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      Carin León Is Bringing Música Mexicana and Country Ever Closer

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      “There are no limits for music,” the Mexican singer-songwriter said.“There’s just good music and bad music.”In January 2023, the música Mexicana star Carin León was preparing for a concert at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena when he decided he needed to do something special for an encore.León grew up in Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora, Mexico, about 250 miles from Tucson, Ariz. Music was always playing around his home, often from border radio stations that piped in a wide variety of American hits, and his father was known to listen to David Allen Coe’s “Tennessee Whiskey” on cassette over and over.“Me and my brother would sing the song as kids, but we would make up different lyrics because we didn’t know English back then,” León said. The country giant Chris Stapleton turned his R&B-slow-dance cover of “Tennessee Whiskey” into a career breakthrough, and León, a Stapleton superfan, worked up his own powerfully soulful version for the largely Latino audience in Nashville.“The next day, the performance went viral,” León said. “People were saying, he can sing country music, he can sing in English. So that gave me a little spark.”León, 34, was already a Latin Grammy-winning artist with billions of streams on Spotify before he covered “Tennessee Whiskey” — and before he released bilingual collaborations with the country star Kane Brown and the soul singer Leon Bridges; wrote with the Nashville veterans Jon Pardi, Cody Johnson and Natalie Hemby; earned a standing ovation at the Grand Ole Opry with a set entirely in Spanish; became the first Latin artist to perform at both the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals; and opened for the Rolling Stones in early May.“My comfort zone is being outside of my comfort zone,” León said from his shopping-bag-strewn suite at a swank Beverly Hills hotel in California, his girlfriend and team at his side. “There are no limits for music. There’s just good music and bad music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F1: Organizers Hope Music Puts the Miami in the Miami Grand Prix

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      The entertainment lineup for this weekend’s Formula 1 race has been infused with Latin music and nightclub-like electronic beats.Organizers at Hard Rock Stadium near Miami have hosted some of the biggest spectacles in American sports in the past five years, including the Super Bowl and college football’s national championship game.Now they want to turn the Miami Grand Prix, the Formula 1 race being held on a serpentine racetrack around the stadium on Sunday, into appointment viewing like the Kentucky Derby and the Masters are.Tom Garfinkel, the race’s managing partner, said that the city’s tropical locale and reputation as a party center were important facets, and that organizers were intentionally infusing the entertainment lineup with regional music, including Latin heritage and nightclub-like electronic beats.“We’re trying to make this a destination that people mark on their calendar in the United States and around the world and say, ‘That’s something I need to attend,’” said Garfinkel, who is also the president of the N.F.L.’s Miami Dolphins.At the third annual Miami Grand Prix, Marc Anthony, the four-time Grammy-winning Latin singer, will perform the national anthem; Kaytranada, an EDM producer born in Haiti, will play at the end of the race. Weekend performances at a festival-like venue near the racetrack included the Puerto Rican rapper Don Omar and the Miami-born D.J. Steve Aoki.The attempt to distinguish the race also includes visual artists. The Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra, whose work has been featured at Art Basel, painted a mural near the track.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shakira on the Pain Behind Her New Album, ‘Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran’

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      With “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran,” her first album in seven years, the Colombian superstar said she “transformed pain into productivity.”For Shakira, 2022 was a year of heartbreak. Decades of hit singles and groundbreaking Latin-pop crossovers couldn’t insulate the Colombian pop star from personal upheavals. In the glare of celebrity coupledom, she broke up with the soccer player Gerard Piqué, her partner for 11 years and the father of her two sons, Milan and Sasha. Her father was hospitalized twice for a fall that caused head trauma; he went on to require further brain surgery in 2023.Shakira was also facing charges of tax evasion in a long-running case disputing whether she had lived primarily in Spain from 2012 to 2014; she declared residency there in 2015. Last November, she settled for a fine of 7.5 million euros (about $8.2 million), citing “the best interest of my kids.” Just days earlier, Shakira had collected the Latin Grammy for song of the year for “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” a collaboration with the Argentine producer Bizarrap with wordplay clearly aimed at Piqué and his girlfriend.The song was one of a string of singles Shakira released that referred directly to the breakup: the sarcastic “Te Felicito” (“I Congratulate You”); the regretful “Monotonía” (“Monotony”); the Bizarrap session, “Acróstico,” a ballad promising her children that she’d stay strong; and “TQG” (“Te Quedó Grande,” roughly translated as “I’m Too Good for You”), a taunting reggaeton duet with the Colombian star Karol G, who had been through her own public breakup. “TQG” has racked up more than a billion streams.Those songs reappear on Shakira’s first album since 2017, “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” (“Women No Longer Cry”), due Friday. All but one of its tracks deal with romantic ups and (mostly) downs, honed into crisp, tuneful pop structures. The LP continues Shakira’s career-long penchant for pulling together music and collaborators from across the Americas, dipping into rock, electro-pop, trap, Dominican bachata, Nigerian-style Afrobeats and regional Mexican cumbia and polka. Her guests include Cardi B, Ozuna and Rauw Alejandro. Not one of them upstages Shakira, who’s playful or raw as each moment demands.Shakira spoke about the album from her white-walled kitchen at her home in Miami, where an air fryer sat on the counter behind her; a pet bunny in a pen was at her side. Unlike Barcelona, Miami is a hub of Latin pop where, she said, “I have the feeling I’ll be making a lot more music now.” Wearing a black tank top, with her hair in long blond waves, Shakira spoke happily and volubly about an album that, for her, was “alchemical.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Shakira faced charges of tax evasion in a long-running case disputing whether she had lived primarily in Spain from 2012 to 2014. Last November, she settled for a fine of 7.5 million euros (about $8.2 million).Josep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamasi Washington’s Ecstatic Return, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by 4batz featuring Drake, Salt Cathedral, Swamp Dogg and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Kamasi Washington, ‘Prologue’“Prologue” is actually the final track on Kamasi Washington’s coming album, “Fearless Movement,” and it’s dense and bustling. Double time drumming, frenetic percussion and hyperactive keyboard counterpoint roil around a melody that rises resolutely over descending chords, while breakneck solos from Dontae Winslow on trumpet and Washington on saxophone exult in sheer agility and emotional peaks. JON PARELESShabazz Palaces and Lavarr the Starr, ‘Take Me to Your Leader’Shabazz Palaces — Ishmael Butler from Digable Planets — sets up a sci-fi scenario in “Take Me to Your Leader” from his album due March 29, “Exotic Birds of Prey.” He and a guest rapper, Lavarr the Starr, have to convince a powerful, mysterious queen that “our race deserves to survive.” Amid blipping electronics and slow-pulsing bass, with voices warped by echoes and effects, they set out a strategy of gifts, philosophizing, seduction and “a steady-bumping beat she can freak with.” PARELESSalt Cathedral, ‘Off the Walls’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Residente’s ‘Las Letras Ya No Importan’: A Troublemaker Reveals His Heart

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      The Puerto Rican rapper from Calle 13 places romance alongside resistance on “Las Letras Ya No Importan.”Residente — the Puerto Rican songwriter René Pérez Joglar — is lying, or at least misdirecting, with the title of his second solo album, “Las Letras Ya No Importan” (“The Lyrics Don’t Matter Anymore”). Words still matter to Residente, and they pour out of him. As always, he’s a blunt, far-reaching, fast-talking rapper who’s determined to engage on multiple fronts: political, cultural, mythmaking, cybernetic, sardonic and — now more than ever — personal.Residente arrived in the early 2000s as the frontman of Calle 13, his duo with his half brother Eduardo Cabra (a.k.a. Visitante). With Residente rapping and Visitante overseeing the musical backdrops, Calle 13 conquered the Americas with rebellious, hard-hitting and sonically omnivorous songs. Residente’s virtuosic raps in Spanish flaunted impeccable diction and a compulsion to push boundaries. He was often crudely raunchy, science-minded and ideologically sophisticated in the same song. As Calle 13’s popularity and ambitions grew, the group formed international musical and activist alliances with songs like the Pan-American manifesto “Latinoamérica” in 2011. The duo went separate ways in 2015.For his first solo album, “Residente” in 2017, Pérez took a DNA test and followed the results to his ancestral homelands, drawing on local musical traditions and, in some places, visiting conflict zones. The new album isn’t so tidily conceptual.With 20 songs that Residente has amassed over the last seven years, “Las Letras Ya No Importan” is a huge harvest of assorted ideas, from minimalistic to lavish, from cocky to righteous to humble to unexpectedly romantic.The album is packed with collaborators including the rappers Busta Rhymes, Big Daddy Kane and Vico C (a Puerto Rican reggaeton pioneer) and the singers Rauw Alejandro and Christian Nodal, among many others. It dips into rock, old-school hip-hop, flamenco, Cuban son, Palestinian music, electro and — with tongue in cheek — pop. (“Quiero Ser Baladista” — “I Want to Be a Ballad Singer” — suddenly switches from a belligerent rap over electric-guitar chords to an ardent love-song chorus from none other than Ricky Martin.)The set reclaims Residente singles like the fiercely percussive “This Is Not America” from 2022, which insists “America isn’t only the U.S.A.,” and “Problema Cabrón,” a blues-rock rap that revels in being a troublemaker. The album concludes with Residente’s 2020 single “René,” a gut-spilling seven-minute confessional that sets his fears and self-doubts to somber, sustained chamber-music strings — until Rubén Blades shows up for a conga-driven coda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘They Shot the Piano Player’ Review: Taking on a Bossa Nova Mystery

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      The pianist Francisco Tenório Júnior, on tour in Argentina during the right-wing dictatorship of the 1970s, vanished. This animated feature picks up the trail.Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s “They Shot the Piano Player” is an astoundingly vibrant animated project, fitting for its subject matter: the history and legacy of Brazilian bossa nova told through the story of the disappearance and presumed death of Francisco Tenório Júnior, one of the genre’s most celebrated pianists and composers.The film, actually a documentary set in a fictional context, begins in 2010, with Jeff Goldblum voicing the made-up music journalist Jeff Harris, whose article on bossa nova in The New Yorker lands him a book deal and a trip to Rio de Janeiro to investigate the fate one of the genre’s most celebrated pianists.Unlike the last Mariscal-Trueba collaboration, the Academy Award-nominated Cuban drama “Chico and Rita,” the story at the center of “They Shot the Piano Player” is all too real. Tenório Júnior vanished in Argentina during the height of a military dictatorship known for erasing people who didn’t embrace its politics. Equally real, and vivid are the over 150 interviews that Trueba conducted for the film, with friends, family and colleagues of the pianist, some of whom are the best-known names in bossa nova history: João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and more.The interviews appear, largely unaltered, in animated form, and getting to hear these musicians remember Tenório Júnior in their own words against the backdrop of the film’s gorgeous art direction brings them more to life better than a standard live-action talking head interview ever could. Even something as simple as the painted Arizona sunset descending behind Bud Shank as he recalls seeing Tenório Júnior play adds extra depth to his words.Goldblum’s character works as a surrogate for Trueba, jetting across the world to get to the bottom of his story and enthusiastically asking questions. But his character is never as interesting as the tale he’s trying to tell, and his vocal interjections — when Jeff Harris becomes, unmistakably, Jeff Goldblum — can be distracting. The film’s most memorable moments, by far, are when it just lets the music play on.They Shot the Piano PlayerRated PG-13 for language and suggested violence. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      7 Grammy Winners Worth Another Spin

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      Hear songs by Laufey, Jason Isbell, Samara Joy and more.Laufey performing on the Grammys preshow on Sunday.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but this year’s Grammys were … really good?The performances were almost uniformly excellent. Tracy Chapman, radiating joy and in fine voice, sang “Fast Car” publicly for the first time in ages, alongside a visibly reverent Luke Combs. (I wrote more about that moment here.) A regal Joni Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now” and made everybody cry. Billie Eilish and her collaborator brother, Finneas, absolutely nailed their performance of “What Was I Made For?” and showed everyone watching why their subsequent win in the song of the year category was so deserved.The wins were also pretty evenly spread. Yes, the universe’s current main character Taylor Swift took home the night’s top honor, album of the year, an award that she’s now won a record four times. But the person who took home the most Grammys this year (four) was someone who didn’t make it to the podium during the televised ceremony: Phoebe Bridgers, who during the preshow picked up three awards with her trio boygenius and one for a collaboration with SZA. The telecast also allowed some rising stars like Karol G, Lainey Wilson and Victoria Monét (who faithful Amplifier readers learned about in Friday’s rundown of the best new artist nominees) to make themselves known.For today’s playlist, we’re going to hear from some more of those slightly-less-than-household-name artists who took home Grammys this year. I chose two selections of my own, and I also asked my fellow Times pop critics Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica to send me a few of their picks — a mix of jazz, folk, pop, gospel and more. Listen below to tracks from Laufey, Peso Pluma and Samara Joy, and check out the Bonus Tracks for more of our Grammy coverage.Don’t wash the cast iron skillet,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Laufey: “From the Start”The Icelandic singer and songwriter Laufey (pronounced Lay-vay) won the traditional pop vocal album category with songs like “From the Start,” which she also performed on the preshow. It’s a bossa nova that confesses to “unrequited, terrifying love” with absolute poise. PARELESWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grammys 2024: How to Watch, Time and Streaming

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      A guide to everything you need to know for the 66th annual awards on Sunday night.The 66th annual Grammy Awards, taking place on Sunday at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, is poised to be a big night for young women.SZA is the top nominee, with nine nods for her album “SOS,” which topped the Billboard 200 for 10 straight weeks. Taylor Swift, who rocked the entertainment world with her record-breaking Eras Tour, and Olivia Rodrigo, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter with a proclivity for rock, are both competing with SZA for the three major all-genre categories: best album, record and song. Joining them are a host of other female artists, including boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish and Victoria Monét. The sole male performer contending for the top three competitions? Jon Batiste.But the biggest winner of the night could be the musicians behind “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s meditation on what it means to be a woman today. The film’s soundtrack garnered 11 nominations across seven categories, with a mix of artists that includes Eilish, Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj and Sam Smith.This emphasis on female representation is notable because the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, has been criticized in the past for failing to adequately recognize women. In recent years, the Grammys have worked to bring in a younger, more diverse membership, with the goal of making the voting process more transparent and fair.The awards show on Sunday will honor recordings released from Oct. 1, 2022 through Sept. 15, 2023. Here’s how to watch and what to expect.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More