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      Sophie, Who Pushed the Boundaries of Pop Music, Dies at 34

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySophie, Who Pushed the Boundaries of Pop Music, Dies at 34As a producer and performer, Sophie distilled speed, noise, melody and clarity, working simultaneously at the experimental fringes of dance music and the center of pop.Sophie onstage at Coachella in 2019. Her 2018 album, “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides,” was nominated for a Grammy for best dance/electronic album.Credit…Rich Fury/Getty Images for CoachellaPublished More

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      Sonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostSonny Fox, Whose ‘Wonderama’ Mixed Fun and Learning, Dies at 95He was not a comic or a clown, just a smart and genial TV host who for almost a decade spoke to children, not at them. He died of Covid pneumonia.Sonny Fox in an undated photo. “Wonderama,” the popular New York children’s TV show he hosted from 1959 to 1967, was a dazzling mixture of cartoons, games and many other elements.Credit…BettmannJan. 30, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETSonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, Calif. He was 95.The cause was Covid pneumonia, his son Dana said.Mr. Fox was a veteran of television when he was hired for “Wonderama” by the New York station WNEW-TV (now WNYW). He had hosted a live local educational program in St. Louis and “Let’s Take a Trip,” on CBS, on which he took two youngsters on a field trip each week.In 1956, CBS named Mr. Fox the M.C. of “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was fired a few months after accidentally giving a contestant an answer. He was not embroiled in the scandal that emerged two years later when it was discovered that several quiz shows, including “Challenge,” had been rigged by their producers.No such problems existed at “Wonderama,” where Mr. Fox’s mission was to tack away from the silly show it had become under previous hosts. But he was too serious at first, focusing on subjects like space exploration. Ratings began to fall.“I became so ponderously educational that the kids who had been watching turtle races” — under the previous hosts — “had no idea what I was doing,” he said in a Television Academy interview in 2008.The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, soon found its footing. It became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games like “Simon Says,” joke-telling (by the children), contests, dramatizations of Shakespeare plays and magic. In 1964, the show held a mock Republican convention. Mr. Fox also interviewed newsmakers like Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and opened the floor to questions from the children.“Do you think all the money that we’ve been spending on this nation’s space program should be spent on this or on poverty bills and such?” an earnest boy with glasses asked Senator Kennedy in 1965.“We can make the space effort,” Mr. Kennedy said, adding that both could be done: “If there’s ever an unknown, man will search the unknown.”Mr. Fox was not a comic performer like Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker or Soupy Sales — stars of their own daytime children’s shows on WNEW at the time — and did not wear funny costumes. He was a smart and genial host who wore a suit and tie.He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of “Wonderama” but as integral to it, whether they were trying to stump him with a riddle or delivering news segments.Mr. Fox with two members of the “Wonderama” audience in 1961. He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of the show but as integral to it, Credit…Wagner International PhotosHe said Mr. Becker and Mr. Sales resented his popularity because he was not a performer.“I did nothing, apparently!” he told the online Observer in 2017. “That’s the contrast: For them, the kids were the audience; for me, the kids were the show.”The popularity of “Wonderama” meant children waited years for tickets to tapings at its studio on East 67th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Fox’s mother, Gertrude (Goldberg) Fox, sent him notes each Monday insisting that tickets be set aside for certain children.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Duke Bootee, Whose ‘Message’ Educated Hip-Hop, Dies at 69

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDuke Bootee, Whose ‘Message’ Educated Hip-Hop, Dies at 69His 1982 hit about the “jungle” of urban poverty charted a new, grittier path for rap music in its early days.Edward Fletcher, better known as Duke Bootee, in 2013. He was a studio musician at Sugar Hill Records when he began writing “The Message,” which Rolling Stone has called the greatest song in hip-hop history.Credit…Geoff L JohnsonJan. 29, 2021, 2:53 p.m. ETEdward Fletcher, who as Duke Bootee was the driving force behind “The Message,” the 1982 hit that pushed hip-hop from merry escapism toward chronicling the daily grind of urban poverty, died on Jan. 13 at his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 69.The cause was heart failure, said his wife, Rosita Fletcher.Mr. Fletcher started writing “The Message” in 1980, the same year he became a studio musician at Sugar Hill Records, which released the early work of groups like the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Mr. Fletcher toured with Sugar Hill acts, contributed to the recording of seminal tracks and occasionally composed music.“We wrote the first chapter in the history of rap,” he said in a 2013 interview broadcast on Channel 28 in Savannah.The sound of hip-hop was initially cheerful and upbeat, with lyrics that encouraged dancing crowds to “throw your hands up in the air/and party hardy like you just don’t care,” as the Sugar Hill Gang rapped on their landmark 1979 single, “Rapper’s Delight.”In his mother’s basement one night, in the tough and increasingly impoverished city where he grew up, Elizabeth, N.J., Mr. Fletcher was smoking a joint with a friend and fellow musician, Jiggs Chase. Thinking about his hometown, he began piecing together a different approach to hip-hop.“The neighborhood I was living in, the things I saw — it was like a jungle sometimes in Elizabeth,” Mr. Fletcher told The Guardian in 2013. In another interview, with the hip-hop historian JayQuan, he recalled how often someone would “ride by and you hear a bottle get broken.”The images of the jungle and broken glass contributed two signature motifs to the lyrics of “The Message,” which sought to define everyday life in a tough urban world. The rhymes included “Got a bum education, double-digit inflation/Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station.” Mr. Fletcher wrote most of the lyrics and the lurching, ominous electro melody.It baffled Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.“It was just too serious,” Melle Mel, a member of the group, told Uncut magazine in 2013. “We were making party tracks,” he added, “and wanted to keep in the same lane. Nobody wanted that song.”Melle Mel eventually caved to pressure from Sylvia Robinson, one of Sugar Hill’s owners. He contributed a final verse to “The Message” and shared rapping duties with Mr. Fletcher, who also played all the instruments except guitar. As a rapper, Mr. Fletcher’s baritone voice registered a cool impassivity that stood in contrast to the excitability of many of his peers.“The Message” was credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, although it was mostly the work of Mr. Fletcher (not seen here).Credit…Sugar Hill RecordsThe song was an instant hit. In years to come, it would be sampled nearly 300 times, according to whosampled.com. Rolling Stone called it the greatest song in hip-hop history and a major influence on rappers like Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G. It also helped earn Grandmaster Flash and his band a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, even though Melle Mel was the only one of them to appear on what was called “their masterpiece,” aside from a short closing skit.“The world (me included) absolutely froze in its tracks the week it debuted on radio,” the musician and songwriter Questlove wrote in Rolling Stone. “Hip-hop was once known as party fodder, a fad. ‘The Message’ pulled a 180 and proved it could be a tool of sociopolitical change.”Mr. Fletcher was credited as a co-composer of “The Message” and received royalties for his work on it. But he did not appear on the album cover, and Rahiem of the Furious Five lip-synced to Mr. Fletcher’s voice in the music video.Mr. Fletcher’s feelings about being cut out of the public image of the song were mixed. At times he saw a shrewd marketing strategy. “It worked with a group like Flash and them because they had that threatening, street image,” he said in the interview with JayQuan. “There aren’t any other groups from that time that could have pulled that record off better than them.”But his gratitude had limits. “If I’d known what it was going to do,” he told The Guardian about his hit song, “I’d have kept it for myself.”Edward Gernel Fletcher was born on June 6, 1951, in Elizabeth. His father, Ernest, was a truancy officer, and his mother, Helen (Bridges) Fletcher, taught elementary school. When he was 16, Ed began dating Rosita Ross, a classmate and family friend. They married in 1976 and stayed together for the rest of his life.Ed took drum and xylophone lessons as a boy, and he played in cover bands at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1973 with a degree in English, he played with local New Jersey bands. He first gained notoriety for playing on Edwin Starr’s disco single “Contact,” and two years later he started working at Sugar Hill.Mr. Fletcher left the music industry while still a young man; the money he was making, he decided, was not worth all the travel and the time away from his family. Back in New Jersey, he turned to what he called “the family business”: teaching.He got master’s degrees from the New School in media studies and from Rutgers University in education. He worked at a juvenile detention center, a high school and two colleges, spending the last decade of his career as a lecturer in critical thinking and communication at Savannah State University. He retired in 2019.Mr. Fletcher left the music industry while still a young man and turned to what he called “the family business”: teaching.Credit…Geoff L JohnsonIn addition to his wife, Mr. Fletcher is survived by two children, Owen Fletcher and Branice Moore, and five grandchildren.The frank discussion of everyday problems in “The Message” informed Mr. Fletcher’s sensibility as a teacher. He propounded what he called the Fletcherian Principles. In the Channel 28 interview, the rap godfather explained the ultimate Message he had worked out for young students:“Figure out a way to take care of yourself, legal. Find somebody you can stand that can stand you. Pay your taxes. Take care of your teeth.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96In a remarkable career of many decades, she refused to take parts that demeaned Black people and won a Tony, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.Cicely Tyson in London in 1973. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral.Credit…Dennis Oulds/Central Press, via Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 7:30 p.m. ETCicely Tyson, the stage, screen and television actress whose vivid portrayals of strong African-American women shattered racial stereotypes in the dramatic arts of the 1970s, propelling her to stardom and fame as an exemplar for civil rights, died Thursday. She was 96. Her death was announced by her longtime manager, Larry Thompson.In a remarkable career of seven decades, Ms. Tyson broke ground for serious Black actors by refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people. She urged Black colleagues to do the same, and often went without work. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral, and insisted that African-Americans, even if poor or downtrodden, should be portrayed with dignity.Her chiseled face and willowy frame, striking even in her 90s, became familiar to millions in more than 100 film, television and stage roles, including some that had traditionally been given only to white actors. She won three Emmys and many awards from civil rights and women’s groups, and at 88 became the oldest person to win a Tony, for her 2013 Broadway role in a revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.”At 93, she won an honorary Oscar, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2018 and into the Television Hall of Fame in 2020. She also won a career achievement Peabody Award in 2020.Despite the gathering force of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, there were few substantial roles for talented, relatively unknown Black actresses like Ms. Tyson. She appeared in Broadway plays, television episodes and minor movie roles before playing Portia, a supporting but notable part in the 1968 film version of Carson McCullers’s “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”Ms. Tyson and Yvonne Jarrell in  “Sounder” (1972).  Credit…20th Century FoxBut in 1972, in a film called “Sounder,” she found what she was looking for: a leading role with dignity. It was as Rebecca, the wife of a Louisiana sharecropper (Paul Winfield) who is imprisoned in 1933 for stealing food for his children. She rises to the challenge — cleaning houses, tilling fields, sweltering under the sun in a worn dress and braided cornrows — a Black woman whose excruciating beauty lies in toil and poverty.“The story in ‘Sounder’ is a part of our history, a testimony to the strength of humankind,” Ms. Tyson told The New York Times after receiving rave reviews and an Oscar nomination for best actress. “Our whole Black heritage is that of struggle, pride and dignity. The black woman has never been shown on the screen this way before.”In 1974, Ms. Tyson stunned a national television audience with her Emmy Award-winning portrayal of a former slave in the CBS special “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” adapted from the novel by Ernest J. Gaines. Born into slavery before the Civil War, Miss Pittman survives for more than a century to see the civil rights movement of the 1960s. At 110, she tells her story, the searing experience of a Black woman in the South. Then, in her only gesture of protest, she sips from a whites-only drinking fountain.Preparing for her metamorphosis, Ms. Tyson visited nursing homes to study the manifestations of old age: the frail shoulders and shaking hands, the unfocused sparkling eyes and slurred speech, the struggle for names and important thoughts just beyond reach.“Cicely Tyson transforms that role into the kind of event for which awards are made,” John J. O’Connor wrote in The Times, citing her passage from young innocence through cycles of age and maturity to shriveled, knowing antiquity. “She absorbs herself completely into Miss Jane, in the process creating a marvelous blend of sly humor, shrewd perceptions and innate dignity.”Maya Angelou and Ms. Tyson in the 1977 mini-series “Roots”Credit…Warner BrothersMs. Tyson later found other suitable television roles: as Kunta Kinte’s mother in a mini-series based on Alex Haley’s “Roots” in 1977; as Coretta Scott King in the 1978 NBC mini-series “King,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final years; as Harriet Tubman, whose Underground Railroad spirited slaves to freedom, in “A Woman Called Moses” (1978); and as a Chicago teacher devoted to poor children in “The Marva Collins Story” (1981). In 1994, she won a supporting actress Emmy for her portrayal of Castalia in the mini-series “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”For many Americans, Ms. Tyson was an idol of the Black Is Beautiful movement, regal in an African turban and caftan, her face gracing the covers of Ebony, Essence and Jet magazines. She was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, a runner, a meditator and, from 1981 to 1989, the wife of the jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. Since the ’60s she had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty — including helping to popularize the Afro.“She’s our Meryl Streep,” Vanessa Williams told Essence in 2013. “She was the person you wanted to be like in terms of an actress, in terms of the roles she got and how serious she took her craft. She still is.”Ms. Tyson eventually appeared in 29 films; at least 68 television series, mini-series and single episodes; and 15 productions on and off Broadway, including “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” (1962) and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969).In “The Corn Is Green” (1983), an Emlyn Williams play set in Wales, Ms. Tyson received mixed reviews as Miss Moffat, an English schoolteacher in a coal-mining town who awakens the minds of impoverished youngsters. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn played the part in earlier film and television adaptations.Since the 1960s, Ms. Tyson had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty.Credit…Ben Sklar for The New York TimesAfter a three-decade absence from Broadway, Ms. Tyson returned in 2013 in a production of “The Trip to Bountiful,” playing Carrie Watts, an old woman, also conceived as a white character, who yearns to see her hometown before dying. Her performance won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.“It’s been 30 years since I stood onstage; I really didn’t think it would happen again in my lifetime, and I was pretty comfortable with that” Ms. Tyson said at the Tonys ceremony. “Except that I had this burning desire to do just one more. ‘One more great role,’ I said. I didn’t want to be greedy. I just wanted one more.” And she appeared with James Earl Jones for nearly four months in 2015-16 in a Broadway revival of “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 play about two elderly residents of a retirement home drawn together over a card table.Mr. Jones, then 84, and Ms. Tyson, 90, were onstage for virtually all of its two-hour running time, as Charles Isherwood noted in a review for The Times. “These two superlative performers establish beyond doubt, if we needed any reminding, that great talent is ageless and ever-rewarding,” he said.James Earl Jones and Ms. Tyson in the Broadway revival of “The Gin Game.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn January 2021, when she was 96, her memoir, “Just as I Am,” appeared, and in a pre-publication interview with The New York Times Magazine, she was asked if she had any advice for the young.“It’s simple,” she said. “I try always to be true to myself. I learned from my mom: ‘Don’t lie ever, no matter how bad it is. Don’t lie to me ever, OK? You will be happier that you told the truth.’ That has stayed with me, and it will stay with me for as long as I’m lucky enough to be here.”Cicely Tyson was born in East Harlem on Dec. 19, 1924, the youngest of three children of William and Theodosia (also known as Frederica) Tyson, immigrants from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her father was a carpenter and painter, and her mother was a domestic worker. Her parents separated when she was 10, and the children were raised by a strict Christian mother who did not permit movies or dates.After graduating from Charles Evans Hughes High School, Cicely became a model, appearing in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and elsewhere. In the 1940s, she studied at the Actors Studio. Her first role was on NBC’s “Frontiers of Faith” in 1951. Her disapproving mother kicked her out.After small film and television parts in the 1950s, she joined James Earl Jones and Louis Gossett Jr. in the original New York cast of Jean Genet’s “The Blacks” in 1961. It was the longest-running Off Broadway drama of the decade, running for 1,408 performances. Ms. Tyson played Stephanie Virtue, a prostitute, for two years, and won a Vernon Rice Award in 1962, igniting her career.She helped found the Dance Theater of Harlem after the 1968 assassination of Dr. King. In 1994, an East Harlem building where she lived as a child was named for her; it and three others were rehabilitated for 58 poor families. In 1995, a magnet school she supported in East Orange, N.J., was renamed the Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts.Her later television roles included that of Ophelia Harkness in a half dozen episodes of the long-running ABC legal drama “How to Get Away With Murder,” for which she was nominated repeatedly for Emmys and other awards for outstanding guest or supporting actress (2015-19), and in the role of Doris Jones in three episodes of “House of Cards” (2016).Ms. Tyson accepting her honorary Oscar in 2018. “This is the culmination of all those years of have and have-not,” she said.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesIn 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.She was always reticent about her age, charity work and other personal details, like being a good-will ambassador for Unicef in 1985-86 and her 1981 marriage to Miles Davis, which ended in divorce in 1989. But she was adamant about dramatic roles. “We Black actresses have played so many prostitutes and drug addicts and housemaids, always negative,” she told Parade magazine in 1972. “I won’t play that kind of characterless role any more, even if I have to go back to starving.”And in November 2018, a month before she turned 94, Ms. Tyson received an honorary Oscar, a Governors Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In an emotional acceptance speech in Los Angeles, Ms. Tyson, whose highest accolade from the film industry had been her Oscar nomination in 1972, paid tribute to her mother, who had opposed her plan for a career as an entertainer.“Mom, I know you didn’t want me to do this,” she said, “but I did, and here it is. I don’t know that I would cherish a better gift than this,” she told the audience. “This is the culmination of all those years of have and have-not.”Azi Paybarah contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Pauline Anna Strom, Composer of Enduring Electronic Sounds, Dies at 74

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPauline Anna Strom, Composer of Enduring Electronic Sounds, Dies at 74Her blindness, she said, enhanced her music, which included homemade recordings from the 1980s prized by aficionados.Pauline Anna Strom in 2017, when her music from the 1980s was rereleased, drawing a burst of attention and new fans.Credit…Aubrey TrinnamanJan. 28, 2021, 6:28 p.m. ETIn the early 1980s, a blind woman stood in her San Francisco apartment with one hand in a bowl of water and the other holding a microphone, recording the burbling sound as she stirred and splashed.“It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself,” she joked years later.The woman was Pauline Anna Strom, and her beguiling homemade synthesizer recordings were prized by aficionados of electronic music. The water sounds went into one of her first compositions, which appeared on her debut recording, “Trans-Millenia Consort” (1982).Ms. Strom died on Dec. 13 at her home in San Francisco, two months before her first new music in 30 years was to be released. She was 74.Matt Werth, the founder of her record label, RVNG Intl., announced the death. He did not specify the cause.Ms. Strom, who was blind from birth, found in synthesizers a way to create compositions that reflected her complex internal landscape, one that was not confined to the present but roamed freely through time and emotions.“I consider myself the ‘Trans-Millenia Consort,’” she wrote in the liner notes to that recording, “by which title I wish to be known. This to me is a personal declaration that I have been in previous lives, that I am in this life, and that I shall in future lives be a musical consort to time.”“Trans-Millenia Consort,” which Ms. Strom recorded on her own equipment at her home in San Francisco and which was issued in a limited release on vinyl and cassette in 1982, was followed by six more recordings, the last released in 1988. In 2017 a broader audience discovered Ms. Strom when Mr. Werth’s label released “Trans-Millenia Music,” a compilation of pieces from those 1980s efforts.“Angel Tears in Sunlight,” Ms. Strom’s first new music in 30 years, is scheduled to be released in February.Credit…Rvng Intl.“Trans-Millenia Music,” a compilation of her work from the 1980s, was released in 2017.Credit…Rvng Intl.“’Trans-Millenia Music’ captures an artist expressing herself freely and without fear or hesitation,” Daniel Martin-McCormick wrote in a review for Pitchfork, “and it makes good on its title. Work like this may fade into obscurity, but it remains fresh to all who seek it out, still vibrant and pulsing with energy in any age — new or otherwise.”Mr. Werth said his label will release a new recording, “Angel Tears in Sunlight,” on Feb 19.Ms. Strom did not dwell on her blindness (“The blindness to me is a nuisance more than anything,” she once said), although mastering her synthesizers was a process of experimentation, since in the 1980s, when the instruments were relatively new, there were no users’ manuals for the blind. Ultimately, she thought, her lack of sight enhanced her music.“My hearing and inner visualization have, I feel, developed to a higher level than perhaps they would have otherwise,” she told the publication Eurock in a rare early-career interview in 1986. “And it doesn’t affect my abilities from a technical standpoint, either. It’s quite possible to program synthesizers, effects units, accurately record one’s work and handle a mixer. I do this all by sound.”“In fact,” she added, “I rather like working in the dark.”Pauline Anna Tuell was born on Oct. 1, 1946, in Baton Rouge, La., to Paul and Marjorie (Landry) Tuell. She grew up in Kentucky in a Roman Catholic household and said that chants and other types of church music influenced her musical ideas, but that so did the works of Bach, Chopin and others.She was married twice, to Bob Strom and then to Kevin Bierl, but the dates of those marriages and how they ended are, like many details of her life, hard to come by. She moved to San Francisco when her husband — it is unclear which — was stationed there while in the military. Reclusive by nature, she lived in the same San Francisco apartment for decades. (“Thank God this city has rent control,” she told the website listentothis.info in 2018.)Her early musical efforts included some do-it-yourself sound effects like those in “Emerald Pool,” but she gradually became more adept at creating whatever sound she wanted with the multiple synthesizers she accumulated. She was influenced by the work of the German band Tangerine Dream and the German composer Klaus Schulze, pioneers in electronic music.“The spaciousness of it, the timeless quality, where it can be in any universal realm — that’s what captivated me,” she said. “It didn’t make you sad, it didn’t make you romantic. It was just driving, and it made you want to explore.”Ms. Strom in 2017. Blind from birth, she found in synthesizers a way to create compositions that reflected her complex internal landscape,Credit…Aubrey TrinnamanMs. Strom’s music was sometimes classified as New Age, but she disliked the term and the people who identified with it.“I think there’s a lot of phoniness in the New Age movement,” she said in a 2017 interview for the Red Bull Academy. “I can’t stand this. I’m a realist. I’m down to earth. I’m practical.”Ms. Strom is survived by three sisters, Loretta Hoffman, Barbara Boniakowski and Anita Burnett.When her 1980s music was rereleased in 2017, Ms. Strom was surprised at the burst of attention and the new fans.“A friend of mine called me and said, ‘You’ve got 20,000 people out there that know you exist and liked your music,’” she recalled in the Red Bull interview, “and I said: ‘What? Why?’”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostJerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82Energizing Manhattan night life, he opened the Electric Circus in 1967 and the Ritz 13 years later. He died of Covid-19.The promoter Jerry Brandt, right, with Tina Turner and Keith Richards in 1984 at the Ritz, the East Village club Mr. Brandt opened in 1980.Credit…Bob GruenJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:52 p.m. ETJerry Brandt, a promoter and entrepreneur who owned two nightclubs, the Electric Circus and the Ritz, that were attention-getting parts of New York’s music scene in their day, died on Jan. 16 in Miami Beach. He was 82.His family said in a statement that the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967 on St. Marks Place in the East Village, it was psychedelia. With the Ritz, opened in 1980 a few blocks away, it was the exploding music scene of the MTV decade, with the shows he staged there — Parliament-Funkadelic, U2, Tina Turner, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and countless others — reflecting the exploratory energy of the time.Not all his big bets paid off. Perhaps his best-known debacle was Jobriath, a gay performer whom Mr. Brandt backed with a lavish promotional campaign in 1973 and ’74, hoping to create an American version of David Bowie’s androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona. The concertgoing and record-buying public soundly rejected the attempt to manufacture a star, and Jobriath, whose real name was Bruce Campbell, faded quickly.But Mr. Brandt’s successes, especially with the Ritz, caught their cultural moment and propelled it forward. At the Ritz, he not only booked an expansive range of bands; he also brought new technologies into the mix.“The Ritz opened May 14, 1980, with a video screen the size of the proscenium arch it hung from,” the WFUV disc jockey Delphine Blue, who was a Ritz D.J. for five years, said by email. “On it were projected cartoons, movie bits, psychedelic montages, while the D.J.s played records and jockeyed back and forth with the V.J., who played music videos. This was over a year before the debut of MTV in August of 1981.”There was, she said, a rope dancer who was lowered from the ceiling. There was a cameraman lugging a huge video camera around the dance floor, capturing the dancers and projecting the images on the big screen. The club was often packed and the chaos barely controlled. Sometimes it was not controlled at all.“A full house at the Ritz began throwing bottles at the club’s video screen two weeks ago when the British band Public Image Ltd. performed behind the screen, refused to come out from behind it and taunted the audience,” The New York Times reported in the spring of 1981. “Several fans then stormed the stage, ripping down the screen and destroying equipment. There was a moment of near-panic on the crowded dance floor, though apparently no one was hurt.”Mr. Brandt was the center of it all.“Jerry,” Ms. Blue said simply, “was the P.T. Barnum of nightclubs.”Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967, it was psychedelia.Credit…Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesJerome Jack Mair was born on Jan. 29, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Jack and Anna (Cohen) Mair. His father, Mr. Brandt wrote in his memoir, “It’s a Short Walk From Brooklyn, if You Run” (2014), left when he was 5. When his mother subsequently married Harold Brandt, Jerry took his stepfather’s name.After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, he served in the Army from 1956 to 1958. Back in New York, he eventually got a job as a waiter at the Town Hill, a Brooklyn club that featured top Black performers like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington.“It was a dream come true,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could see great performers and make money at the same time. It made me realize that I wanted to be in the music business.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Jonas Gwangwa, Trombonist and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies at 83

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJonas Gwangwa, Trombonist and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies at 83He became a leading light on the South African jazz scene at a young age, and went on to lead the African National Congress’s flagship ensemble.Jonas Gwangwa in concert in Johannesburg in 2007. The president of South Africa called him “a giant of our revolutionary cultural movement.”Credit…Lefty Shivambu/Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 4:12 p.m. ETJonas Gwangwa, a pre-eminent South African trombonist, vocalist and composer who became a leading artistic ambassador for the anti-apartheid resistance, died on Sunday. He was 83.The office of President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the death in a statement, but did not say where he died or what the cause was. Mr. Gwangwa had been in poor health for some time.Calling him “a giant of our revolutionary cultural movement,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote, “Jonas Gwangwa ascends to our great orchestra of musical ancestors, whose creative genius and dedication to the freedom of all South Africans inspired millions in our country and mobilized the international community against the apartheid system.”Mr. Gwangwa died exactly three years to the day after the death of the trumpeter Hugh Masekela — Mr. Gwangwa’s classmate as a youngster, his bandmate as a young adult and his fellow national hero in later years.Mr. Gwangwa’s crisp and graceful trombone playing was marked by its tightly slurred notes and peppery rhythm. By his early 20s, he had become known as the leading trombonist on the Johannesburg jazz scene: He was in the ensemble of the smash hit musical “King Kong,” South Africa’s first jazz opera, composed by the musician and writer Todd Matshikiza and based on the life of a boxing champion; and with Mr. Masekela, he helped found the Jazz Epistles, a sextet of young all-stars whose 1959 LP, “Jazz Epistle: Verse 1,” signaled a turning point in modern South African jazz.He left the country in 1961, on tour with “King Kong,” and remained in exile for 30 years. But he stayed closely involved with the anti-apartheid struggle being led by the African National Congress. In 1980, at the request of the A.N.C.’s leaders, he assembled the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, the party’s official artistic group, which toured the world, helping to build support for the movement.“It was something exciting, because everybody was ready for the gun — but this was a different gun,” Mr. Gwangwa said in a 2016 interview on South African television.“O.R. Tambo had said it: We’d been here for 20-some-odd years and everything, trying to talk to the international community about our struggle, but here Amandla does it in two hours,” he added. “Because we’re talking about the life of the people. We’re putting that onstage.”Together with George Fenton, Mr. Gwangwa composed the music for “Cry Freedom,” Richard Attenborough’s 1987 film about the South African revolutionary leader Steve Biko. The soundtrack was nominated for an Academy Award, and the film’s theme song earned both Oscar and Grammy nods.Mr. Gwangwa left South Africa in 1961 and did not return for 30 years. But he stayed closely involved with the anti-apartheid struggle being led by the African National Congress.Credit…Lefty Shivambu/Gallo ImagesJonas Mosa Gwangwa was born on Oct. 19, 1937, in Orlando East, a township of Johannesburg, and grew up surrounded by song. His parents played records around the house; one of his two older sisters was a concert pianist; the family often came together to sing hymns.He studied at St. Mary’s elementary school in Orlando and then at nearby St. Peter’s, a premier high school for Black students. In 1954, he was given his first trombone by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican missionary and social campaigner, who also put Mr. Masekela’s first trumpet (donated by Louis Armstrong) in his hands.Jonas had hoped for a clarinet, but he made use of what he got. “I’m a self-taught musician even in just holding the instrument. I saw from a Glenn Miller picture how to hold it,” he was quoted as saying by Gwen Ansell in her book “Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa” (2004).He met his future wife, Violet, when the two were teenagers. For almost 70 years, their relationship endured through exile in various countries; for extended periods they were unable to see each other. But in 1991, with apartheid toppled, they finally settled back in South Africa, surrounded by their children.Ms. Gwangwa died just weeks before her husband. Four sons, three daughters, and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren survive.As soon as he could play, Mr. Gwangwa was swept up in the jazz boom in Sophiatown, a racially mixed Johannesburg neighborhood where a vibrant youth culture emerged in the postwar years. Together with Mr. Masekela and the saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, he journeyed to Cape Town to seek out Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim), a young piano phenom whom musicians in both cities were talking about. When they found him, the Jazz Epistles were born: six blazing young talents, all fascinated by American bebop but intent on giving voice to the cosmopolitan imagination of young South Africans.In 1960, police in the Sharpeville township massacred a group of protesters against apartheid restrictions. A harsh government crackdown followed in all realms of society. After touring with “King Kong” in London, Mr. Gwangwa remained abroad, eventually moving to New York to enroll at the Manhattan School of Music.He roomed with Mr. Masekela for a time and became increasingly active in the milieu of A.N.C.-aligned expatriate artists. He helped to edit the speech that the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, an old friend, wrote for the vocalist and activist Miriam Makeba to read before the United Nations in 1963. He was the arranger of a Grammy-winning album by Ms. Makeba and Harry Belafonte, and he performed at the 1965 “Sound of Africa” concert at Carnegie Hall, alongside Mr. Masekela, Ms. Makeba and others. He also led his own ensembles, including African Explosion, which released one album, “Who?” (1969).Mr. Gwangwa’s apartment in New York became a meeting ground for fellow musicians and activists, fondly referred to as “the embassy.”In 1976, after a stint in Atlanta, Mr. Gwangwa moved with his family to Gaborone, Botswana, where he founded Shakawe, a group of exiled South African jazz musicians, and became a member of the Medu Art Ensemble, an interdisciplinary collective engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle. In 1977, he appeared in Lagos, Nigeria, at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known as Festac, a historic gathering of representatives from around the African continent and across the diaspora. Taking in the range of talent on hand, he decided to organize the South African performers into a unified multidisciplinary production. They were a hit.He was later summoned to Angola, where he met with A.N.C. leaders and soldiers in the party’s armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe, known as M.K. They commissioned him to write a full musical telling the story of South Africans’ heritage and the continuing freedom struggle, and he assembled a cast of musicians, dancers and other performers made up of M.K. soldiers and other expatriates. It became the A.N.C.’s flagship arts ensemble, the Amandla Cultural Ensemble.Mr. Gwangwa in performance in 1996.Credit…AlamyFor the next few years Mr. Gwangwa alternated between rehearsals in Angola, tours around the world and home in Botswana. But his prominent role in the movement placed a target on his back. In 1985, the South African Defense Force staged a raid on the M.K. and organizers in Gaborone. Mr. Gwangwa’s home was bombed.He and his family moved to London, then to the United States. As the apartheid government fell, they returned home, and Mr. Gwangwa received a heroic reception. In 2010, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga, South Africa’s highest honor for contributions to the arts and culture. The only other recipient that year was Mr. Masekela.He released a few standout late-career albums, including “A Temporary Inconvenience” (1999). But his proudest accomplishment remained Amandla, as he told Ms. Ansell in a recent interview.“Because it involved all the things in music that excited me the most, and gave me the opportunity to bring them together,” he said, “for the most important reason possible: It was for the people.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More