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      Mavis Staples and Levon Helm’s Last Show, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Pusha T, Laura Veirs, Helado Negro and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Mavis Staples and Levon Helm, ‘You Got to Move’Back in 2011, Mavis Staples and her band visited Woodstock, N.Y., to perform at the barn-studio-theater of the Band’s drummer Levon Helm; they had appeared together at the Band’s “The Last Waltz,” in 1976. Helm’s band joined hers, which included her sister Yvonne Staples on backup vocals, and they recorded the show. More than a decade later, an album, “Carry Me Home,” is due May 20. Staples gave “You Got to Move,” a gospel standard, her full contralto commitment; the guitarists Rick Holmstrom and Larry Campbell traded blues twang and bluegrassy runs. It was just another good-timey show in two long careers, but it would be their last together; Helm died in 2012. JON PARELESPusha T featuring Ye, ‘Dreamin of the Past’Nostalgia is not a concept often associated with Pusha T; even when he’s mining his coke-dealing past for material (and best believe, he usually is), his rhymes have the vivid immediacy of the present tense. But the classic, Old-Kanye production heard on “Dreamin of the Past” — revolving around a sped-up sample of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” — gives the song a halcyon glow that’s playfully at odds with his unrepentant flow. As ever, on this highlight from his latest solo album “It’s Almost Dry,” Push’s lyrics pop with poetic detail (“We hollowed the walls in back of bodegas”) and riotous cleverness: At one point, he boasts of keeping people “on the bikes like Amblin.” LINDSAY ZOLADZShakira and Rauw Alejandro, ‘Te Felicito’​​Robot love, funky bass lines, Rauw Alejandro’s head in a refrigerator: Welcome to Shakira and the Puerto Rican reggaeton star’s first collaboration. “Te Felicito” is a bitter send-off to a paramour whose love has been a charade that marries some of the superstars’ signature gifts: the Colombian singer’s eccentric choreography and Rauw’s penchant for funk-infused reggaeton. The Shak stamp of approval is a sought-after trophy for young artists ascending the ranks of the industry — just another sign that Alejandro is here to stay in all his freaky glory. ISABELIA HERRERAMidas the Jagaban featuring Liya, ‘420’Marijuana anthems abound on April 20. Here’s a lighter-than-smoke one from Nigeria, sung by the always-masked female songwriter Midas the Jagaban and a guest, Liya. The tapping, airborne polyrhythms of Afrobeats, topped by labyrinthine echoed vocals, provide just enough propulsion and haze as the women declare, “Whatever I do/I do it better when I smoke my marijuana.” PARELESPinkPantheress featuring Willow, ‘Where You Are’To capture the way a breakup can upend everything, PinkPantheress enlisted two beat experts — Skrillex and Mura Masa — to share production on “Where You Are,” along with Willow (Smith), who delivers full-throated hooks. They sing about the limbo between wanting to move on and longing to stay together: “I know it will never be the same,” Willow wails. The song is a vortex of obsession, with a brisk beat, a fingerpicking pattern (sampled from Paramore’s “Never Let This Go”) and vocals that diffuse into echoes and wordless syllables as PinkPantheress (breathy) and Willow (desperate and dramatic) toss around all the possibilities of separation, confrontation and wishing for a reunion. PARELESLaura Veirs, ‘Winter Windows’Laura Veirs has been a folk-rock fixture since the early aughts, but over the past few years she’s experienced a great deal of personal and professional change. Shortly before the pandemic, she divorced her longtime collaborator Tucker Martine, who had produced many of her albums — including “My Echo” from 2020, which was partially about their split. Her forthcoming album “Found Light,” due July 8, is her first album without Martine and the first she co-produced herself. Veirs sounds fittingly reinvigorated and inspired on the lead single “Winter Windows,” an antsy, guitar-driven meditation on motherhood and moving on. “I used to watch them watch you light up every room,” she sings, a gritty resilience in her voice. “Now it’s up to me, the lighting I can do.” ZOLADZSorry, ‘There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved’On the London group Sorry’s charming “There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved,” Asha Lorenz sings with the sort of sweet, earnest guilelessness that Mo Tucker brought to the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours.” “See them in the nightclubs, barking up the walls, head in their hands in the bathroom stalls,” she notes of all the lonely people she observes. But as the song gradually builds from unassuming to epic, “There’s So Many People” becomes less a lament and more a celebration of communal human longing — a feeling to be cherished, and, ironically, shared. ZOLADZRavyn Lenae, ‘M.I.A.’It’s been four years since the Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae dropped her “Crush” EP, a Steve Lacy-produced release that stitched her sky-high vocals with funky bass lines and delicious electro-soul textures. For “M.I.A.,” her first single from her debut album “Hypnos,” Lenae pairs with the producer Sango for something a little more breezy. Over a buoyant, syncopated Afrobeats production, a gleaming synth expands and contracts under Lenae’s airy falsetto, as she coos about finally making it: “I’m gonna run the town, ain’t nothing in my way.” HERRERARuth Radelet, ‘Crimes’“Is it easy to start over?” Ruth Radelet wonders on the chorus of her debut solo single, and it’s safe to assume that’s an autobiographical sentiment. For nearly two decades, Radelet was the frontwoman of the moody electro-pop group Chromatics, who disbanded last summer amid drama surrounding a mysterious (and possibly nonexistent) final album. On the glassy, synth-driven “Crimes,” though, Radelet sounds ready to wipe the slate clean. The verses have a bit of a steely bite (“I know what they’re telling me is true/I know I could never be like you”), but the lush chorus is awash in her signature, dreamy melancholy. ZOLADZHelado Negro, ‘Ya No Estoy Aquí’Helado Negro’s music may be dreamlike and crepuscular, but don’t confuse his songs for simple lullabies. “Ya No Estoy Aquí,” his latest single, revisits the celestial meanderings that have defined his work: soft, pulsing drum loops and wobbling, echoing synths. The Ecuadorean-American artist sings about isolation and melancholy alongside harmonic melodies from the Chicago singer-songwriter Kaina. “Ojalá me estoy volviendo loco/Por lo menos tengo con quien puedo hablar/alucinaciones,” he intones (“Hopefully I’m going crazy/At least I have someone to talk to/Hallucinations”). Underneath that soothing exterior, Helado Negro’s music holds a special power: the capacity to engage difficult feelings. HERRERALou Roy, ‘U.D.I.D.’The Los Angeles songwriter Lou Roy regularly juggles euphoria and disillusionment. Her debut album, “Pure Chaos,” is due April 29, and in “U.D.I.D.” — “You don’t I don’t” — she probes a relationship that seems about to fissure. “I always want you here/but I’m starting to get the deal,” she sings. The track, which she co-produced with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, has an upbeat 4/4 pop thump, but some sonic elements — vocals, keyboards, guitar chords — linger like contrails, hinting that the romance may already be a memory. PARELESCharles Mingus, ‘The Man Who Never Sleeps’One heavy day in 1973, Columbia Records dropped every jazz musician on its roster besides Miles Davis. The bassist and composer Charles Mingus (whose 100th birthday would have been on Friday) was among them. So were Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. But just months before that, the label had arranged to have a performance by Mingus’s new sextet recorded at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. The tapes were ultimately shelved. They’ll finally be released on Saturday, Record Store Day, as the triple-disc set “The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s.” On “The Man Who Never Sleeps,” Mingus is lit up by the antic virtuosity of the young trumpeter and Dizzy Gillespie protégé Jon Faddis, barely 19, who had just joined the band. Just before Columbia would press a final symbolic seal on an entire jazz generation, you can hear a torch being passed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOFred Moten, Brandon López and Gerald Cleaver, ‘The Abolition of Art, the Abolition of Freedom, the Abolition of You and Me’“Freedom is too close to slavery for us to be easy with that jailed imagining,” the poet and theorist Fred Moten says in a coolly controlled voice, speaking over the rustle of Gerald Cleaver’s drums and the dark pull of Brandon López’s open bass strings. There’s a doom-metal energy here, and Sun Ra’s relationship to darkness — as a substance. López hangs on the high strings for a moment at the end of Moten’s phrase, aware that the thought needs time to settle and land, then comes home to the root of the minor key. In the past 20 years Moten has become perhaps the leading thinker on Black performance, writing volumes of poetry and theory that dance with the ways in which Diasporic expression resists definition and capture. “The Abolition of Art” is the first track from a new album, “Moten/López/Cleaver,” putting that engagement directly to music and sacrificing none of its complexity or wit. RUSSONELLO More

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      Paul Siebel, Singer Whose Career Was Notable but Brief, Dies at 84

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      He arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the mid-1960s and drew comparisons to Dylan. But he left the music business not long after.Paul Siebel, a folk singer and songwriter who drew comparisons to Bob Dylan in the 1960s and ’70s but dropped out of the music business, hindered by stage fright and disappointed by the lack of attention his work received, died on April 5 in hospice care in Centreville, Md. He was 84.The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, his nephew, Robert Woods, said. Mr. Siebel had lived in nearby Wye Mills.In the mid-1960s, Mr. Siebel (pronounced SEE-bel) moved from the folk music scene in Buffalo to the more thriving one in Greenwich Village.“He knocked me out,” the folk singer and multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg, who backed Mr. Siebel in performances and remained his friend for decades, said by phone. “He was a great singer and songwriter. But he had the worst stage fright of anyone I ever met. If not for the stage fright, he would have continued.”Mr. Siebel, whose music was infused with a country sound, sang in a nasal voice and wrote evocative songs with strong narratives. In “Louise,” his best-known composition, he sang about the death of a truck-stop prostitute:Well, they all said Louise was not half badIt was written on the walls and window shadesAnd how she’d act the little girlA deceiver, don’t believe her, that’s her tradeLinda Ronstadt, in her book “Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir” (2013), recalled seeing Mr. Siebel at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village in 1969.“We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto and a song about a poignant, sad girl of a certain reputation named Louise,” Ms. Ronstadt wrote.She recorded “Louise” and included it on her album “Silk Purse” (1970). It was subsequently covered by Bonnie Raitt, Leo Kottke and at least 20 other artists. Another of Mr. Siebel’s songs, “Spanish Johnny,” was recorded by Emmylou Harris and Waylon Jennings and by Mr. Bromberg.Mr. Siebel signed with Elektra Records after Mr. Bromberg set up a concert for him at the Folklore Center, in Greenwich Village, so that Peter Siegel, a producer for the label, could hear him.When Mr. Siebel’s first album, “Woodsmoke & Oranges,” was released in 1970, Gregory McDonald, a critic for The Boston Globe, wrote that it “justifies his currently being compared with Bob Dylan.” He called Mr. Siebel “the big new name in folk music.”But “Woodsmoke & Oranges” did not sell well and neither did his follow-up album, “Jack-Knife Gypsy,” released the next year.There would be only one more, a live album recorded with Mr. Bromberg and the singer-songwriter Gary White in 1978 and released in 1981.“He was very critical of himself,” Mr. Bromberg said. “After those two albums, he wrote another bunch of songs, but he destroyed them. He said they weren’t as good as the ones on the albums.”By the early 1980s, he had left the business altogether.“I started drinking, things started coming apart,” he told the magazine American Songwriter in 2011. “I guess I wasn’t getting the recognition I wanted, and without that, how can you write? And then after a while I just couldn’t go out and do those same songs again and again. I soured. It soured.”Mr. Siebel in the 1970s. “I guess I wasn’t getting the recognition I wanted,” he said of his decision to leave the music business, “and without that, how can you write?”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesPaul Karl Siebel was born on Sept. 19, 1937, in Buffalo. His father, Karl, was a farmer and restaurateur. His mother, Dorothy (Hosmer) Siebel, was a homemaker and seamstress.Paul studied classical violin as a child and later became proficient at the guitar. After attending what is now the University at Buffalo, he served in the Army in Europe before beginning to perform on the folk circuit in Buffalo. When he moved to New York City, he supported himself by working in a baby carriage factory in Brooklyn.Robert Zachary Jr., his manager, told Dirty Linen, a folk and world music magazine, in 1996 that, before Mr. Siebel signed with Elektra, he didn’t have a telephone. “I used to have to send him telegrams, you know, to get him to come uptown and see us and talk to us or sign a contract,” he said.After Mr. Siebel walked away from the music business, he became a bread baker for a restaurant and a county park worker in Maryland.He leaves no immediate survivors.Asked in 1996 how he thought he would be remembered, Mr. Siebel said: “He was a guy who wrote a couple of pretty good songs. What ever happened to him?” More

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      Camila Cabello Gets in Her Head, and 16 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kelsea Ballerini, Syd, Oliver Sim and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Camila Cabello featuring Willow, ‘Psychofreak’Alienation gets an electronic lilt in “Psychofreak” from Camila Cabello’s “Familia,” which is actually stacked with songs about jealousy. In “Psychofreak” she sings about feeling dissociated, insecure and suspicious: “Tryin’ to get connected, no Wi-Fi/tell me that you love me, are you lying?” Against brittle percussion and impassive chords on the off-beats, Cabello sounds relatively unruffled despite what the lyrics say, but Willow (Smith) focuses and ratchets up the anguish. JON PARELESMiranda Lambert, ‘Actin’ Up’Miranda Lambert’s “Actin’ Up” could have been just another feisty, bluesy country-rock song. “I want a sunset ride, a velvet rodeo/A Colorado high, a California glow,” she declares. Its richness is in its arrangement: its stereo, reverbed guitar picking, its syncopated drumming, the echoes and pauses placed behind her boasts. PARELESKelsea Ballerini, ‘Heartfirst’On her 2020 album “Kelsea,” Kelsea Ballerini honed her keen ability to spotlight the sort of anxiety and self-doubt that many other country singers conveniently crop out of the frame. The single “Heartfirst,” though, is all about pushing those impediments aside and jumping headlong into new romance: “That voice in my head says to slow down, but it can’t feel your hands on my hips right now,” she sings. Recommended for anyone who revisited Taylor Swift’s version of “Red” last year and wished someone were still making glimmering, wholehearted pop-country songs like that in the present tense. LINDSAY ZOLADZBanks, ‘Meteorite’Banks’s songs bring a deep wariness to her relationships. “We’re already in bed, you may as well lie,” she sings as “Meteorite” begins. But in this track, syncopation fights pessimism. Handclaps, stop-and-start drums and backup vocals that hint at Balkan and African call-and-response insist that this iffy romance could still push ahead. PARELESPieri, ‘Vente Pa Aca’It was only a matter of time until the textures of hyperpop collided with reggaeton. Consider the Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Daniela Pieri its champion: Her new single “Vente Pa Aca” interlaces a muted dembow riddim, serrated synths and gauzy speaker feedback lifted straight from a PC Music compilation. In an Auto-Tuned shrill, one that carries just enough of a punk edge, she intones, “No te quiero perder/tú y yo hasta el amanecer” (“I don’t want to lose you/Me and you till dawn”). ISABELIA HERRERASyd, ‘Fast Car’“Broken Hearts Club,” the first album in five years from Syd — a member of the R&B collective the Internet and a one-time Odd Future upstart — is mostly an intimate chronicle of a relationship’s demise, but the sultry “Fast Car” conjures a moment before things went sour. A driving, 4-4 beat and glossy ’80s sheen provide a backdrop for Syd’s vaporous vocals (“No one can see inside,” she croons, “do with me what you like”) before a glorious, Prince-like guitar solo breaks the whole song open like a cracked sunroof. ZOLADZOliver Sim, ‘Fruit’Harnessing the high drama of a power ballad, but holding all the airiness of the xx’s gauzy R&B, Oliver Sim’s “Fruit” is the kind of queer anthem only he could make. Produced by his bandmate Jamie xx, “Fruit” is a love letter to a younger self coming to terms with queer identity. “You can dress it away, talk it away/Dull down the flame/But it’s all pretend,” Sim whispers, oozing melancholia. He may have been the last member of the xx to go solo, but it has been well worth the wait. HERRERAFlorist, ‘Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)’This one’s a tear-jerker. Emily Sprague — sometimes a solo artist, sometimes the leader of the Brooklyn indie-folk group Florist — recounts the life of her late mother and her own early childhood in a series of vivid, cleareyed snapshots (“I’ve seen photos of the living room, we didn’t have a lot”), sung atop a gentle, fingerpicked chord progression. Synthesizer whirs mingle with bird chirps in the song’s airy atmosphere; Sprague and the band actually recorded it on a porch. That sonic embrace of the natural world becomes even more poignant toward the end of the song, which will appear on a forthcoming self-titled Florist album, when Sprague sings in a peaceful murmur, “She’s in the bird song, she won’t be gone.” ZOLADZDaniel Rossen, ‘Unpeopled Space’“Unpeopled Space,” a dazzling highlight from the former Grizzly Bear guitar virtuoso Daniel Rossen’s first full-length solo album “You Belong Here,” is a searching meditation about leaving the city for the country, as Rossen himself did a decade ago. But his arrangement is so full of compositional surprises and instrumental chatter — shape-shifting acoustic guitar riffs, croaking strings and dynamic percussion from his former bandmate Christopher Bear — that he makes the natural world sound every bit as alive as a teeming metropolis. “Whatever was, whatever will,” he sings to the vast green space around him, “we belong here now.” ZOLADZPink Floyd featuring Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, ‘Hey, Hey Rise Up’Andriy Khlyvnyuk from the Ukrainian band Boombox returned to his homeland to fight the Russian invasion. From Kyiv, he made an Instagram post of his defiant, full-throated rendition of a resistance anthem, “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” singing with a rifle slung across his chest. It moved Nick Mason and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd to build a full-length track around it — their first new Pink Floyd song since 1994, which will benefit Ukrainian relief. Pink Floyd accompanies Khlyvnyuk with somber gravity, buttressing him with organ chords and choir harmonies; a wailing, clawing Gilmour guitar solo sustains the mood of grim determination. PARELESJoyce Manor, ‘Gotta Let It Go’Emo bands tend to be verbose, but Torrance, Calif.’s Joyce Manor are unusually efficient — as if Taking Back Sunday had attended the Guided by Voices school of songwriting. “Gotta Let It Go,” a two-minute ripper from the band’s forthcoming album “40 oz. to Fresno” (out June 10 and named after an autocorrected text about Sublime) showcases the lead singer and guitarist Barry Johnson’s rabid but melodic holler, alongside the sort of crushing waves of distorted guitar that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on late-90s alt-rock radio. “You say it’s cute but you think it’s ugly,” Johnson shouts on the pummeling bridge — yep, a bridge in a two-minute song! Told you these guys are efficient. ZOLADZEl Alfa, Braulio Fogón, French Montana and Kaly Ocho, ‘Máquina de Dinero’El Alfa’s ascent as the king of Dominican dembow has come with its fair share of missteps: diluted EDM bangers, or pop-dembow tracks with a little too much gloss. So “Máquina de Dinero,” from his fourth studio album, “Sabiduría,” is an unexpected bombshell. El Alfa deploys his double entendres and witty raps over a gritty, shrapnel-like beat from his go-to producer Chael Produciendo, its deliciously raw, unfinished texture aligning more closely with the coarseness of his own early hits. His guests are surprising, too — Braulio Fogón and Kaly Ocho, titans of el bajo mundo (the underground dembow scene), along with French Montana. Just try not to laugh out loud when Montana says, “’Rican or Dominican, she bustin’ out the skirt,” and mimics the addictive hook from El Alfa’s summer heater “La Mamá de la Mamá.” HERRERAAlicia Keys, ‘City of Gods (Part II)’Alicia Keys let herself be treated as a mere hook singer alongside Fivio Foreign and Kanye West on “City of Gods,” shunted aside as they touted their careers. But with “City of Gods (Part II)” she reclaims the song as the plea of a spurned lover, begging, “Don’t leave me, go easy,” amid towering piano chords and cavernous bass tones, a voice trying to find its way through the cityscape. PARELESSun’s Signature, ‘Golden Air’Sun’s Signature is the partnership of Elisabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins and Damon Reece from Massive Attack. In the 1990s, both groups conjured encompassing atmospheres, but in different registers. Cocteau Twins were mistily ethereal; Massive Attack was bassy and seismic. “Golden Air,” the first song from an EP due in June, is more protean. It works through multiple transformations — tinkly Baroque-pop, Minimalist a cappella vocal layers, shimmering psychedelic march — as Fraser sings cosmic musings: “My heart shall say to me/Do with me something.” PARELESS. Carey, ‘Sunshower’S. Carey, a longtime collaborator with Bon Iver, goes for billowing bliss in “Sunshower.” His multitracked falsetto harmonizes with cascading guitars and saxophones as he surrenders to the unexplainable beauty of a deep connection: “I don’t know myself before I knew you,” he realizes. PARELESSam Gendel and Antonia Cytrynowicz, ‘Something Real’One afternoon in Los Angeles, the saxophonist, keyboardist and composer Sam Gendel improvised some songs with Antonia Cytrynowicz, the younger sister of his partner, the filmmaker Marcella Cytrynowicz; at the time Antonia was 11 years old. They haven’t played them before or since. Luckily they recorded them, and realized they were good enough to release as an album; “Live a Little” is due May 13. In “Something Real,” Gendel circled through an undulating, slightly gloomy four-chord keyboard pattern as Antonia mused about what she was hearing: “Never knowing, never feeling/Like a sound, that is nice,” she sang. “You’re nice and gentle.” But dissonant feedback wells up at the end, suggesting that safety is fragile. PARELESMyra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, ‘For the Love of Fire and Water: II.’On “For the Love of Fire and Water,” the esteemed pianist and bandleader Myra Melford helms a new band featuring some of the most distinctive players in improvised music today: Ingrid Laubrock on saxophone, Tomeka Reid on cello, Mary Halvorson on guitar and Susie Ibarra on drums. On Track 2 of the 10-part suite, the quintet pulls itself forward with a mix of lethargy and restlessness, Halvorson and Laubrock — longtime musical intimates — carrying the nervy melody over Melford’s halting left-hand pattern, then improvising together in dyspeptic bursts. The tune itself is hard to keep track of, and the meter tough to count, but the stubbornness of the pulse and the resonance of the harmony may linger in your ear long after the track fades away. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      Roland White, a Shaper of Bluegrass and Country-Rock, Dies at 83

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      A mandolin player and singer, he made his mark with the Country Boys (later renamed the Kentucky Colonels), and his influence extended into the rock of the ’60s.NASHVILLE — Roland White, a mandolin player and singer who helped shape major developments in bluegrass and country-rock over a seven-decade career, died here on Friday. He was 83.His death, in a hospital after a recent heart attack, was confirmed by his wife, Diane Bouska.Mr. White was admired for his rich tone and rhythmic imagination as a mandolinist, as well as for his warm, expressive vocals, which were equally suited to the lead and harmony parts in an arrangement. His openness to ideas and approaches outside the bounds of traditional bluegrass was also among the hallmarks of his music.He first made his mark in the late 1950s with the Country Boys (later renamed the Kentucky Colonels), the West Coast bluegrass band that originally included his younger brothers Eric and Clarence on tenor banjo and guitar. Inspired by the virtuoso flatpicker Doc Watson, Clarence reimagined the role of the guitar in bluegrass, transforming it from a strictly rhythmic vehicle to a more expansive instrument on which lead and rhythm could be played simultaneously.“Appalachian Swing!,” the Kentucky Colonels’ all-instrumental album from 1964, was among the most influential bluegrass collections of the 1960s. In terms of repertoire and technique, the record — which, along with Roland and Clarence White, featured Billy Ray Latham on banjo, Roger Bush on bass, Bobby Slone on fiddle and LeRoy Mack on dobro — was a touchstone for the musically adventurous bands of the 1970s and beyond whose music came to be known as “newgrass.”The album’s reach extended to country-rock bands like the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, who incorporated bluegrass instrumentation and sensibilities into their music. The album’s enduring relevance is also due in large part to Mr. White’s innovative mandolin work, as well as to his leadership with the project.“I don’t think it was my playing that had so much influence as just the fact that I was playing in the style and pulled things together for us to play, learn and be a band,” Mr. White said in a 2010 interview with the website Mandolin Cafe.“I didn’t show anybody what to play on their instrument, and really nobody else did, either,” he added. “Bits of things might have been shown to us by someone here and there, but almost all of it was by ear and observing.”Despite the band’s impact on West Coast folk and bluegrass, the Kentucky Colonels struggled to gain a foothold commercially amid the increasingly rock-dominated West Coast music scene of the 1960s.The group disbanded in 1966, with Mr. White moving to Nashville and, in 1967, becoming the lead singer and guitarist for Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, with whom he made recordings like “Sally Goodin” and “Walls of Time.” (His brother Clarence found work as a studio musician and later joined the Byrds as lead guitarist.)After about two years with Mr. Monroe, Mr. White took a job as mandolinist with the Nashville Grass, the band of another bluegrass patriarch, Lester Flatt.Mr. White around 2000. He began his career in the 1950s playing country music at dances and other social functions with his siblings.Stephen A. Ide/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. White remained with Mr. Flatt until 1973, when he and his brothers reunited to form the New Kentucky Colonels with the banjo player and singer Herb Pedersen. The reunion ended tragically when Clarence White was killed by a drunken driver while loading equipment outside a club in Palmdale, Calif.Roland Joseph LeBlanc was born on April 23, 1938, in Madawaska, Maine, the first of five children of Eric and Mildred Cyr LeBlanc. His father, a carpenter, played guitar, tenor banjo and harmonica; his mother was a homemaker. Of French Canadian descent — young Roland spoke French at home until he was in the second grade — Mr. White’s father stopped using the original family name in favor of its anglicized equivalent, White, sometime after Roland was born.The family moved to Southern California in 1954, and the three brothers, with their sister Joanne occasionally joining them on bass, began playing country music at dances and other social functions. They moved to Burbank in 1957; shortly after that, the brothers won a talent contest sponsored by the Pasadena radio station KXLA.They also attracted the attention of the guitarist Joe Maphis, who helped get them bookings on “Town Hall Party” and other musical variety shows of the day.By this time a quintet, the group appeared on the sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” shortly before Mr. White was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961. They recorded their first album, “The New Sound of Bluegrass America,” in 1962, at which point they changed their name to the Kentucky Colonels at the suggestion of the guitarist Merle Travis. (Mr. White was still stationed in Germany at this point; his brother Eric had previously left the group to get married.)After his brother Clarence’s death in 1973, Mr. White joined the Country Gazette, a musically omnivorous Los Angeles-based bluegrass band that also included Mr. Pedersen, the fiddler Byron Berline and the banjoist Alan Munde. Mr. White toured and recorded with the group while also releasing an acclaimed solo album, “I Wasn’t Born to Rock’n Roll,” in 1976.He left the Country Gazette in 1987 to join the Nashville Bluegrass Band, with whom he recorded Grammy-winning albums in 1993 and 1995. In 2000, he formed the Roland White Band; the group’s debut album, “Jelly on My Tofu,” was nominated for a Grammy.A prolific mandolin teacher, Mr. White published numerous instructional books and videos with Ms. Bouska, who, in addition to singing and playing guitar in the Roland White Band, was a co-producer of their records.Mr. White was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2018. The Kentucky Colonels received the same honor a year later.In addition to Ms. Bouska, he is survived by a daughter, Roline Hodge, and a son, Lawrence LeBlanc, both from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; a great-granddaughter; and a sister, Rose Marie Johnson.As influential as the album “Appalachian Swing!” proved to be, of equal impact on the West Coast folk scene of the 1960s were the club dates that Mr. White and the Kentucky Colonels played at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.The Byrds were particularly impressed, adapting the bluegrass instrumentation and technique they gleaned from those shows — they even enlisted Clarence White to play guitar on landmark albums like “Younger Than Yesterday” (1967) and “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” (1968).“Playing the Ash Grove opened the way for us to play to a totally new audience — a folk audience that we had known nothing about,” Mr. White said in an interview with the website The Bluegrass Situation. “They dressed differently from the country-western audience (they were college students, professors, beatniks, doctors and lawyers) and they paid close attention to the music.” More

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      2022 Grammy Awards Winners: Updating List

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      The list of winners for the 64th annual Grammy Awards.Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Grammy Awards.The 64th annual Grammy Awards are back Sunday night after being delayed by the Omicron variant. The show is being held in Las Vegas for the first time at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and Trevor Noah will return as the host. The ceremony has began and is airing on CBS and Paramount+. A majority of the awards were presented at the premiere ceremony, held before the telecast.Jon Batiste, the bandleader from “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” who received 11 nominations — the most of any artist — won four awards at the premiere ceremony. The 19-year-old pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo, who is nominated for the four top awards — album, record and song of the year, and best new artist — will be closely watched during the telecast. Rodrigo is up against Billie Eilish — who swept the four top awards in 2020 — in three of those categories.Rodrigo, BTS, Lil Nas X with Jack Harlow, Silk Sonic, Eilish, J Balvin, Carrie Underwood, John Legend and Lady Gaga are all scheduled to perform. The presenters include Megan Thee Stallion, Questlove and Dua Lipa, as well as Joni Mitchell, who will make a rare televised appearance. The show will feature an in memoriam segment with songs of Stephen Sondheim by Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler, as well as a moment of observation for the war in Ukraine.The planning for the show hasn’t been without complications. Kanye West was asked not to perform at the ceremony because of troubling online behavior. Foo Fighters were also set to perform but canceled after the sudden death of the band’s drummer, Taylor Hawkins. Check back here for live updates on all the winners throughout the night.Song of the Year“Leave the Door Open,” Brandon Anderson, Christopher Brody Brown, Dernst Emile Ii and Bruno Mars, songwriters (Silk Sonic)Best Pop Solo Performance“Drivers License,” Olivia RodrigoBest Traditional Pop Vocal Album“Love for Sale,” Tony Bennett and Lady GagaBest Dance/Electronic Recording“Alive,” Rüfüs Du SolBest Dance/Electronic Music Album“Subconsciously,” Black CoffeeBest Alternative Music Album“Daddy’s Home,” St. VincentBest Contemporary Instrumental Album“Tree Falls,” Taylor EigstiBest Rock Performance“Making a Fire,” Foo FightersBest Metal Performance“The Alien,” Dream TheaterBest Rock Song“Waiting on a War,” Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Rami Jaffee, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, songwriters (Foo Fighters)Best Rock Album“Medicine at Midnight,” Foo FightersBest R&B Performance“Leave the Door Open,” Silk Sonic“Pick Up Your Feelings,” Jazmine SullivanBest Traditional R&B Performance“Fight for You,” H.E.R.Best R&B Song“Leave the Door Open,” Brandon Anderson, Christopher Brody Brown, Dernst Emile II and Bruno Mars, songwriters (Silk Sonic)A Guide to the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, was postponed for a second year in a row due to Covid and is now scheduled for April 3.Jon Batiste Leads the Way: The jazz pianist earned the most nominations with 11, including album and record of the year. Here’s his reaction.Performers: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X are among the first performers announced for the April 3 show, which will be available on CBS and Paramount+.Kanye West: The singer, who is nominated for five awards, was told he will not be allowed to perform during the ceremony due to his erratic public behavior. A Surprise Appearance: The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who suffered an aneurysm in 2015 and has spoken in public infrequently since, will present an award at the ceremony.Best Progressive R&B Album“Table for Two,” Lucky DayeBest Melodic Rap Performance“Hurricane,” Kanye West featuring the Weeknd and Lil BabyBest Rap Song“Jail,” Dwayne Abernathy, Jr., Shawn Carter, Raul Cubina, Michael Dean, Charles M. Njapa, Sean Solymar, Kanye West and Mark Williams, songwriters (Kanye West featuring Jay-Z)Best Rap Album“Call Me if You Get Lost,” Tyler, the CreatorBest Country Solo Performance“You Should Probably Leave,” Chris StapletonBest Country Duo/Group Performance“Younger Me,” Brothers OsborneBest Country Song“Cold,” Dave Cobb, J.T. Cure, Derek Mixon and Chris Stapleton, songwriters (Chris Stapleton)Best New Age Album“Divine Tides,” Stewart Copeland and Ricky KejBest Improvised Jazz Solo“Humpty Dumpty (Set 2),” Chick Corea, soloistBest Jazz Vocal Album“Songwrights Apothecary Lab,” Esperanza SpaldingBest Jazz Instrumental Album“Skyline,” Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette and Gonzalo RubalcabaBest Large Jazz Ensemble Album“For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver,” Christian McBride Big BandBest Latin Jazz Album“Mirror Mirror,” Eliane Elias With Chick Corea and Chucho ValdésBest Gospel Performance/Song“Never Lost,” CeCe WinansBest Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song“Believe for It,” CeCe Winans; Dwan Hill, Kyle Lee, CeCe Winans and Mitch Wong, songwritersBest Gospel Album“Believe for It,” CeCe WinansBest Contemporary Christian Music Album“Old Church Basement,” Elevation Worship and Maverick City MusicBest Roots Gospel Album“My Savior,” Carrie UnderwoodBest Latin Pop Album“Mendó,” Alex CubaBest Música Urbana Album“El Último Tour Del Mundo,” Bad BunnyBest Latin Rock or Alternative Album“Origen,” JuanesBest Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano)“A Mis 80’s,” Vicente FernándezBest Tropical Latin Album“Salswing!,” Rubén Blades y Roberto Delgado & OrquestaBest American Roots Performance“Cry,” Jon BatisteBest American Roots Song“Cry,” Jon Batiste and Steve McEwan, songwriters (Jon Batiste)Best Americana Album“Native Sons,” Los LobosBest Bluegrass Album“My Bluegrass Heart,” Béla FleckBest Traditional Blues Album“I Be Trying,” Cedric BurnsideBest Contemporary Blues Album“662,” Christone “Kingfish” IngramBest Folk Album“They’re Calling Me Home,” Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco TurrisiBest Regional Roots Music Album“Kau Ka Pe’a,” Kalani Pe’aBest Reggae Album“Beauty in the Silence,” SojaBest Engineered Album, Non-Classical“Love for Sale,” Dae Bennett, Josh Coleman and Billy Cumella, engineers; Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone, mastering engineers (Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga)Producer of the Year, Non-ClassicalJack AntonoffBest Remixed Recording“Passenger” (Mike Shinoda Remix); Mike Shinoda, remixer (Deftones); track from: “White Pony” (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)Best Global Music Performance“Mohabbat,” Arooj AftabBest Global Music Album“Mother Nature,” Angelique KidjoBest Children’s Music Album“A Colorful World,” FaluBest Spoken Word Album“Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation From John Lewis,” Don CheadleBest Comedy Album“Sincerely Louis C.K.,” Louis C.K.Best Musical Theater Album“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” Emily Bear, producer; Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, composers/lyricists (Barlow & Bear)Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media“The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Andra DayBest Score Soundtrack for Visual Media“The Queen’s Gambit,” Carlos Rafael Rivera, composer“Soul,” Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, composersBest Song Written For Visual Media“All Eyes On Me [From Inside],” Bo Burnham, songwriter (Bo Burnham)Best Immersive Audio Album“Alicia,” George Massenburg and Eric Schilling, immersive mix engineers; Michael Romanowski, immersive mastering engineer; Ann Mincieli, immersive producer (Alicia Keys)Best Immersive Audio Album (for 63rd Grammy Awards)“Soundtrack of the American Soldier,” Leslie Ann Jones, immersive mix engineer; Michael Romanowski, immersive mastering engineer; Dan Merceruio, immersive producer (Jim R. Keene and the United States Army Field Band)Best Engineered Album, Classical“Chanticleer Sings Christmas,” Leslie Ann Jones, engineer (Chanticleer)Producer of the Year, ClassicalJudith ShermanBest Orchestral Performance“Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3,” Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor (Philadelphia Orchestra)Best Opera Recording“Glass: Akhnaten,” Karen Kamensek, conductor; J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Zachary James and Dísella Lárusdóttir; David Frost, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus)Best Choral Performance“Mahler: Symphony No. 8, ‘Symphony of a Thousand,’” Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Grant Gershon, Robert Istad, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz and Luke McEndarfer, chorus masters (Leah Crocetto, Mihoko Fujimura, Ryan McKinny, Erin Morley, Tamara Mumford, Simon O’Neill, Morris Robinson and Tamara Wilson; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, National Children’s Chorus and Pacific Chorale)Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance“Beethoven: Cello Sonatas – Hope Amid Tears,” Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel AxBest Classical Instrumental Solo“Alone Together,” Jennifer KohBest Classical Solo Vocal Album“Mythologies,” Sangeeta Kaur and Hila Plitmann (Virginie D’Avezac De Castera, Lili Haydn, Wouter Kellerman, Nadeem Majdalany, Eru Matsumoto and Emilio D. Miler)Best Classical Compendium“Women Warriors – The Voices of Change,” Amy Andersson, conductor; Amy Andersson, Mark Mattson and Lolita Ritmanis, producers.Best Contemporary Classical Composition“Shaw: Narrow Sea,” Caroline Shaw, composer (Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish and Sō Percussion)Best Instrumental Composition“Eberhard,” Lyle Mays, composer (Lyle Mays)Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella“Meta Knight’s Revenge (From ‘Kirby Superstar’),” Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman, arrangers (The 8-Bit Big Band featuring Button Masher)Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals“To The Edge Of Longing (Edit Version),” Vince Mendoza, Arranger (Vince Mendoza, Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Julia Bullock)Best Recording Package“Pakelang,” Li Jheng Han and Yu, Wei, Art Directors (2nd Generation Falangao Singing Group and the Chairman Crossover Big Band)Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package“All Things Must Pass: 50th Anniversary Edition,” Darren Evans, Dhani Harrison and Olivia Harrison, art directors (George Harrison)Best Album Notes“The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966,” Ricky Riccardi, album notes writer (Louis Armstrong)Best Historical Album“Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967),” Patrick Milligan and Joni Mitchell, compilation producers; Bernie Grundman, mastering engineer (Joni Mitchell)Best Music Video“Freedom,” (Jon Batiste); Alan Ferguson, video director; Alex P. Willson, video producer.Best Music Film“Summer of Soul,” (Various Artists); Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, video director; David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent and Joseph Patel, video producers. More

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      Judy Collins Is Picky About Audiobook Readers and Folk Singers

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      Voices are of primary importance to the 82-year-old musician, who is delivering her first album of original songs this month.It’s been nearly six decades since Leonard Cohen challenged Judy Collins to start writing her own songs. Now, at 82, the folk singer is finally delivering “Spellbound,” her first album of entirely original material. “I can’t tell you why it took me so long,” Collins said. “Probably because I didn’t have a pandemic to keep me at home.”Slowing down has never come naturally to Collins. She has been wildly prolific since emerging as a pre-eminent voice of the Greenwich Village folk scene with her beautiful cover versions of friends’ songs, including Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” in 1968. “Spellbound” (out Feb. 25) finds Collins reminiscing about old lovers, her Colorado childhood and, yes, that iconic era. The bygone romance on “So Alive” unfolds between downtown landmarks like the Bitter End and Jackson Square, summoned up in Collins’s signature crystalline soprano.“As an artist, you’re always in the midst of memory,” she said via phone from her Upper West Side apartment, which she shares with her husband, Louis Nelson, and their three Persian cats. “The older brain is capable of a lot of things. For instance, handling grief and creativity at the same time. That was a hard mountain to climb when I was younger. I don’t really find it hard anymore.”In 2016, Collins and the folk-pop musician Ari Hest were nominated for a Grammy for their album “Silver Skies Blue,” and Hest joins her here for “Hell on Wheels,” a rowdy rock track about a nearly tragic joy ride taken by an inebriated teenage Collins. “I became a wild child at 17,” she said. “That kicked off my drinking history.” Collins got sober in 1978, which she partially credits for her abundant energy: She devotes a third of her year to performing live, tries to walk 10,000 steps per day and just last year launched an Audible podcast, “Since You’ve Asked.” “I haven’t reached my peak yet,” she said, “but it’s coming.”Collins pulled out her journal to discuss the cultural inspirations and pastimes that have sustained her long career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Yellowstone”My sister says, “Oh, it’s just a soap opera.” It is, but it’s very amusing. It’s set in Montana, so it gave me a chance to spend some time in the mountains during the pandemic. The mountains do it for me. And I love a mystery, so I want to know who did what. And I love Kevin Costner. He has made some awfully good movies. We watched “Dances With Wolves” again recently. He’s always done a good job in terms of Western history.2. Deng Ming-Dao’s “365 Tao: Daily Meditations”Carol, one of my best friends growing up in Denver, sent me “365 Tao,” and it is a resource that I treasure. It’s my Zen connection. Every day for about half an hour in the morning I try to read Thomas Merton, Emmet Fox, Marcus Aurelius and “365 Tao.” It has wonderful quotations. I’ve read it for years. Maybe I don’t have a good memory, but it always seems new.3. FlyingI love to fly. It doesn’t matter where I’m going. I went through a period in the ’60s and I was terrified. I was traveling with my old friend Eric Weissberg, the great banjo player from “Deliverance.” I bet I was jumping into his lap. He was like a pilot. He said, “Let me explain to you what happens when an airplane takes off, what happens in the air and what happens when the plane lands.” And my fear disappeared. Every day I pray for all the pilots, the mechanics, air traffic control, the people who throw the bags around, the people who drive me to the airports. Anyone who whines and complains — well, I have to knock wood when I say this. I do fly first class.4. Jimmy WebbThe songs of Jimmy Webb drive me nuts. They’re so wonderful and I love singing them. Jimmy always says, “You take my hardest songs.” I recorded “Paul Gauguin in the South Seas” and it taught me more about singing than I had learned since I studied it. It’s like climbing without a rope. What Jimmy Webb does in “Gauguin” is the musical version of “Free Solo.”5. Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie is third in line behind Shakespeare and the Bible. I just finished 40 of her audiobooks, all of them read by the great Hugh Fraser. She was dynamic, she was particular, she was elegant. She described the buildings and the water and what was served at tea. I mean, sometimes she could go on and on until you got tangled in the web of language and scenario. She was a relentless writer. She was 80 when she wrote her last book.6. Audiobook ReadersWe have very strong opinions in my family about a lot of things: politics, literature and always the voice. I need to have a good reader or I can’t listen to an audiobook. Peter Grainger is a favorite writer of mine, and he has Gildart Jackson, who may be the best reader that I’ve ever heard, second only to Hugh Fraser. And I love listening to Robert Caro read his books. They are phenomenal. I remember his voice on television when he was talking about Robert Moses and what he did to the public landscape by tearing down communities to build the freeways. His books about Lyndon Johnson are read by another reader whom I cannot bear. But I can hear them in my own voice, so that’s fine.7. Monty PythonMonty Python were the first group of comedians that I got in touch with when I was in England in the ’60s, and they always had a way with humor. Nothing we can do quite matches it. There was the show “Beyond the Fringe” and then they made a movie, “Behind the Fridge,” and nobody else seems to have seen it. It was Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They were hysterical. The humor is quite priceless. You see a reflection of it in “Downton Abbey.”8. Shawn ColvinI’m very picky about my singers, and I am crazy about Shawn Colvin. I’ve actually written a song about her, which I didn’t put on this album. I played it for her, though. She’s the best. She and I played together in the mid-’90s. The brilliant album that she made with John Leventhal, “Steady On,” is mysterious and extraordinary. We did an artist weekend for three days in Greece in 2016 and we had the best time. That’s where I basically fell in love with her singing, her writing, her spirit.9. PBSWe watch the “PBS NewsHour” and “Masterpiece,” anything. “Professor T” is a Belgian series, which is now on PBS. It was our lunchtime television watching. It’s very offbeat. That’s a fabulous show. I love “Endeavour.” And “Inspector Morse” and “Inspector Lewis.” Inspector Lewis is not as brilliant as Morse, but, you know, he’s good.10. CatsI’ve always had cats. My first cat was named Fluffy. She gave birth on my bed one morning. “Mommy!” I screamed. “Fluffy fell apart!” Now I have three cats. They’re all Persian longhairs. Rachmaninoff is a devotee of my husband. He follows him everywhere he goes. Coco Chanel is always busy. She purrs and purrs and wants to be petted. Tom Wolfe is so exquisitely beautiful and he knows it, so he poses a lot. He claimed the Christmas tree this year, because he knew that people would come and take his picture More

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      Norma Waterson, a Key Figure in Britain’s Folk Revival, Dies at 82

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      With her familial singing group, the Watersons, and later as a solo performer, she helped revitalize traditional music from the north of England.Norma Waterson, a vaunted fixture in British folk music for decades whose familial singing group, the Watersons, helped spur the genre’s revival in the 1960s, died on Jan. 30. She was 82.Her daughter, Eliza Carthy, also a highly regarded singer and musician, announced the death on Facebook but did not say where Ms. Waterson died. She said Ms. Waterson had been in ill health for some time and was recently hospitalized for pneumonia.Ms. Waterson had a dynastic influence in British folk, not only for her work with the Watersons but also through her collaborations with the singer she married in 1972, Martin Carthy, himself a pivotal figure in British acoustic music, as well as through her joint albums and concerts with Eliza, their daughter.She formed the Watersons in 1965 with her younger siblings Mike and Elaine (who performed as Lal), along with their second cousin John Harrison. They were driven by a mission to re-enliven overlooked folk music, particularly from the northern Yorkshire region surrounding their home in Hull, England.“Whereas people in other countries are proud of their traditions, somehow here in England we got left behind,” Ms. Waterson once told the British folk magazine Fatea. “I think that England has as good a tradition as anywhere else, and I think that we should keep it alive.”The Watersons did so without vocal fuss or musical adornment. They largely performed a cappella and always took care to keep their harmonies humble.“To bring the audience in to you, instead of projecting your particular personality out to the audience, that’s the point,” Ms. Waterson said in “Traveling for a Living,” a 1965 BBC documentary about her group.Despite her ardor for traditional sounds and styles, she reached well beyond them. Her debut solo album, released in 1996 and titled simply “Norma Waterson,” featured elaborate arrangements of songs by contemporary writers like Elvis Costello and Ben Harper. On her final album, “Anchor,” a joint recording with Ms. Carthy issued in 2018, she followed a cover of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s “Lost in the Stars” with “Galaxy Song,” a whimsical hymn to human irrelevance co-written by Eric Idle of Monty Python.To all her performances Ms. Waterson brought unquestioned gravitas, signaled by her deep register and enhanced by a brandy-rich tone and a vibrato that roiled like a surging sea. In an email, Rob Young, the author of “Electric Eden” (2010), a history of British folk, likened her voice to “a hand-thrown clay pot, full of character and texture.”“It never sounded trained,” he added.Ms. Waterson performing in 1999. Her profile rose in the 1990s, when her debut solo album was nominated  for Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesNorma Waterson was born into a working-class family in Hull, East Yorkshire, on Aug. 15, 1939. Her mother died when Norma was 8. Ten days later, her father died of a stroke. Norma and her siblings were immediately taken in by their maternal grandmother, Eliza, who had belonged to the Irish Travelers, an ethnic group sometimes referred to as Irish Gypsies.Their grandmother’s imaginatively superstitious nature encouraged the children to believe in the sort of supernatural phenomena that can haunt English folk songs. Seven generations of the family had gravitated toward music, and she sang to the children, often and eagerly. “It was in the genes,” Ms. Waterson told NPR in 2001.The first group that Ms. Waterson formed with her siblings and Mr. Harrison played skiffle music, a blend of American folk music, blues and jazz that became hugely popular in Britain in the 1950s. But they soon switched to the kinds of English folk songs they had cherished in their youth.In 1965, the Watersons signed with Topic Records, which included them in a compilation titled “New Voices: An Album of First Recordings” before issuing the group’s debut album, “Frost and Fire: A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs.”The album showcased Ms. Waterson on the song “Seven Virgins or the Leaves of Life,” which she delivered with an authority that seemed almost otherworldly. The British music magazine Melody Maker named “Frost and Fire” folk album of the year.In that same period, the group ran Folk Union One, a club in Hull that contributed to the folk revival by presenting important artists in the genre like Anne Briggs and Mr. Carthy. After releasing their third album, “A Yorkshire Garland,” in 1968, the Watersons split, and Ms. Waterson moved to the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where she worked as a radio disc jockey.By 1972, she had returned to England, and the Watersons reunited (without Mr. Harrison.). Soon after, she fell in love with Mr. Carthy, who had been issuing his own respected folk albums since 1965. He then joined the Watersons and began releasing albums with them when not playing with important electric folk bands of the time, including Steeleye Span and the Albion Country Band. All those efforts made Ms. Waterson and Mr. Carthy British folk’s ultimate power couple.Her profile rose further in the 1990s, when her first album, recorded when she was in her mid-50s, was nominated for Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize, alongside albums by young rock acts at the time like Pulp (which won) and Oasis. She continued to release albums either on her own or with her husband and daughter, together billed as Waterson: Carthy. But she became significantly less active in the last decade, following an illness that at one point left her in a coma, after which she had to learn to walk and talk again.Her sister Elaine died in 1998 and her brother Mike in 2011, both of cancer. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by Mr. Carthy and their granddaughters.Later in life, Ms. Waterson was buoyed by her belief that folk music would last way beyond her, so long as it evolved with the times.“We thought that we’d all get old and gray and there’d be nobody left,” she told The Guardian in 2010. “Then this new generation of young musicians came up and we all said, ‘Thank God.’ If people say traditional music has got to be ‘like that’ or ‘like that,’ you’re going to freeze it. You can’t do that with tradition. You have to hope each generation brings their own thing to it, so it keeps going forever.” More

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      After 16 Years in ‘Hadestown,’ Anaïs Mitchell Emerges With a New Album

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      The singer-songwriter fully plunged into her acclaimed theater project. Since then, her life changed wildly — and she recaptured the desire to record her own music.BRISTOL, Vt. — Eight years ago, shortly before the birth of her first child, the musician Anaïs Mitchell was instructed in a hypnobirthing class to envision her “happy place,” and was flooded with a sense memory from her rural Vermont childhood.She was in her grandparents’ house, which her father helped build, “laying on the carpeted floor in a sunbeam coming through the sliding glass door,” she recalled. Something fragrant was cooking on the stove. Her grandmother quilted while young Anaïs stenciled, crafted, or, later, scribbled lines that would become the basis of her earliest songs.In early January, a now 40-year-old Mitchell stood in that same living room, taking in the house’s rich history. Her wide blue eyes smudged with dark liner, she wore a flannel button-down and a Brooklyn Nets beanie, not an expression of fandom so much as a sartorial homage to the city she used to call home.In the decades since that childhood memory, she’s become an accomplished singer-songwriter and a force behind one of the most successful and celebrated Broadway musicals of the past few years, the eight-time Tony-winning hit “Hadestown.” By this time next year, Mitchell hopes to be living in this house with her husband and children, bringing up her two daughters on the very same family farm on which she was raised.“It’s intense to go home,” she said. “I know everyone; it’s a small town.” When she runs into people she has known her whole life, she admitted, it can be easy to revert to her childhood self. “I was a little scared to move back for that reason,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not the thing you should do.”In some sense, leaving Brooklyn for Vermont was a practical choice: Mitchell was nine months pregnant with her second child when Covid-19 hit New York. “One day I pulled our older kid out of school and the next day we bought a car,” she said. “And then the next day Broadway closed and I was like, we’re leaving. We drove to Vermont and the baby was born a week later at my parents’ farm.”It’s in many ways an ordinary story — how many city-dwellers fled to the country? — but her telling has the narrative beats of an epic myth. In that way, it feels like an Anaïs Mitchell song.Foreground from left, Eva Noblezada, Andre De Shields and Amber Gray in “Hadestown,” which opened on Broadway in 2019 and won eight Tonys.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“There’s something in the way her ideas connect and always come back around,” said Josh Kaufman, the musician and producer who plays with Mitchell in the folk trio Bonny Light Horseman. “She has a very lived-in knowledge of traditional music and folk songs. But as a human she’s also incredibly in-the-moment, which allows her to anchor everything in the present.”Once a prolific solo artist, it’s been nearly a decade since Mitchell released music under her own name. But on Jan. 28, she’s returning with a self-titled album, produced by Kaufman — a collection of the most personal songs she has ever released. She sometimes attempted to write her own music during those long, busy years of working on “Hadestown,” but she ultimately “felt like I was cheating on it if I did anything else.”“I’m so proud of what we made and there was so much joy in the making of it,” she added, “but it was also an unsustainable way of living, that level of stress.”Adapted from a humble, low-budget community theater project she debuted in Montpelier in 2006, “Hadestown” brought the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into conversation with such modern phenomena as capitalism, climate change and New Orleans-style jazz.In 2010, Mitchell released a concept album called “Hadestown,” featuring songs from the initial Vermont theater production sung by some of her folk peers: Justin Vernon of Bon Iver voiced Orpheus, Ani DiFranco was Persephone. But Mitchell still dreamed of adapting a more ambitious stage production.“Anaïs is the most specific writer I’ve ever encountered,” the “Hadestown” director Rachel Chavkin said in a phone interview. “So often the process of creating can seem really abstract,” she added. “What is very beautiful about Anaïs is that she lives very openly in the process of turning over words and images, feeling them around in her mouth and on her guitar.”When “Hadestown” opened at the Walter Kerr Theater in April 2019 (taking over for “Springsteen on Broadway”), Mitchell became just the fourth woman to compose the music, lyrics and book of a Broadway musical. The moment was a turning point in her journey with a project she’d been living with for 13 long years. But there comes a time in a show’s life when even the most involved writer must find a new space.“There was a funny moment that happened as soon as the show opened on Broadway, where suddenly I didn’t have a home in the theater anymore,” Mitchell said when we first met up in Manhattan in the courtyard of the Standard Hotel last November. “Literally: It used to be, this is my seat, this is where I go play guitar in the stairwell. And then suddenly the audience is there and there’s nowhere for me.”But this necessary step back from “Hadestown” finally gave her the opportunity to reconnect with the music world from which she’d long been absent, and return to her own, more intimate form of songwriting.“Hadestown” and her stirring 2012 album “Young Man in America” involved a lot of “dressing up in costumes, getting access to some kind of larger-than-life feelings and language, like, ‘I’m the king of the Underworld,’” she said, laughing for a moment as she did her best Hades impression. “I do really enjoy that. But these songs are all me, the stories are my stories. That feels very different.”“A songwriter is kind of a songwright,” Mitchell said. “It’s like building a house that other people will inhabit.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesTHOUGH SHE IS not quite at the level of Ben, Jerry or Bernie, Mitchell is certifiably Vermont Famous — the sort of New Englander who gets recognized in hushed tones at folk festivals and farmers’ markets. Her hair is shaggy and dyed darker than the blonde of her “Hadestown” days, and she speaks in a chiming voice that often sounds innocently wonder-struck, before a joke or a playful bit of profanity suddenly brings it back down to earth.Behind the wheel of her salt-kissed Chrysler Pacifica in January, she pointed out local landmarks on the 15-minute drive between the house she is renting in Bristol and her parents’ farm: her high school; a sign for a local “radical puppetry” company; a humorously and undeniably phallic-shaped headstone that has always made her laugh (“Who chose that?”).Mitchell describes her parents as “hippies, back-to-the-landers.” In the late 1960s, her father, Don, scored a book deal when he was still a Swarthmore undergraduate, for a semi-autobiographical hitchhiking novel he’d written called “Thumb Tripping.” He sold the movie rights, moved to Los Angeles with his young wife, Cheryl, and wrote the screenplay to a pulpy, “Easy Rider”-era film adaptation of his book. He cashed out in the early 1970s and used his Hollywood earnings to buy a 130-acre farm in Vermont’s Champlain Valley.For most of Anaïs’s childhood, her entire family lived on the property, including her grandparents in that wooden house her father helped build for them. Cheryl opposed television, so young Anaïs would sneak over to her grandparents’ place whenever she wanted to watch; she has fond and uncommonly subversive memories of the nightly news with Dan Rather. She rode horses, roamed the woods with her older brother and, like her namesake Anaïs Nin, journaled prolifically.She found those old diaries recently in a box in her grandparents’ house, and the experience inspired “Revenant,” a heartfelt, acoustic-guitar-driven song on the new album that finds her extending a mature grace to her younger self: “Suddenly I saw you there, runny-eyed in a wooden chair/Ran outside to hide your face in the wild Queen Anne’s lace,” she sings. “Come and let me hold you in my arms/Come and get my shoulder wet and warm.”Mitchell went to Middlebury College, and supported herself as a figure model for art classes. “I was always very comfortable nude because no one can see us here, so everyone would skinny-dip,” she said on the secluded farm. When she was 19, one of those gigs led to the sort of meet-cute that might appear in an R-rated comedy: Noah Hahn, a student in one of the classes, turned out to be the man she would marry.They were apart quite a bit in the early years of their relationship, as Mitchell was paying her dues on the road as an aspiring singer-songwriter. But — as she proposes on the new album’s ode to an artist’s muse, “Bright Star” — sometimes longing and distance can bear unexpected fruit. She was driving home alone from a show one night, hoping Noah was waiting up for her, when the melody and a few lyrics of what would become the first “Hadestown” song came to her out of the blue:“Wait for me, I’m coming, in my garters and pearls/With what melody did you barter me from the wicked underworld?”Mitchell and the “Hadestown” director Rachel Chavkin. “Anaïs is the most specific writer I’ve ever encountered,” Chavkin said.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesLIKE THE LONG gestating “Hadestown” (Chavkin compares the pace at which Mitchell works to “watching a tree grow, because it’s so deep, so imperceptible”), one of the most affecting songs on Mitchell’s new album took years to finish writing.“Little Big Girl” is partially about the tension she experienced returning to her hometown, appearing to the outside world as a grown and accomplished woman while, internally, still feeling like that same scrappy little Anaïs she was years ago. But the song is roomy enough to tap into a more universal sentiment — how strange it is that we all “keep on getting older” while still feeling “just like a kid.” Or, more specifically, that the world treats you as an ever-aging woman when you sometimes feel as defenseless as a little girl.“There’s so much art made by people in their 20s about the ups and downs of your love life,” Mitchell said. “I’ve been there and I love that music. It’s very deep and real. But there’s also all these other elements of being the age I am now, and being a mom, and relocating myself in the world and in my family. I want to be able to write about that stuff, too.”Mitchell knows this kind of work can be too easily dismissed as “culturally irrelevant mom art,” as she put it. But the remarkable specificity of her songcraft and the expansive, almost mythic scope she brings to her human experience as a wife, mother and 40-something woman demand to be taken seriously.“On her other records, it’s someone else’s epic poem that she’s running through her own beautiful sense of language and harmony,” Kaufman said. “On this one, she’s looking back like, ‘I have my own epic poem here. There’s these people, these relatives, my kids, my long relationship with my husband, my long relationship with my songwriting.’ It’s a self-portrait, but like any compelling self-portrait it’s vulnerable enough that you almost feel like you’re looking in a mirror. It resonates deeply because it’s so honest.”Ideally, Mitchell said, “the song could live on without you.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesFOR ONE NIGHT in November 2021, Mitchell once again had a designated seat in the theater when she attended the reopening of “Hadestown” following its pandemic closure. “It just made me miss the process of working on that show so much,” she said later. “I spent the first act of the show spinning wheels in my head like, ‘What musical could I write next? I need another story!’” She is content for now to focus on her work as a solo artist and with Bonny Light Horseman, though the thought of never writing another stage show after “Hadestown” would be like if she “went to grad school and then didn’t use the degree.”Mitchell doesn’t see such a clear delineation between the two artistic worlds she straddles, though. “I do think there’s a common denominator with writing for the theater and writing songs,” she said. “Ideally, the song could live on without you. You don’t have to sing it, someone else could sing it. I love that. Someone singing it at their wedding, or at a funeral, or at a protest.”She reached for a bit of lingual antiquity and metaphor that tracks closely to her own move to Vermont. “You know how you spell playwright as playwright, like you’re building or constructing something?” she asked. “A songwriter is kind of a songwright. It’s like building a house that other people will inhabit.” More