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      Ray Cordeiro, a Voice on Hong Kong’s Airwaves for 70 Years, Dies at 98

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      Late-night radio listeners in Hong Kong associated Mr. Cordeiro’s sonorous voice with easy-listening standards and early rock. He worked until he was 96.HONG KONG — Ray Cordeiro, a familiar voice on Hong Kong’s airwaves who was one of the world’s longest-working disc jockeys, spinning records for more than 70 years, died here on Jan. 13. He was 98. His death, at CUHK Medical Centre, was confirmed by his manager, Andy Chow. Mr. Cordeiro, known to fans as Uncle Ray, worked until he was 96. His durability got him into Guinness World Records, though he later lost his title to a Chicago D.J., Herbert Rogers Kent.Countless Hong Kong residents associated Mr. Cordeiro’s husky, sonorous voice with early rock n’ roll and easy-listening standards, both when the songs were new and when they’d become sources of nostalgia.Mr. Cordeiro interviewed the Beatles, Elton John, Tony Bennett and other stars, cementing his stature as a local authority on Western popular music. But he was also one of the first D.J.s to introduce Hong Kong’s homegrown Cantopop to English-speaking listeners in the 1970s, said Cheung Man-sun, a former assistant director of broadcasting at Radio Television Hong Kong.“It’s rare and exceptional,” said Mr. Cheung, who did much to popularize Cantopop as a Chinese-language D.J. He said Mr. Cordeiro would translate the Cantonese lyrics into English for a weekly segment on “All the Way With Ray,” his long-running late-night show. “His spirit of loving music influenced the other D.J.s and raised the status of Chinese music,” Mr. Cheung said.Reinaldo Maria Cordeiro was born in Hong Kong on Dec. 12, 1924, the fifth of six children in a family of Portuguese descent. His father, Luiz Gonzaga Cordeiro, a bank clerk, left his mother, Livia Pureza dos Santos, and the children in 1930, according to Mr. Cordeiro’s 2021 autobiography, “All the Way With Ray.” Mr. Cordeiro attended St. Joseph’s College, a prestigious Catholic secondary school, where he credited a teacher with giving him a solid grounding in English. In his late teens, during Japan’s World War II occupation of Hong Kong, he spent years in a refugee camp in Macau, then a Portuguese colony, with his mother and sisters.After the war, the family returned to Hong Kong. Mr. Cordeiro briefly worked at a prison, then spent four years as a clerk at the bank where his father worked. To escape the tedium of that job, he played drums at night for a jazz trio. In 1949, Mr. Cordeiro got his first radio job: writing scripts for on-air hosts at a local station called Rediffusion. Within the year, he was hosting his first show, “Progressive Jazz.” His big break came in 1964, a few years after he’d become a producer for the city’s main broadcaster, Radio Hong Kong, which is now Radio Television Hong Kong. In London, where he’d gone for training at the BBC, Mr. Cordeiro interviewed rock bands like the Searchers and Manfred Mann — and the Beatles, who were coming to Hong Kong. “I heard it’s a swinging town, or city, or place,” Ringo Starr said when Mr. Cordeiro asked about their expectations of Hong Kong, according to a transcript published in Mr. Cordeiro’s book. Mr. Cordeiro’s stature at Radio Hong Kong skyrocketed when he came back and delivered tapes of the interviews to his boss. He said he was given all of the broadcaster’s pop music slots, which meant three other hosts had to be reassigned. Besides playing records, he hosted live music shows like “Lucky Dip,” on which local singers took audience requests. They mostly sang covers of Western hits, which had more cachet in Hong Kong then, but some of his guests — notably Roman Tam and Sam Hui — went on to become major Cantopop stars.In 1970, Mr. Cordeiro debuted “All the Way With Ray,” which he would host for more than half a century. He took requests; knowing that some callers saw his show as a chance to practice conversational English, Mr. Cordeiro often helped them with their pronunciation. Sometimes, so many people called in that the lines crossed and listeners found themselves talking to each other, said Dennis Chan, a longtime fan. He said he and some of the people he met that way struck up friendships.As the years went by, Mr. Cordeiro accommodated listeners’ requests for more contemporary music. But late in life, he shifted the emphasis back to the older music he preferred, always starting his show with Elvis Presley. As midnight neared, he would move further back in time, to the likes of Steve Lawrence and Doris Day. “He wouldn’t take too much time to describe the songs or their stories. Instead, he would let the audience listen to the music,” said Mr. Chow, Mr. Cordeiro’s manager since 1985. Mr. Cordeiro had open-heart surgery in 2010, but returned to the airwaves and kept up a five-nights-a-week schedule, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., until he retired in 2021. In his book, he said he had the best job in the world. “No matter how bad I feel, once I walk into the studio, I’m full of energy — and ready to go,” he wrote.Mr. Cordeiro never married and had no children, and he outlived his five siblings. Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old retiree, said he had listened to Mr. Cordeiro since he was 12. He said Mr. Cordeiro knew his voice and would greet him by name when he called. “I would tune into the program after long days at work, and feel like my good friend was still with me,” he said. More

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      Jerry Blavat, D.J. Who Channeled the Soul of Philadelphia, Dies at 82

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      A live-wire personality and an epic self-promoter, he got a generation of youth in the City of Brotherly Love on its feet with little-known R&B gems.Jerry Blavat, a bookmaker’s son from South Philadelphia who rose from head-turning teenage dancer on a precursor to “American Bandstand” to widespread acclaim as the most influential disc jockey in the Delaware Valley thanks to his third-rail energy, fantastical wordplay and finely honed instincts for the particular rhythms of his native city, died on Jan. 20 in Philadelphia. He was 82.His longtime partner, Keely Stahl, said the cause was myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that weakens the skeletal muscles.With his rat-a-tat patter and crooked Jack-o’-lantern smile, Mr. Blavat (pronounced BLAV-it) displayed otherworldly skills in promoting under-the-radar vinyl — and himself — in a career that began in 1961 with a 10:30 p.m. Thursday slot on tiny WCAM-AM in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.Christening himself the “Geator With the Heater” (“geator” being Blavat-ese for “gator,” an animal as voracious as the disc jockey himself) and the “Boss With the Hot Sauce,” he woofed, howled and rhymed his way to local fame, particularly among a generation of young Philadelphians in the 1960s, whom he affectionately referred to as “yon teens” (“yon” was a twist on “young,” which, in his view, sounded Shakespearean).“It’s hard to explain to an outsider what kind of energy and influence he had,” said the singer, songwriter and syndicated radio host Ben Vaughn, who came of age listening to Mr. Blavat’s show and later became a close friend. “He defined the sound and the sensibility of the city.”Purchasing his on-air time by selling ads himself, Mr. Blavat steered clear of program directors and rigid formats, and as a result he had the freedom to upend the conventions of early-’60s pop radio by spinning little-known singles, some of them several years old and many of them by Black artists who were largely unknown to white audiences.Among the many performers Mr. Blavat presented on his nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” were the Supremes. Jerry BlavatThroughout the ’60s, Mr. Blavat spun the latest singles by artists like Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Smokey Robinson. “Whenever we were in Philly and the Geator was playing our music, we always knew we’d have a hit,” Mr. Robinson wrote in a blurb for “You Only Rock Once,” Mr. Blavat’s 2011 memoir. But Mr. Blavat also made it his trademark to unearth underappreciated gems by R&B groups like the Intruders or Brenda & the Tabulations.His unflagging support of Black artists made an impression on many young white Philadelphians, some of whom would become stars themselves.“I tell people everywhere I go that I’m the product of the Philadelphia music scene,” Todd Rundgren said when he inducted the band the Hooters into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame in 2019. “People ask me, what does that mean? I tell them it comes down to one thing: I grew up listening to the Geator. He played the music that would have been called race records at the time, the music that was made south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And that’s why so many white kids in Philly grew up wanting to sing R&B.”For Mr. Blavat, success rested on one set of ears: his own. “If I don’t dig it, it could be my father out there grooving on the record and I won’t play it,” he was quoted as saying in a 1966 profile by the novelist Bruce Jay Friedman in The Saturday Evening Post.He could be stubborn in his refusal to abide by industry trends — for example, he largely ignored the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. “I sensed that it just didn’t have enough soul for my kids,” he told Mr. Friedman. “The Stones, yes. The Beatles, no. So I’d go up to Fonzo’s restaurant and the upper-class kids would say, ‘How come no Beatles?,’ and I’d say it’s just not my schticklach, not my groove.”Gerald Joseph Blavat was born on July 3, 1940, in South Philadelphia, the youngest of two children of Louis and Lucille (Capuano) Blavat. His father, known on the street as Louis the Gimp, favored sharkskin suits and Stetson hats, had ties to the local Jewish mob and ran an illegal bookmaking operation, according to Mr. Blavat’s memoir. His mother worked in a jewelry store, as well as at Philadelphia’s naval shipyard during World War II.“My mother taught me love,” Mr. Blavat told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2011. “My father taught me the streets, the nightclubs, how to hustle.”An avid dancer from an early age, he used that hustle to talk his way onto “Bandstand,” a local television show featuring teenagers dancing to the latest hits, at age 13, a year shy of the minimum age requirement. (The show, hosted by Bob Horn, later evolved into Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”) With his flashy moves and electric personality, he was soon a neighborhood celebrity. His musical ambitions, however, lay far beyond the dance floor.Mr. Blavat at an in-store appearance promoting “The Discophonic Scene.” He didn’t just present acts on that show; he was out on the floor, showing off his moves.Jerry BlavatChasing any opportunity, he did stints as a road manager for Danny & the Juniors, the Philadelphia doo-wop group best known for the No. 1 hit “At the Hop,” while still in high school, and as the comedian Don Rickles’s valet. When he was 20, he used his outsize salesmanship to scrounge up enough sponsors to buy his first $120 hour of airtime on WCAM.Despite the limited reach of the station’s signal, word spread quickly. “Kids would park on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River, as close to the transmitter as they could, so they could listen to the Geator,” Mr. Vaughn said. “There was a whole scene going — dancing, heavy petting, everything you could think of. Just classic teenage rock ’n’ roll passion.”Before long, Mr. Blavat was hosting record hops drawing up to 2,000 teenagers in ballrooms around the city. In the mid-1960s, he produced and hosted a nationally syndicated weekly television show, “The Discophonic Scene,” similar to “American Bandstand” but with Mr. Blavat actually out on the floor, showing off his moves, and with the artists performing live and not lip-syncing.As the decades rolled by, Mr. Blavat remained a cherished and ubiquitous figure on the Philadelphia cultural scene, hosting radio shows on WXPN and other stations in the region as well as an annual celebrity-dotted revue at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the city’s marquee performance hall.His reputation would not remain entirely unsullied. His friendships with Philadelphia organized crime bosses like Angelo Bruno and Nicodemo Scarfo brought various allegations of mob-related activity over the years.In 1992, the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation called Mr. Blavat to testify in a hearing about mob influence in the state’s liquor business, including allegations that Mr. Blavat had paid a “street tax” to Mr. Scarfo to keep union organizers away from Mr. Blavat’s popular Memories in Margate disco on the Jersey Shore, and that he had served as a front for a yacht purchase by Mr. Scarfo.Mr. Blavat at a parade in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving Day 2021.Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images, via Getty ImagesMr. Blavat cited the Fifth Amendment, and in later interviews described his relationship with local crime figures as merely personal. “I’m a performer,” he said about his mob associations in a 1995 television interview. “I’m friends with everyone.”Such controversies did little to slow his momentum. Ms. Stahl said he continued to spin his oldies on local stations seven nights a week, and to drive all over the region to perform at record hops for his old fans, and in many cases, their grandchildren.In addition to Ms. Stahl, Mr. Blavat is survived by his sister, Roberta Lawit; his daughters, Kathi Furia, Stacy Braglia, Deserie Downey and Geraldine Blavat; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.Despite achieving nationwide exposure in the 1960s with “The Discophonic Scene” and appearances on “The Monkees” and “The Mike Douglas Show,” Mr. Blavat was never interested in making the compromises it would take to abandon his roots in Philadelphia, Mr. Vaughn said.“He had offers to go national,” he said, “but they told him that they needed him to be less Geator, because what he does doesn’t make sense outside of Philadelphia. Everything he says rhymes, and he makes up words that don’t even exist. In Philly, we didn’t even question it.”“To his credit,” he added, “he passed on every one, because he didn’t want to lose us.” More

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      New Year’s Eve D.J.s Haven’t Been This Busy Since 2019

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      For the first time in years, New Year’s Eve parties are back in full swing, despite a possible equipment shortage and a tripledemic.Since October, Rashad Hayes, a D.J. from Brooklyn who prides himself on spinning, in his words, “every genre,” has fielded 12 offers to work on New Year’s Eve in New York City — triple what he was offered in 2019. So he did what any other enterprising artist who is suddenly in demand after surviving two years of Covid slowdowns and cancellations (and willing to work on New Year’s Eve) might do: He packed three sets in, at three different venues in Manhattan.“I would say if you’re not D.J.ing on New Year’s Eve in New York City, you probably need to get another profession if you’re a D.J.,” Mr. Hayes said. “There’s so many parties.”Although the pandemic and inflation continue to make socializing in big groups impossible for many New Yorkers, several leaders in the nightlife industry have expressed optimism about the demand for New Year’s Eve parties — and what this could possibly mean for the rest of the winter. Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.This weekend, Sameer Qureshi, who co-founded the hospitality company El Grupo SN, will finally get to throw the two-floor New Year’s Eve party at Somewhere Nowhere, the dreamy nightclub atop the Renaissance New York Chelsea Hotel, that he had planned to throw last year — until Omicron, the fast-spreading variant that announced itself in time for the 2021 holidays, stymied his plans.Last week, he walked through the hotel’s 38th floor, an Eden-like setting that Prince would have approved of had the musician favored forest green — the color of the plush European couches in the room — over purple. There was a cluster of disco balls on the ceiling, along with a sparkling dove-like creature and fabricated clouds hanging throughout. Flowers spilled from the D.J. booth and floral scents wafted through the vents.It was the only floor he could use for New Year’s Eve 2021. At the time, 80 percent of his staff had come down with Covid, and he was wondering if holding an event even made sense at that point.But this New Year’s Eve, the party in the sparkly pleasure dome on the 38th floor will expand to include the 39th floor, which has another lounge area and a rooftop that features heated tents. From there, guests have a clear view of One World Trade Center and Times Square, a potential draw for tourists, who have also returned to the city.“It’s the first year it’s probably going to be normal, you know, after so long,” Mr. Qureshi said.Madison Back, the chief executive of 4AM, a talent management and events company, said she had three times as many booking requests this year, compared to before the pandemic.Although New Year’s Eve is not the biggest event on some planners’ calendars — that could be Halloween or Pride Month — the night is inarguably a massive moneymaker for those involved. Ticket prices for clubs and lounges are often marked up to at least $100.Martin Muñiz Jr., known as D.J. Marty Rock, has two gigs lined up for New Year’s weekend. OK McCausland for The New York TimesMartin Muñiz Jr., a Bronx native who performs as Marty Rock, locked in a gig 200 miles north of New York City in Saratoga Springs four months ago, the earliest he had ever been booked for New Year’s Eve.But then this fall, more requests poured in, Mr. Muñiz said. In the end, he was able to book an additional job for the holiday weekend; on New Year’s Day, he will rush back to Manhattan to do a set at Bounce Sporting Club in Chelsea. “There’s a lot of venues and a lot of G.M.s looking for a lot of people, last minute,” he said.Some believe that the last-minute demand stems from party organizers hedging their bets, especially after the suddenness with which Omicron’s surge ended the hopes of a near-normal Dec. 31 in 2021. This year, there is the tripledemic of Covid, R.S.V. and influenza to worry about; in December, Mayor Eric Adams recommended that New Yorkers use masks again. The New York State Department of Health warned people to stay vigilant, too: “With New Year’s Eve celebration gatherings around the corner, it is important New Yorkers take precautions to protect against the flu,” it said in a statement.Ms. Back, of 4AM, said that at least for this holiday season, there is room for New Yorkers who want to take the risk and for those who are not quite ready.“I think other people have completely moved on and they’re doubling down and saying, ‘People want to party, people want to go out, we are going to invest in making New Year’s amazing and really promote it and sell our venue out,’” she said. “I think for others, they maybe fall into more of that casual category, and there’s a little bit more uncertainty there. They might be taking a wait-and-see approach to see how this goes.”For those organizing parties, equipment is also in high demand, especially at the last minute. Mixers, speakers and controllers — which are to turntables as laptops are to desktops — from brands like Pioneer DJ have been on back order for months. (A representative for Pioneer DJ said in an email that the company, reeling from pandemic-related supply chain issues, might not catch up with those back orders until well into next year.)“I’ve seen like a shortage of new equipment,” Mr. Muniz said. “Like a mixer drops, sold out. There would be a shortage of that. But a shortage of all equipment? I’ve never seen that.”For now, the D.J.s who are just starting out or who are playing private parties are more likely to be the most affected by the shortage.Venue owners and event management companies say ticket sales for New Year’s Eve are at least meeting those from 2019, and agencies that book D.J.s say requests have skyrocketed.OK McCausland for The New York TimesPlanners for bigger events often start plotting out New Year’s Eve by late summer, which allows some leeway for production delays and gives them a better shot at securing equipment and booking top-flight D.J.s. For George Karavias, the chief executive of Dream Hospitality Group, which owns nightclubs and runs events for several others all over the city, the equipment shortage has not been an issue.“It’s all about planning ahead,” he said. “You know, if you’re a promoter that books an event a week before New Year’s Eve trying to book a D.J., yes, you’re going to have issues because every D.J. is booked. And, you know, big or small or whatever name it is, New Year’s Eve is New Year’s Eve.”The first weeks in January typically slow down for nightlife as tourists leave, the glow of the holiday season fades and the chill of winter spreads. While it is difficult to definitively call the New Year’s Eve turnout a forecaster of what’s to come for the party scene, some of the outside factors that pushed people to celebrate may continue to be a barometer in 2023.“I think it’s just going to be a function of how the economy holds up,” Mr. Qureshi said. “How people are feeling, if they’re still spending, if they’re still craving the experiences after being locked down for as long as they were. And we’ll see what happens.” More

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      DJ HoneyLuv Remixes Lizzo’s ‘Everybody's Gay’

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      Name: HoneyLuvAge: 28Hometown: ClevelandNow Lives: In a two-bedroom apartment in Downtown Los Angeles.Claim to Fame: HoneyLuv (whose legal name is Taylor Character) is a house D.J. and producer who is part of a new generation of Black artists shaping dance music — blending R&B, Reggaeton, Afrobeats, house and techno into her signature sound. She has toured with Kaytranada, MK, Kevin Saunderson and other electronic music artists, and has remixed songs for Diplo and Annie Mac. Her vision, she said, is “to provide music that empowers people to be who they want to be and to be free on that dance floor with no worries of tomorrow.”Big Break: In 2018, while serving as a drone operator in the Navy to pay for college, HoneyLuv taught herself to D.J. while stationed at Point Mugu near Malibu, Calif. She decided to pursue D.J.-ing when she left the military last year, and booked her own gig at the Flamingo Deck, a popular restaurant and lounge in San Diego. Her set of “funky deep grooves,” she said, caught the attention of a patron, Hamilton Wright, who happened to be a former agent at the United Talent Agency who represented D.J.s. With his help, she played the following week at the Day Trip Festival, a two-day house music gathering in Los Angeles.Her latest tech-house single, “Thr33 6ix 5ive,” has been streamed more than five million times on Spotify.Maiwenn Raoult for The New York TimesLatest Project: In July, HoneyLuv released her latest single “Thr33 6ix 5ive,” an up-tempo tech-house track on Black Book Records that has been streamed more than five million times on Spotify and was chosen as a BBC “Hottest Record.” HoneyLuv is also passionate about fashion and was tapped last month to be a brand ambassador for Armani Exchange. “I expect a runway one day,” she said. “They always have artists and actors doing it, so I believe D.J.s can do it, too.”Next Thing: HoneyLuv is set to release a ’90s-style house remix of Lizzo’s “Everybody’s Gay” soon. Describing it as “an honor,” she said, “I’m a huge Lizzo fan, just for what she stands for,.” She is also releasing at least two singles in the coming months, including “Sway,” a house track featuring Dope Earth Alien on Insomniac Records, and hopes to collaborate with house music pioneers Harry Romero and Roland Clark next year.Diversity in Dance: When HoneyLuv performed at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas last year, she was the only Black female artist on the lineup. There have been very few in recent years and she is pushing for more inclusivity. “This music started with us, and to have a new generation of young, Black artists like myself finding their love for house music and wanting to put our mark on it has been such a beautiful experience,” she said. “It’s up to us to continue the legacy in hopes we can inspire more and more people to join this community and enjoy the music.” More

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      Honey Dijon Steps Up From Dance Music’s Underground

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      The D.J. and producer has been a force in house music for over two decades. Tapped by Beyoncé and Madonna, and releasing her own LP, her career is kicking into another gear.Honey Dijon is easy to talk to — if you can get in touch with her. Nearly 25 years into a career as a D.J. and electronic music producer, she is seemingly everywhere at once. During just one November week that included Manchester, England (where she played the 10,000-capacity venue Depot Mayfield); London; New York (where she was honored at the L.G.B.T.Q.-focused Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art); her hometown Chicago; and Berlin, where she lives — at least for the moment.In a penthouse suite in a Lower East Side hotel, Dijon (legal name: Honey Redmond) took a rare moment to pause and reflect, while unsurprisingly multitasking, getting her hair and makeup done for a photo shoot in a white terry cloth robe. “I’d rather be exhausted from work than looking for it,” she said, pausing perhaps for effect.During her early days in nightlife, Dijon scraped by on $150 gigs. In 2022 alone, she estimates she’s played 180 shows between club nights, festivals, fashion events and “private corporate things” — almost a full return to prepandemic levels, when she was spinning some 200 times a year.This summer, she contributed to “Finally Enough Love,” the remix album from Madonna, who has called Dijon “my favorite D.J. in the whole world.” She curated the opening club night of Grace Jones’‌s Meltdown festival‌ in June‌, which brought artists including Sippin’ T and Josey Rebelle to London’s Southbank Centre. And she was a writer and producer on Beyoncé’s acclaimed “Renaissance,” receiving her first Grammy nomination this month as an album of the year contributor. Three days later, she released “Black Girl Magic,” her own collection of vocal-laden pure house songs.House music, known for its steady four-four thump and electronic essence, was born in Chicago — specifically at the Warehouse club, where Frankie Knuckles spun a mélange of dance music, including American and European disco, from 1977 to 1982. Soon after, some local producers attempted to replicate the suave and heavily orchestrated sounds of disco with drum machines and synthesizers. Eventually, house evolved into lusher forms while maintaining its insistent pulse.Dijon is a fastidious house-music griot, a musical historian who will not let anyone forget the form’s Black and queer roots, even as subgenres like EDM and tech house have strayed far from its origins. “Past, present, and future exist on a continuum,” she said. “And it’s just reintroducing things into now.”DIJON LIKES TO say that she was born in Chicago but grew up in New York, where she moved in the late ’90s. (She does not, however, like to say her age, calling the question “really sexist and horribly boring.”) As she does in her music, Dijon seeds her speech with references: During our two conversations, she quoted Laverne Cox, Marc Jacobs, Quincy Jones and Pepper LaBeija, best known for her wisdom-spouting turn in the 1990 ballroom documentary “Paris Is Burning.”In New York, she said, she found her people. From early on she was “a very effeminate child,” she said, in a video interview from her hotel room in Manchester, before her Depot Mayfield gig. She withstood bullying and assumed she was gay “because I was attracted to men and I really didn’t have any mirrors of affirmation of trans femme energy.”Clubland did not just provide a community and information — it was a lifeline. Dijon said that as a trans woman of color, she couldn’t just go and get a job with benefits, as her mother had encouraged: “So clubbing at that time was really a great place for you to make a quote-unquote honest living.”The trans women she met working in nightlife took her under their wing, filling her in on how to obtain black-market hormones and what doctors to see. “I’m Frankenstein,” Dijon said. “There’s a lot of different countries in this body.”Music was ever-present, she noted — even in utero: “I think that was really where I fell in love with the vibration of sound and music.” During our interview in New York, Dijon revealed that she sneaked into the legendary Chicago house nightclub the Music Box when she was 13.“When I talk about all of the things that I’ve gone through as a trans person, and as a queer person, and as an underground D.J., to be able to occupy these spaces with these artists, it’s still mind-blowing for me,” Dijon said.Myles Loftin for The New York TimesShe’s been a professional D.J. since 1998, consistently waving the banner for classic-sounding house even when it wasn’t in vogue. (This year, house music itself has been having a moment in pop, with Drake dropping a predominantly house-oriented album called “Honestly, Nevermind” ‌and Beyoncé releasing “Renaissance” about a month later.) A turning point came when Dijon accepted her first residency in 2008, at the now-shuttered venue Hiro in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district.Another major shift came 10 years later, ‌after her set recorded at Melbourne’s Sugar Mountain festival for the massively popular dance music broadcasting platform Boiler Room was uploaded to YouTube‌, where it now has nearly 10 million views‌. It’s an impassioned performance, in which Dijon remixes a cappella vocals from Stevie Wonder and the “I Have a Dream” speech from Martin Luther King, Jr. on the fly, her body perpetually vibrating to her endlessly pounding beats.“Beyoncé has Sasha Fierce, Honey Redmond has Honey Dijon,” she said of her musical persona.“She is performing these pieces of music,” said Nita Aviance, one half of the New York D.J. and production duo the Carry Nation, who recalled working alongside Dijon as far back as 2006. “She embodies the whole of everything that she’s playing.”Since 2019, Dijon has had her own Honey ____ Dijon clothing line for Comme des Garçons; much of the apparel has been printed with explicit references to disco and house, effectively creating merch for genres that never had much of it. For Dijon, clothing is a tool to communicate subculture. “It’s celebrating art by people of color that created culture and art from nothing,” she explained.Alyssa Nitchun, the executive director of the Leslie-Lohman museum, which honored Dijon at a gala in November, called her a “queer visionary.”“Every facet of her life is acting and moving forward new possibilities for living,” Nitchun said. “Queer people since the beginning of time, have been organizing, loving and living in ways that I think the whole world has a lot to learn from. And, you know, Honey is a woman for our time.”Dijon’s work ethic is rivaled only by her capacity for reference, and as a curator and broadcaster of existing sounds, these two skills are often one and the same. “Black Girl Magic,” her second album, was inspired by the 1989 debut full-length from the Chicago house auteur Lil Louis, “From the Mind of Lil Louis,” and the New York house producer Danny Tenaglia’s 1998 album, “Tourism.” Its cover depicts a 3-D digital sculpture of a nude Dijon, which she worked on with the artist Jam Sutton. It’s partly a reference to Grace Jones’s 1981 release “Nightclubbing,” but also a statement of self-determination: “I have a beautiful Black body, and I wanted to celebrate this,” she said, adding an expletive.“Magic” is rich in callbacks to the past, with egalitarian messaging at the heart of its invitations to the dance floor. Dijon worked on the album alongside the veteran producers Luke Solomon and Chris Penny. The three bonded about five years ago over their love of what Penny called “golden-era house,” which he places around ’88 to ’95. Solomon said he met Dijon in the early ’90s when he was D.J.ing at a friend’s house in Chicago, where Dijon danced in a plastic tube.Penny described their working relationship as “co-piloting a vision” that comes from Dijon. Summarizing the division of labor, Penny called Solomon, who programmed the beats, the “captain.” Penny’s work on the other musical elements, like keyboards, makes him “co-captain.” And Dijon? “She’s the ship,” Penny said. Dijon is responsible for conceptualizing, pulling in references, driving the grand vision, and working on the selection of guest vocalists. The album’s contributors include the rapper Eve (who sings on “In the Club”), the Chicago producer Mike Dunn (who adds vocals to “Work”) and the flamboyant Compton-based M.C. Channel Tres.“There’s not one way to be a producer or musician or singer or an artist,” Dijon said. “And so, I think we need to demystify what that looks like.” Likewise, she said, collaborating with two straight white men on the project shouldn’t diminish its house bona fides: “We need to stop limiting people on their gender identity or race.”AFTER MOVING BODIES underground for nearly two decades, Dijon’s work has entered the light of the mainstream. She hooked up with Madonna via Ricardo Gomes, who briefly managed Dijon’s touring before taking a role as Madonna’s documentarian/photographer. Dijon learned that Madonna was interested in a remix from her, then went rogue and picked “I Don’t Search I Find,” a throwback to the queen of pop’s early ’90s work with Shep Pettibone. Dijon dropped her remix, a collaboration with Sebastian Manuel, at a Pride party in 2019, and a video of the moment made its way to Madonna.“You have to create opportunities — you can’t wait for someone to give it to you,” Dijon said simply.Dijon at the decks at Moogfest 2018. She estimated that she spins nearly 200 dates a year.Jeremy M. Lange for The New York TimesWhen word came from Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood, that she was interested in making a dance album, Dijon recalled being “gagged” that the pop superstar turned to her as a primary source of Chicago house. Dijon, Penny and Solomon ultimately teamed up on two tracks that ended up on “Renaissance”: “Cozy” and “Alien Superstar.” Dijon said she sent Beyoncé a playlist of “iconic New York tracks” for potential reference (including a Kevin Aviance song that is sampled on “Pure/Honey”) and some literature on vogueing ball culture.Working on the songs involved months of back-and-forth with Beyoncé’s team, as the songs were tweaked and adjusted. Dijon and Co. had no idea which of the 20 or so pieces they’d been laboring over would end up on “Renaissance” until its track list dropped the week before the album’s release.Dijon finally met Beyoncé twice after the production work wrapped; in Paris, she spun at the Club Renaissance party celebrating the album’s release. While she described contributing to one of the year’s defining releases as “a good day at the office” she also said the experience was life changing.“When I talk about all of the things that I’ve gone through as a trans person, and as a queer person, and as an underground D.J., to be able to occupy these spaces with these artists, it’s still mind-blowing for me,” she said. She added, “And I’ve gotten to do it through my love of house music.”And her days of scrambling for $150 gigs are well in the past. “I’m good,” she said. “I can go to Cartier if I want to. Twice in one day.” More

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      Art Laboe, D.J. Who Popularized ‘Oldies but Goodies,’ Dies at 97

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      A familiar voice on the California airwaves for almost 80 years, he saw the appeal of old rock ’n’ roll records practically before they were old.Art Laboe, the disc jockey who as a mainstay of the West Coast airwaves for decades bridged racial divides through his music selections and live shows, reached listeners in a new way by allowing on-air dedications and helped make the phrase “oldies but goodies” ubiquitous, died on Friday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 97.An announcement on his Facebook page said the cause was pneumonia.Mr. Laboe worked in radio for almost 80 years. In 1973, The San Francisco Examiner was already calling him the “dean of Los Angeles rock ’n’ roll broadcasting,” and he would be on the air for almost a half-century more after that.He started in the business as a teenager during World War II, working at a San Francisco station, KSAN, before gravitating to KPMO in Pomona and KCMJ in Palm Springs. The idea of a disc jockey with a distinctive personality had not yet become the norm in radio — at KCMJ, a CBS affiliate, he was mostly an announcer doing station identifications and such between radio soap operas — but for an hour late at night he was allowed to play music.He featured big bands, crooners and other sounds of the day. But as tastes changed, his selections changed, and sometimes he was at the front edge of the evolution. In 1954, by then working in Los Angeles, Mr. Laboe “was largely responsible for making the Chords’ ‘Sh-Boom’ (sometimes cited as the first rock ’n’ roll record) an L.A. No. 1,” Barney Hoskyns wrote in “Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes, and the Sound of Los Angeles” (1996).He also saw the appeal of “oldies” practically before they were old. Around 1949 he had started working at KRKD in Los Angeles, selling advertising by day and playing music in the wee hours. He thought an all-night restaurant, Scrivener’s Drive-In, might be interested in advertising on his all-night show, so he paid a visit and sold the owner, Paul Scrivener, some spots. A few months later, Mr. Scrivener made a suggestion.“‘You know, that show’s pretty good,’” Mr. Laboe, in a 2016 interview with The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, recalled Mr. Scrivener saying. “‘Why couldn’t you do that show from my drive-in?’ So I did.’”Mr. Laboe issued the first volume of his “Oldies but Goodies” series of compilation albums in 1959. It stayed on the Billboard chart for more than three years, and many more volumes followed.JP Roth CollectionHe would broadcast from the restaurant (he moved to KLXA and then KPOP in this period), stopping by cars and asking the occupants to pick a song from a list.“At the bottom of the list,” The San Francisco Examiner wrote in 1973, “were a half a dozen ‘oldies’ titles — songs at that time no more than three years old — and when this portion of the list began to show the heaviest action, Laboe wondered if there might be something to this.”He had already formed his own record label, Original Sound, and in 1959 it issued “Oldies but Goodies, Vol. 1,” a compilation album — a relatively new concept — that included “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins, “Earth Angel” by the Penguins and 10 other songs that, although they’d been on the singles charts only a few years earlier, had already begun to acquire a nostalgic feel. The album stayed on the Billboard chart for more than three years, and many more volumes followed.Early in his career Mr. Laboe began taking requests on the air, allowing listeners to dedicate a song to a friend, love interest or other special person. It became one of his signatures; few if any other disc jockeys were doing that in his early days. Some callers would dedicate a song to a loved one who was incarcerated. And early on, Mr. Laboe welcomed Black and Mexican callers, a barrier-breaking thing to do at the time.In the 1950s, Mr. Laboe also began producing and serving as M.C. at live music shows at the American Legion Stadium in El Monte, a blue-collar city east of Los Angeles, that were known for the racially diverse crowd they attracted. The Penguins, Ritchie Valens and countless other acts performed at the El Monte shows.Mr. Laboe with Jerry Lee Lewis at the American Legion Stadium in El Monte, Calif., in 1957. The shows Mr. Laboe produced there were known for the racially diverse crowd they attracted. Art Laboe Collection“Friday and Saturday night rhythm-and-blues dances at the El Monte Legion Stadium drew up to 2,000 Black, white, Asian American and Mexican American teenagers from all over Los Angeles city and county, becoming an alternative cultural institution from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s,” the scholar Anthony Macias wrote in American Quarterly in 2004.Mr. Laboe was still producing live shows into his 90s.“If you come to one of our concerts,” he told KQED in 2019, “you’ll see a mixture, a complete mixture, of what we have in California.”He was also still on the radio, on the syndicated “Art Laboe Connection,” after having logged time at assorted stations. In 2002, Greg Ashlock, the general manager of KHHT-FM in Los Angeles, where Mr. Laboe had a long run, summed up Mr. Laboe’s appeal in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.“There’s nobody that connects with the community like him,” he said. “The audience knows him and loves him like a family member. It’s almost like tuning in to Uncle Art.”Wherever he was spinning, Mr. Laboe made it a point of mixing genres and generations.“Sometimes the 20-year-old who wants to hear Alicia Keys will tolerate the Spinners,” he told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2008. “It’s not off the course enough to make them want to change stations.”Russell Contreras/Associated PressArthur Egonian was born on Aug. 7, 1925, in Salt Lake City to a family of Armenian immigrants. His obsession with radio began at a young age: His sister gave him his first radio for his eighth birthday. In a 2020 interview with The Press-Enterprise, he recalled being amazed by the “box that talks.” That experience sparked his interest in the nascent radio scene.He attended George Washington High School in Los Angeles and studied engineering for a time at Stanford University.He was hired at KSAN while still a teenager; his voice, he said, had not yet acquired the timbre that became his calling card.“The very first words I uttered on radio myself, I said, ‘This is K-S-A-N San Francisco,’ and it was in 1943,” he said.The station manager suggested he Americanize his name, and he is said to have taken “Laboe” from the name of a secretary there. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he moved to Southern California, which became his home base.Information about his survivors was not immediately available.In 2015, the nonprofit online radio station DubLab turned the tables on Mr. Laboe, the man who was a conduit for so many on-air dedications, giving his fans an opportunity to call in and dedicate a song to him.“I don’t know what we would have done without you,” one caller said. “I spent a lot of time in a car without anything but a radio, and you made it good, and you exposed me to a lot of beautiful music.” More

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      Ukrainian D.J. Spins Rare Music in N.Y.C.

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      Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“Support Ukraine means listen to some Ukrainian songs, buy some Ukrainian brands, talk about Ukraine one minute a day, just in conversation.” Recently, Daria played her music at Le Bain, a club in The Standard, High Line hotel. More

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      Making Up for Lost Time as Ibiza’s Clubs Reopen

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      IBIZA, Spain — As the sun was setting over Ibiza last Saturday, the party at Ushuaïa was just hitting its stride. Nearly 8,000 people had gathered at the outdoor mega-club for the beginning of the island’s first clubbing season in three years, and the crowd — including many women in tasseled bikinis and tanned, musclebound men — seemed intent on making up for lost time.While Artbat, a Ukrainian D.J. duo, played a high-octane blend of house and techno, the dancers heaved around the club’s large pool, cheered on by guests from the overlooking hotel balconies. In the V.I.P. section, a parade of staff carrying sparklers announced that a high-paying guest had just purchased another pricey bottle of champagne.Sipping a drink at the bar, Mina Mallet, a heavily tattooed 25-year-old finance worker from Zurich, said that the reopening of Ibiza’s clubs marked the end of a difficult and tedious period in Europe. “It means a new beginning: for enjoying life, enjoying our freedom and getting wasted,” she said. “I actually think people are going harder than before.”After more than two years of uncertainty for nightclubs, governments across Europe have gradually dropped many of their pandemic restrictions over the last few months, allowing clubs to reopen with a sense of relative stability for the first time in two years.On the dance floor at Amnesia, one of Ibiza’s mega-clubs. Roughly 30,000 people traveled to Ibiza this past weekend to go to the clubs, according to a local nightlife association.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesIn many countries, including Spain, Germany and Britain, governments now allow clubs to welcome visitors without any vaccine checks, masks or distancing requirements. And although the pandemic is not yet over, and a new variant could appear anytime to spoil the fun, Europe’s clubbers seem ready to relive the days when nobody had ever heard of Covid-19.The return of the clubs has come as a relief to many workers in the nightlife sector, which has been especially hard-hit. Before the pandemic, 45 percent of the gross domestic product in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, came from tourism, for which clubbing is a major draw. In the first half of last year, tourist spending in Ibiza and the nearby island of Formentera was less than one-third of prepandemic levels, according to the Statistical Institute of the Balearic Islands.Ocio de Ibiza, a local nightlife association, estimates that 30,000 people traveled to Ibiza this past weekend to go to the clubs, a number on par with a prepandemic opening weekend. Sanjay Nandi, the chief executive of the group that runs the large Pacha nightclub, said in an interview before the opening that advance ticket sales had surpassed those of previous years. Of the island’s major clubs, only one, Privilege, does not yet have plans to reopen this summer.“I know we are very lucky,” Nandi said, explaining that, like other clubs, Pacha had received help from Spain’s government in the form of a furlough program for staff. The company also received a loan of 18 million euros, about $19 million, from the government’s Recapitalization Fund for pandemic-hit businesses, and it was able to get some revenue through its constellation of restaurants and other venues. Nandi said that the size of Ibiza’s major clubs — whose capacities range from around 3,000 to 7,800 — and their associated political clout allowed them to weather the pandemic better than smaller venues. “Being bigger helps,” he said.Nearly 8,000 people gathered at the outdoor mega-club Ushuaïa on Saturday.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesA professional dancer getting ready for the opening party at Pacha, another Ibiza club.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOther clubs in Europe have been less fortunate. According to France24, the French broadcaster, 200 clubbing venues in the country had permanently closed because of the pandemic as of last fall. A survey released in October by the Night Time Industries Association, a British lobbying group, found that 22 percent of the city’s clubs had shuttered since the pandemic’s start.Amy Lamé, London’s “night czar,” a city hall official charged with liaising between nightlife businesses and city authorities, said in an interview that the city was still doing its own assessment of the damage done. Although the British government gave relief grants to venues, she said, the country’s unpredictable public health measures, “which sometimes changed from one day to the next,” had posed a particular challenge.Lamé added that the city had also provided targeted aid to what she described as the most “vulnerable” venues, including L.G.B.T.Q. clubs. Those grants meant that all of London’s L.G.B.T.Q. clubs survived the pandemic, she said. “If we lose those kinds of venues, we lose part of the essence of London,” said Lamé.Perhaps the most ambitious measures to protect the clubbing sector were taken in Berlin, another European clubbing capital where nightlife is recognized as a key driver of the city economy. According to a 2018 study by the Berlin Club Commission, tourists visiting the German capital for its club scene contributed approximately $1.7 billion to the city’s economy.Partygoers at Ushuaïa. Before the pandemic, 45 percent of the gross domestic product in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, came from tourism, for which clubbing is a major draw. Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesAs well as offering financial aid for small and large businesses during the pandemic, German officials classified clubs as cultural venues, allowing them to access a 2-billion-euro fund meant for institutions such as museums and theaters. In Berlin, extra emergency funding was also made available for shuttered clubs. Kyle Van Horn, the managing director of Trauma Bar und Kino, a Berlin club and arts venue, said the pandemic was a turning point in the way officials have treated clubs. “I think there was a change from the side of the government; they are finally seeing us as relevant contributors to society,” he said.In an interview, Lutz Leichsenring, a Club Commission spokesman, said that thanks to the support, no Berlin clubs had closed as a direct result of pandemic restrictions. “The aid money was done in a very well-targeted way,” he said by phone. He explained that the pandemic had vindicated yearslong efforts by Berlin’s clubbing industry to mobilize as a political force. “We were very well networked as a sector,” he said.And perhaps inevitably, the social changes of the past two years are also making themselves felt on the dance floor. Steven Braines, a co-founder of He.She.They, a London-based record label and event company organizing L.G.B.T.Q.-inclusive parties at Ibiza’s Amnesia mega-club this season, said club organizers were now more focused on expanding gender and racial diversity among the acts they booked, which he said was partly a result of the heightened international visibility of movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter during the pandemic.Braines added that he sensed that men “maybe aren’t as predatorial anymore on the dance floor.” Club culture would now be reshaped, he said, by a cohort of 18- to 20-year-olds who were now visiting clubs for the first time, and who had less experience with drugs and alcohol. “This will be a new breed,” he said.The dance floor at Amnesia on Friday night.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesUshuaïa on Saturday.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOn Friday night, some of these newcomers were gathering outside Amnesia, on a highway outside Ibiza’s largest town. “I had just turned 18 when the pandemic happened, and everyone told me that I had lost the best years of going out,” said Sebastian Ochoa, 20, who works in social media in Madrid. “When I go out at home, there’s a limit, but here there’s the party, the after-party, the after-after-party. I’m here to make up for lost time.”A few feet away, Richard Stone, 58, said he had been coming to the club for 30 years, often four times a season, so he felt he couldn’t miss the reopening. “This is a milestone,” he said.A few minutes away by car, at Pacha, near Ibiza’s main yacht marina, a more glamorous party was taking place. A line of several hundred snaked around the exterior of the hulking white club, which includes a rooftop terrace, garden, restaurant and gift shop, where visitors could buy a scooter helmet bearing the club’s logo ($221) or a Pacha-branded game of Monopoly.The upstairs area of the V.I.P. section, where guests paid up to 25,000 euros for a table, was filled with groups of men in white dinner jackets and women in sparkly minidresses dancing to a set by Solomun, a German-Bosnian D.J. At one of the tables, Arthur Coutis, a 20-year-old visitor from Paris, said he had the feeling that the pandemic had led clubbers to shift their priorities.“Before it was much more about money and drinking — now it’s much more about freedom, and enjoying the music,” he said, looking out over the crowd. As the music reached a new climax, a nearby group raised a bottle of champagne, and screamed with joy.Opening weekend celebrations at Pacha.The club received about $19 million from the Spanish government’s Recapitalization Fund for pandemic-hit businesses.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times More