just after midnight, leaving only because his baseball team had a game later that day.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesSo after the Blue Jays beat the Houston Astros — a game from which Montoyo was ejected in the fifth inning for arguing a called third strike to Guerrero — he was at Lula Lounge with the Luis Franco Worldwide Salsa band.“We call it swing,” said Alex Naar, 42, a percussionist for the band who lent Montoyo a güiro and guided him through the more modern arrangements. “He has a natural swing for the music. He feels it in his heart. He has the rhythm.”After the first set, Montoyo posed for photos with a few fans. As a D.J. played salsa and reggaeton classics, Montoyo darted up to the empty stage to play congas along with the song. And when the band returned for their second set, he rejoined them.“Baseball is very Caribbean,” said Ortega, who was born in Ecuador and raised in New York. “It’s Puerto Rican, it’s Dominican, Venezuelan, and the whole rhythm and style and panache that Latinos bring to the game. That vibe, it kind of goes together. So to me, when Charlie was there, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a funny, perfect marriage of all of those things.’”In all aspects of his life, Montoyo has tried to represent his island, from the field to the stage.“It’s hard to reach this level,” he said of his job. “I sincerely never expected to reach it after so many years. That’s why I have the Puerto Rican flag on my glove, everywhere. I’m proud of where I’m from and the music.”Not long after midnight, with a few songs left in the second set of his recent visit to Lula Lounge, Montoyo was done. He handed the güiro back to Naar, gave him a hug and said his goodbyes. He didn’t want to leave but the Blue Jays had a 1 p.m. game. He grabbed his jacket and left with the team employees who had come along. He will be back. More

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      in Television

      A French Hit on Netflix Changes Its Language and Streaming Service

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      “Call My Agent!,” set at a Parisian talent agency, was a cult favorite during the pandemic. But the English-language adaptation will be on Sundance Now and AMC+.Four bumbling talent agents at risk of losing their business because of poor financial planning. A secret daughter interested in a career in the entertainment industry. Cameos by famous actors playing themselves. One spoiled dog. This is the formula that made the French show “Call My Agent!,” about a Parisian talent agency, into a global hit once it began appearing on Netflix in 2016.On Friday, the British version of the show, titled “Ten Percent” and set at a London talent agency, will debut. But instead of airing on Netflix, the eight-episode series will premiere on Sundance Now and AMC+ in the United States, and Amazon U.K. in Britain, Canada and six other English-speaking territories.Basing an English-language TV show on a popular hit from another country is a tried-and-true convention in the U.S. entertainment industry. Think “Homeland” and “Euphoria” — or even “The Office,” which began life with Ricky Gervais in England before being adapted into the long-running American version starring Steve Carell.“Ten Percent” was conceived in much the same way. David Davoli, who heads the television division for Bron Studios, negotiated, along with London’s Headline Pictures, for the English rights to “Call My Agent!” in 2017, after the show debuted on Netflix but before it truly caught on with English-speaking audiences. According to Mr. Davoli, it was already doing “bonkers numbers on French television,” where it debuted in 2015. Yet it was before “the dawn of international television where people were more comfortable ingesting foreign language stuff,” he said.What makes “Ten Percent” unique is that usually the English-language version is adapted from a show not widely seen in the United States. Not so with “Call My Agent!,” which became a cult favorite with American audiences during the pandemic. The show has run for four seasons on Netflix — with talk of a possible fifth to come — and inspired a film and adaptations in India and Turkey. Its star, Camille Cottin, could be seen in the films “House of Gucci” and “Stillwater” last year.“Call My Agent!” became available on Netflix in 2016.Christophe Brachet/NetflixNetflix won’t give details on the show’s viewership numbers, but the company’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos referred to the series in his January earnings call as proof that Netflix’s investment in international programming was paying off. It, along with “Money Heist” and “Squid Game,” proved to streaming companies that if a show is good enough, subtitles and cultural specificity are not a deterrent for viewers. And if that’s the case, why spend money on an English-language version? The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors are continuing to expand.A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.In contrast, “Ten Percent” will appear on a much smaller platform, one with nine million subscribers, just 12 percent of Netflix’s 74.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada. (It stars Jack Davenport as the de facto head of the agency and will feature cameos from well-known British actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and David Oyelowo.)Netflix had the opportunity to buy “Ten Percent,” as did every other streaming service in the United States, but passed. It declined to comment on its decision. Instead, Sundance Now came up with an attractive offer and licensed the show.“We’re very happy to be there,” Mr. Davoli said of his relationship with AMC Networks, which owns Sundance Now. “I like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I think we’re going to get way more attention there. Marketing is half the battle, and on some of the bigger streamers they’re up on Friday and gone on Monday.”AMC Networks, which owns a handful of niche streaming options including AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AllBlk, will also air the show weekly on its BBC America channel, two days after the episodes become available through streaming.“We jumped at the chance to make Sundance Now the U.S. home of the British remake,” said Shannon Cooper, vice president of programming for Sundance Now. “This is such a fun watch, whether you’ve seen the original or not.”This is a rocky moment for streaming, with Netflix’s stock plummeting after last week’s announcement that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year and expected to lose two million beyond that in the second. Despite the deluge of content arriving weekly on the various services, consumers are happy to end a subscription if the latest offerings aren’t striking their fancy.Helena Bonham Carter, right, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in “Ten Percent.” Lydia Leonard is one of the show’s stars.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowAccording to a recent survey by Deloitte, 37 percent of consumers in the United States added or canceled a streaming subscription in the last six months, a churn figure that has been consistent since 2020. The primary reasons they cited were price concerns and lack of new content. The return of a favorite show, according to Deloitte’s survey, is a key reason customers would subscribe to a service, or resubscribe to one they recently abandoned. That’s why a show like “Ten Percent,” which has the potential to lure viewers who enjoyed “Call My Agent!,” is an attractive purchase for an upstart streaming service.“It’s an appealing proposition for any of these distributors,” said Dan Erlij, partner at United Talent Agency and co-head of the television literary department. “There’s so much stuff that’s constantly premiering. How do you make sure that people are aware of it? Bus ads and billboards only take you so far. And it’s expensive. So if you know that there’s a word of mouth built in already, I think that can be really helpful.”The executive producer of “Ten Percent” is John Morton, best known for his comedy “W1A,” which satirizes the BBC. In a recent interview, he said he was cognizant of the high stakes he was facing when he took the job of adapting the beloved series. Attracted to the show’s “warm heart” and its ability to connect its audience to its fallible main characters, Mr. Morton said, he was intimidated by the idea of “starting again with something that’s already so good.”His strategy was to go back and rewatch the first season of “Call My Agent!” in its entirety but then never refer to it again. As of the interview, he had yet to finish the third season and hadn’t watched the fourth.The ultimate goal was to take the essence of “Call My Agent!” and make it specifically British, capturing the diversity of London, from its architecture to its people.“London is chaotic — architecturally, logistically, creatively — and that throws up wonderful things and also terrible things,” Mr. Morton said, adding that, as in “Call My Agent!,” the talent agency has a rooftop. But rather than looking out over a pristine Parisian night sky, this roof “looks out over a certain sort of unconnected chimneys.”The cast of the British version is also more diverse, with the secret daughter from the original now played by the British actress Hiftu Quasem, who is of Bengali descent, and the bumbling agent, Dan, portrayed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, a British actor of Sri Lankan descent. Yet the archetypes from the original prevail. For example, Ms. Cottin’s character, a hard-charging lesbian agent, is now played by Lydia Leonard, and her character’s frenetic love life is also complicated by her career ambitions.Mr. Davoli — who since becoming the head of Bron TV has sold three other co-productions to streaming companies, including “The Defeated” to Netflix and “Kin” to AMC — admits that the market for format deals has become more challenged in recent years.“The thing that’s most important that I’ve learned over the last four years is the quality bar cannot be messed with,” he said. “The only way to protect the investment is to ensure that you’re creatively making content that can sell into the U.S., because our audiences are so sophisticated now. They won’t stick around for stuff that’s not rising above a certain bar.” More

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      in Television

      An Indigenous Canadian Director Channels Traumatic Memories Into Film

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      Tracey Deer based “Beans” on her experiences as a child during the 1990 Oka crisis, a confrontation between the Mohawk people and the government.Tracey Deer can still remember the sound of rocks hitting the car, her panicked mother’s orders to “Get down!” and the loud smash as a back passenger window shattered, showering glass over her screaming little sister.Deer, an Indigenous Canadian filmmaker, was only 12 on Aug. 28, 1990, when a white mob hurled stones and racial insults at vehicles filled with Mohawk women, children and the elderly, all trying to evacuate a reservation near Montreal. The Oka crisis, a dispute between Canadian authorities and the Mohawk people over land rights, was reaching its height, and the frightened children crouched on the floor until Deer’s mother could drive on.“My sense of safety was stolen from me,” Deer said. “My sense of self-worth, as of that moment, was nonexistent.” But after spending most of her adolescence consumed by anger, she said in a video interview, “I ended up finding a way to channel that instead into my drive to prove all those people wrong.”One result is “Beans,” her first narrative feature, which was named best picture at the Canadian Screen Awards this year and has collected more than 20 prizes on the film-festival circuit. The newly released drama is a long-sought milestone for Deer, 43, a screenwriter, director, documentarian and television showrunner. (She was a creator of the comedy-drama series “Mohawk Girls,” streaming on Peacock, as well as a writer for “Anne With an E” on Netflix.)A fictionalized version of her experiences, the film focuses on a bright, ambitious Mohawk girl, nicknamed Beans (portrayed by the Mohawk actress Kiawentiio). She lives with her family on the Kahnawake reserve, as Deer did, and has applied to enter seventh grade at an elite, mostly white academy that’s similar to the school Deer went to before graduating from Dartmouth.“I wanted to be the one to tell the story,” Kiawentiio (pronounced Ghee-ah-wen-DEE-o) said via video from Canada, where she was shooting the new live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series for Netflix. Thirteen while filming “Beans,” she felt a personal connection to the history, having grown up in Akwesasne, a reserve not far from the conflict. “A lot of people from my community went there and were helping,” said Kiawentiio, whose own parents were teenagers at the time.Violah Beauvais, left, and Kiawentiio in a scene from Deer’s film.Sebastien Raymond/FilmriseBeans’ journey begins when she is caught up in the real protests that unfolded after the mayor of Oka, a town near Montreal, announced plans to expand a golf course onto land containing a sacred Mohawk burial ground. Devastated by the violence that ensues — she is present when gunfire erupts at a confrontation between Mohawk demonstrators and the police, precipitating the 78-day crisis — Beans falls in with a rough crowd of Mohawk teenagers. They include a charismatic boy who tries to force her to perform oral sex; the scene is based on a sexual assault Deer experienced when she was 20.“It’s a big story,” said Anne-Marie Gélinas, founder of EMAfilms, which produced the drama. “And Tracey’s challenge was to talk about, of course, the bullies outside,” which in the film include the government and real-estate developers. But, Gélinas added in a video call, “she also wanted to talk about the bullies inside her community.”Although Beans’ struggles relate specifically to her time and place, they are likely to resonate with anyone who has raised an adolescent — or been one. When Beans practices profanity in front of her bedroom mirror, smiling proudly when she finally utters a curse, it’s impossible not to notice the doll and stuffed animals still on her bureau. And any viewer will be alarmed when a tough older girl encourages Beans to harm herself so she will be impervious to the pain inflicted by others.“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of the Oka crisis,” Deer said, adding that the character is coming of age “in a tumultuous, unwelcoming world that is indicative of where we currently are.”An incident during filming reinforced that view. Deer shot “Beans” at several spots where the historical events occurred, including the Honoré Mercier Bridge, which Mohawk demonstrators blockaded during the crisis. It’s where the rock-throwing confrontation, recreated in the film, took place as well. When Deer began shooting in 2019, the structure was partly closed for maintenance. But some motorists, she said, assumed the movie crew had shut down the route.“They were beeping and yelling at us and revving their engines,” said Deer, who added that the occupants of one car began shouting racial slurs. Thirty years after the Oka crisis, she said, “the same kind of moment played out.”To show that she was not distorting the historical backdrop, Deer used archival footage throughout the film, in one case inserting an actor into the Mohawk protesters in a 1990 news clip. “Nobody remembered it to be so violent, so negative, so traumatic,” Gélinas said, describing audiences’ reactions in Canada, where the response to “Beans” has been overwhelmingly positive.Although the Oka conflict ended in September 1990 with the cancellation of the golf course expansion, disputes over the land rights continue. But in the Canadian cultural sphere, the concerns of Indigenous people are gaining increased attention, said Jesse Wente, chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts and executive director of the Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto. (The organization supports Native film projects but did not contribute to the financing of “Beans.”)“I think what you’re seeing is maybe an industry that is so ravenous for stories that it’s realized it has to open the gates beyond its usual suspects,” Wente, who is Anishinaabe, said in a phone interview. He added that while Indigenous representation in the Canadian film industry had been largely confined to documentaries until recent years, artists like Deer were now delving into many genres. “What that means is that Indigenous cinema is about to become commercial in a way it never was,” he said.Likening Deer’s film to Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” Wente said, “‘Beans’ is exactly what happens when you empower storytellers from a community who’ve had stories told about them forever, but rarely have had the opportunity to tell them themselves.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      in Theater

      Martha Henry, a Leading Stage Actress in Canada, Dies at 83

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      For decades her performances at the Stratford Festival drew acclaim. She gave her last performance just days before her death.For the last role of her long career, Martha Henry, one of Canada’s finest stage actors, played the character in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” known simply as A. Mr. Albee’s character description reads in part, “a very old woman; thin, autocratic, proud, as together as the ravages of time will allow.”As Ms. Henry took to the stage at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in August to begin the play’s two-month run, the cancer she had been dealing with for more than a year was well along. She used a walker in the first shows. In September she performed the role from a wheelchair, soldiering on in the demanding part through the final performance, on Oct. 9.She died of the disease on Thursday at her home in Stratford, the festival announced. She was 83.The effort Ms. Henry put into her final role — A is a dying woman, mean and prone to bursts of both laughing and crying — was, by all accounts, something to see. The performance “shows the veteran actor at her monstrous best,” J. Kelly Nestruck, the chief theater critic for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, wrote in August.“It’s unforgettable — which I mean both as praise and as a warning,” he added. “You might not want the woman she plays stuck in your head.”Ms. Henry had been known for memorable performances at Stratford for decades. She first appeared there in 1962 in a production of “The Tempest,” and her association with the festival continued, with a few gaps, to the present. She acted in more than 70 productions and directed 14 others.“Her sense of responsibility to the theater was so profound that it enabled her to endure pain and face down her terminal disease to complete an astoundingly truthful performance as a dying woman in ‘Three Tall Women,’” Antoni Cimolino, Stratford’s artistic director, said in a statement. “Her life became art.”Ms. Henry with Brian Bedford in “Much Ado About Nothing,” a Stratford Festival production staged at New York City Center in 1998. She acted in more than 70 Stratford productions and directed 14 others.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMartha Kathleen Buhs was born on Feb. 17, 1938, in Detroit. Her parents, Lloyd and Kathleen (Hatch) Buhs, divorced when she was 5. Her mother was a pianist who played cocktail lounges and was often working at night, so Martha was raised by her grandparents until she was 14. She was interested in acting at a young age.“I joined a Brownie troop because they were doing a play,” she told The Pittsburgh Press in 1968.As a teenager she rejoined her mother, who had become part of a traveling entertainment troupe. She would often go on the road with her, enjoying the company of the other performers.“On the same bill there’d be a comic — my mother would fill in as the straight woman — a ventriloquist, a snake charmer, a tap dancer,” Ms. Henry told The Edmonton Journal of Alberta in 1996, when she was playing the same role in “Three Tall Women” in an Edmonton production. “I grew up with show people. They were so good to me.”She enrolled at what is now the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in Pittsburgh, choosing it over several other colleges because, as she told The Press, “it was the only one that held auditions, to see what you could really do.”The drama department did four Shakespeare plays while she was there, she said, but this future star of numerous Shakespeare productions didn’t get into any of them. After graduating in 1959, she did summer stock in Ontario and worked with the Crest Theater in Toronto. Then she enrolled in the National Theater School in Montreal when it was established in 1960, and went on to become its first acting graduate: Halfway through the three-year course, as she told The Press, the directors told her that she was ready for a professional career.Six weeks later she was a member of the Stratford troupe; her debut there was as Miranda in “The Tempest.” One critic called her “the find of the season.”She had married a fellow student at the theater school, Donnelly Rhodes Henry. The marriage didn’t stick, but the last name did (though not for him — he performed professionally as Donnelly Rhodes). A later marriage, to the actor Douglas Rain in 1968, ended in divorce in 1988. In 1989 she married the actor Rod Beattie, who survives her, along with a daughter from her second marriage, Emma Rain.At Stratford, Ms. Henry’s Isabella in “Measure for Measure” in 1975, her Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” in 1998 and her Mary in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1994 were among her most acclaimed performances. She was also artistic director of the Grand Theater in London, Ontario, from 1988 to 1994.Ms. Henry made the occasional film or television appearance and performed on many stages beyond Stratford, including some in New York. But she said she was never tempted, as a young actress, to try to make it in Manhattan.“I knew exactly what would happen there,” she told The Journal. “I wasn’t exactly shy, but I wasn’t pushy. I was no great beauty. I could see myself getting an apartment and just staying in it.”Canada offered what she wanted, she said.“I just wanted to work, and I felt that any country that could produce a Stratford had to be the most wonderful place. And I was right.” More

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      in Music

      Brandon Valdivia habla de su nuevo disco

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      En su álbum más reciente, el productor nicaragüense-canadiense se plantea las expresiones políticas surgidas en los momentos de quietud.“Momento Presente” de Brandon Valdivia es como una invocación. En este tema perteneciente a Máscaras, su álbum lanzado en septiembre, un ritmo poco convencional que no pertenece al estilo de baile “footwork”, suena junto a los remolinos de un silbato de hojalata. Suena una campana y, al poco tiempo, la voz divina de un hombre entona un llamado a la acción. “Sabemos que se está separando los opresores y los oprimidos”, reflexiona en español. “No vamos a esperar 2000 años para que los buenos estén de un lado y los malos estén de otro lado. Sino que ese momento lo estamos viviendo ahora”.Este es el tipo de magia militante que Valdivia, de 38 años, más conocido como Mas Aya, invoca en su música. “Intento fusionar lo político y lo espiritual”, comentó en una entrevista por video desde su estudio en Londres, Ontario. “Hay que actuar, hay que estar en el momento, hay que estar en el mundo”.Esa sensación de urgencia silenciosa inunda Máscaras, su primer disco desde el LP de 2017 Nikan. A veces, el proyecto hace referencias directas a las revoluciones en Nicaragua, su tierra natal. (El audio hablado de “Momento Presente” proviene de una reunión de guerrilleros a finales de la década de 1970 liderada por Ernesto Cardenal, el teólogo de la liberación). Sin embargo, Máscaras no solo se basa en alusiones explícitas al poder. También se trata de las pequeñas rebeliones incrustadas en los momentos de inmersión y quietud.Valdivia dijo que el título del álbum describe las máscaras utilizadas en las marchas políticas y las ceremonias indígenas, pero también se trata de su propio método compositivo. “Los instrumentos se esconden dentro de la nube de texturas”, explicó. Las canciones del álbum son como bocetos impresionistas, que cambian los puntos focales por una fresca fluidez. La quena y las flautas bansuri revolotean sobre bucles de batería. El repiqueteo de las claves o las maracas se desvanece en olas de sintetizadores nítidos y ritmos electrónicos desordenados, que se transforman en dulces ráfagas de armonía.Valdivia creció en Chatham, una pequeña ciudad canadiense a una hora en auto de Detroit. La suya fue una de las primeras familias latinas en llegar, y a menudo anhelaba tener aliados en la música, la comunidad y el arte.En Nicaragua, su padre era un jipi de cabello largo que escuchaba Black Sabbath y cumbia, fumaba marihuana y consumía ácido. Valdivia se enamoró de la música a los 12 años y aprendió a tocar la flauta dulce, y luego la batería. Veía MuchMusic (el paralelo de MTV en Canadá) y escuchaba la radio pública de Detroit. Leía poesía francesa y pidió una copia de A Love Supreme de John Coltrane en la tienda de discos local. Tardó seis meses en llegarle.“Sabía que era un bicho raro”, dijo sobre el mundo conservador que lo rodeaba. “Quería salir de ahí en cuanto pudiera”.Se escapó a la universidad, donde estudió composición en la Universidad Wilfrid Laurier de Ontario, ahí encontró “gente creativa, interesada en superar los límites”, comentó. “Como bichos raros. Utilizo mucho esa frase”.Valdivia optó por iniciar un proyecto en solitario después de sentirse frustrado con la escena artística de Toronto. “Nadie hablaba de política”, dijoBrendan Ko para The New York TimesEn los años siguientes, Valdivia se convirtió en un respetado multinstrumentista y percusionista del entorno experimental y de art-rock de Toronto, tocando en grupos como Not the Wind, Not the Flag y I Have Eaten the City. También ha colaborado ampliamente con su compañera, la artista nominada al Grammy y que rompe géneros, Lido Pimienta, quien también participa en Máscaras. A los veinte y pocos años, viajó a Nicaragua, donde visitó a su familia en Managua, Estelí y Masaya, la ciudad natal de su abuela, y estudió las tradiciones musicales folclóricas del país. A su regreso a Canadá decidió poner en marcha un proyecto en solitario, inspirado en parte por su frustración con el entorno artístico de Toronto.“Nadie hablaba de política. Todo el mundo hacía, básicamente, una extraña música experimental nihilista”, afirmó. Mas Aya toma su nombre del hogar de su abuela, así como de “el más allá”.Valdivia describió su práctica como “armelódica”, un término que tomó prestado del músico de jazz Ornette Coleman. “Este tipo de música en la que la melodía, la armonía y el ritmo están al servicio de los demás”, dijo. Es una visión que capta el enfoque musical real de Valdivia, pero también evoca los tonos espirituales del álbum en su conjunto.En el tema “Quiescence”, Valdivia utiliza la mbira dzavadzimu (un tipo de piano de pulgares) como percusión, a pesar de que es un instrumento que suele pulsarse sobre teclas de metal. Por encima de ligeras flautas y sintetizadores brillantes, el sonido de los mazos que golpean la mbira se funde en una pacífica ondulación líquida.En “18 de Abril”, usa el audio de un manifestante universitario en una protesta de 2018 en Nicaragua, conectando los esfuerzos de resistencia actuales con los movimientos de décadas pasadas, y presentando la lucha política como un continuo. El resultado va más allá de la mera fusión o del homenaje ancestral. Articula un lenguaje prismático y poético, con lo cual demuestra que la expresión política no siempre es evidente. También puede llegar en momentos de silenciosa contemplación y conexión.Isabelia Herrera es crítica de arte becaria en el Times. Cubre la cultura popular, con especial atención a la música latinoamericana y latina en Estados Unidos. Anteriormente fue editora colaboradora en Pitchfork y ha escrito para Rolling Stone, Billboard, GQ y NPR, entre otros. @jabladoraaa More