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    5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Art Blakey

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    For a time in the late 1940s, Art Blakey went to live in West Africa. When he returned to the United States, he told reporters that his time there had given him a fresh appreciation for the music called jazz. This, he declared, was a Black American music — quite distinct from the folk forms he’d heard in Africa.Yet at the same time, Blakey’s experiences in the motherland — where he’d converted to Islam and taken the name Abdullah ibn Buhaina — filled him with a knowledge of jazz’s roots, allowing him to hone a style that was deeply polyrhythmic, powerful and directly related to the drum’s original role: communication. With that knowledge, he would change jazz history.“When he plays, his drums go beyond a beat,” Herb Nolan once wrote in a DownBeat profile. “They provide a whole tapestry of dynamics and color.”Blakey had started out playing piano on the Pittsburgh scene during the Great Depression, but after switching to the drums he stood out, joining the famous big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. Following his sojourn in Africa, he and other young Muslim musicians in New York formed their own large ensemble, the Seventeen Messengers. After that band broke up, he and the pianist Horace Silver started a smaller group, the Jazz Messengers; before long, Blakey was its sole leader, and with his drumming as the linchpin, the Messengers came to define the straight-ahead, “hard bop” sound of jazz in the 1950s and ’60s.Art Blakey at Cafe Bohemia in New York in the mid-1950s.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesBlakey kept the band together for decades, frequently replenishing its lineup with young talent, so that the Messengers became known as jazz’s premier finishing school. “Once he saw that you’d learned the lesson, it was time for you to go,” the saxophonist Bobby Watson recalled of his time as a Messenger in the 1970s and ’80s. He added, “He was one of the most positive people I ever met, and he loved young people. He used to say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being young — you just need some experience.’ And that’s what he provided.”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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      What to Know About Bob Vylan, the Band at the Center of a Scandal

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      British police are investigating and the band lost its U.S. visas after a member called for “death” to Israel’s army at a festival.Before this weekend, Bob Vylan was a rising punk band with about 273,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — hardly a household name.Now, after leading chants of “Death, death to the I.D.F.” in reference to Israel’s army at the Glastonbury festival in England, it has become punk rock’s latest notorious act.On Monday, British police opened a criminal investigation into the chant, shortly after Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Jewish groups condemned it as hate speech.In the United States, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said that the State Department had revoked visas for Bob Vylan’s members, meaning the band can no longer play a planned U.S. tour.Despite all the attention now focused on the group, many people had never heard of it before. Here’s what you need to know.Who is in Bob Vylan and what’s its music like?A British punk-rap duo known for fast-paced, politically provocative songs, the group uses pseudonyms and deliberately obfuscates other biographical details. The singer goes by Bobby Vylan and the drummer by Bobbie Vylan.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

      How ‘Colors of the Wind’ Became a Generational Rallying Cry

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      Thirty years after Disney released “Pocahontas,” the film’s Oscar-winning song has taken on a life of its own with millennial and Gen-Z fans.In January, Lanie Pritchett expressed her displeasure with the second inauguration of President Trump by passionately lip-syncing a 30-year-old Disney song.“I had this rage in me,” the 22-year-old theater major at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas said in an interview. “It was a rough day for a lot of people. I thought, I can’t do much, but I can share my thoughts.”Her thoughts were encapsulated in a few lines from “Colors of the Wind,” the power ballad from Disney’s 1995 animated film, “Pocahontas.” Specifically, “You think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you / But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.”She uploaded a TikTok video with the overlay, “me arguing with magas for the next four years” — and a caption explaining that her progressive views partly stem from “Pocahontas” being her “favorite princess movie growing up.” It quickly racked up more than half a million views.Pritchett, who is a lesbian, was raised in a conservative household in East Texas, where she and her sister would give living-room performances of “Colors of the Wind” while the “Pocahontas” DVD played in the background. She now views the song as an important commentary on queer inclusivity, cross-cultural understanding and environmentalism.“Obviously, that movie has its problems,” Pritchett said, “but the music was really good.”In fact, 30 years after Disney released “Pocahontas” in theaters in June 1995, the film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning track has broken out as a beloved entity with millennial and Gen Z fans.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

    • 138 Shares56 Views

      in Television

      Lalo Schifrin, 93, Dies; Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible’ and Much More

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      Lalo Schifrin, the Grammy-winning Argentine-born composer who evoked the ticking, ominous suspense of espionage with his indelible theme to the television series “Mission: Impossible” as well as scored movies like “Cool Hand Luke,” “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry,” died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 93.His wife, Donna, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of pneumonia.Mr. Schifrin had a startlingly diverse career as a composer, arranger and conductor in a wide range of genres — from classical to jazz to Latin to folk to rock to hip-hop to electronic to the ancient music of the Aztecs.He conducted symphony orchestras in London and Vienna, and philharmonic orchestras in Tel Aviv, Paris and Los Angeles. He arranged music for the Three Tenors. He provided what The Washington Post called the music of “rebellious cool” for Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood.When Mr. Schifrin won an honorary Academy Award in 2018, it was given to him by Clint Eastwood, a frequent collaborator.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesBut the prolific Mr. Schifrin, who wrote more than 100 film and television scores, was best known for “Mission: Impossible.” Interpretations of his propulsive theme have also been featured in the eight movies in the “Mission: Impossible” series, starring Tom Cruise, which began in 1996.Like John Williams, whose many compositions for film include the theme from “Jaws,” Mr. Schifrin was a master of creating jittery unease and peril. Both composers worked with a recognizable style and a distinct purpose.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 Theater

      Diana Oh, Passionate Voice for Queer Liberation in Theater, Dies at 38

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      Mx. Oh’s politically provocative and often playful works, including the Off Broadway production “{my lingerie play},” asserted the right to be oneself while having fun.Diana Oh, a glitter-dusted experimental artist-activist whose theater works intertwined political provocation with profound compassion in rituals of communion with audiences, died on June 17 at their home in Brooklyn. Mx. Oh, who used the pronouns they and them, was 38.The death was confirmed by Mx. Oh’s brother Han Bin Oh, who said the cause was suicide.A playwright, actor, singer-songwriter and musician, Mx. Oh created art that didn’t fit neatly into categories. Mx. Oh was best known for the outraged yet disarmingly gentle Off Broadway show “{my lingerie play},” a music-filled protest against male sexual violence; it was performed in a series of 10 installations around New York City.A concert-like play — with Mx. Oh singing at its center — “{my lingerie play}” percolated with an angry awareness of the ways restrictive gender norms and society’s policing of sexual desire can leave whole groups vulnerable. It was an emphatic and loving assertion of the right to be oneself without worrying about abuse.“I was born a woman, to immigrant parents,” Mx. Oh said in the show. “That’s when my body became political. That’s when I became an artist.”Mx. Oh’s Infinite Love Party, which the Bushwick Starr theater in Brooklyn produced in 2019, was not a show but rather a structured celebration with a sleepover option. It was a handmade experience, including music and aerial silks, designed to welcome queer people, people of color and their allies.Mx. Oh in The Infinite Love Party, which was not a show but rather a structured celebration with music.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMx. Oh in 2019 during The Infinite Love Party, which had a sleepover option.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWe 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

    • 125 Shares62 Views

      in Music

      ‘The Forest of Metal Objects’ Premieres at the Met Cloisters

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      It was the hottest day of the year, and young musicians from the University of Michigan were staying cool in a 12th-century Benedictine cloister that, reconstructed indoors, let in the summer sun while a chill blew in from vents around their ankles.But they wouldn’t be inside for long. Those players, from the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble, were rehearsing “The Forest of Metal Objects,” which premieres on Friday and is designed to travel through the Met Cloisters, the hilltop museum of medieval art and architecture, with the performance ending outside in the lush garden of the Cuxa Cloister.Before they went outdoors, though, the piece’s composer, Michael Gordon, had notes about how the percussionists were handling makeshift instruments constructed of small chains and jingle bells. “The first time you shake them, let’s make it playful,” he said. “But maybe the second time is about discovery, and then as we slow it down it becomes more serious.”Players rehearsing “The Forest of Metal Objects” at the Met Cloisters in Upper Manhattan. The site-specific composition from Michael Gordon premieres on Friday.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe players were also receiving direction from Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, founders of Big Dance Theater, who had choreographed each movement within the cloister, such as picking up the chains and processing to the next room, with some of them standing on steps to form a corridor for the audience.Lazar didn’t know how many steps he could fill with performers without getting too close to the centuries-old sculptures at the top. “Does this work?” he asked a member of the museum’s curatorial staff who was observing. He was told to leave a couple of steps’ worth of space between the musicians and the art, and he happily obliged.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

    • 125 Shares46 Views

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      Cannonball With Wesley Morris: My Love Affair With Bruno Mars

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      Wesley Morris has a confession to make: He loves Bruno Mars. Nothing wrong with that, right? With the help of the culture writer Niela Orr, Wesley untangles his crush from his discomfort with the pop star’s cozy relationship to Blackness.You can listen to the show on your favorite podcast app, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and iHeartRadio, and you can watch it on YouTube:Cannonball is hosted by Wesley Morris and produced by Janelle Anderson, Elyssa Dudley, and John White with production assistance from Kate LoPresti. The show is edited by Wendy Dorr. The show is engineered by Daniel Ramirez and recorded by Maddy Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pitman. It features original music by Dan Powell and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Justin Ellington.Our video team is Brooke Minters And Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa, and edited by Jamie Hefetz and Pat Gunther.Special thanks to everyone who helped launch this show: Daniel Harrington, Lisa Tobin, Sasha Weiss, Max Linsky, Nina Lassam, Jeffrey Miranda, Mahima Chablani, Katie O’Brien, Christina Djossa, Kelly Doe, Shu Chun Xie, Dash Turner, Benjamin Tousley, Julia Moburg, Tara Godvin, Elizabeth Bristow, Lynn Levy, Victoria Kim, Jordan Cohen, Clinton Cargill, Bobby Doherty, Dahlia Haddad, Paula Szuchman, and Sam Dolnick.And an extra special thanks to J Wortham. More

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      in Music

      The Edge, U2’s Guitarist, Becomes Irish Citizen After 62 Years There

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      The musician born David Evans was one of more than 7,500 people who became citizens in a series of ceremonies in southwest Ireland this week.The Edge, the U2 guitarist known for his omnipresent black beanie and his chiming, echoey sound, became an Irish citizen this week. It only took him 62 years.“I’m a little tardy on the paperwork,” the English-born musician, whose real name is David Evans, told reporters at the ceremony on Monday. “I’ve been living in Ireland now since I was 1 year old, but the time is right and I couldn’t be more proud of my country for all that it represents and all that it’s doing.”A representative for U2 did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.More than 7,500 people were granted citizenship in a series of ceremonies Monday and Tuesday in Killarney in County Kerry, nearly 200 miles southwest of Dublin, according to the Irish government. Applicants from over 140 countries made a declaration of fidelity and loyalty to the state. Since 2011, more than 200,000 people have received Irish citizenship.Evans, 63, was born in Essex to Welsh parents and moved to Ireland as a young child.The band formed in 1976 when Larry Mullen Jr. tacked a “musicians wanted” ad to a bulletin board in Dublin, according to the band’s website. The group — Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton (bass) and Mullen (drums), then all teenagers — practiced in Mullen’s kitchen.U2 became perhaps the most recognizable and successful rock group from Ireland and is considered by many fans there to be something of a national treasure. At the citizenship ceremony, Evans said that Ireland was showing “real leadership” on the world stage and that his becoming a citizen couldn’t have come at a better moment. “I have always felt Irish,” he told reporters, saying he was happy “to be in even deeper connection with my homeland.”Evans said the application process took a couple of years but was ultimately straightforward.“Honestly there were many moments in the past when I could have done it, with just the form to be filled out, but I’m happy it’s now,” he said. “It feels more significant, it feels more meaningful.” More

    • 138 Shares117 Views

      in Theater

      Democrats to Protest Trump’s Takeover of Kennedy Center With Pride Event

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      “This is our way of reoccupying the Kennedy Center,” said Jeffrey Seller of “Hamilton,” who was asked to stage the invite-only concert hosted by five senators.Five Democratic senators have rented a small theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and invited the producer of “Hamilton” to stage a gay pride concert there as a form of symbolic protest against President Trump’s takeover of the institution.The event, scheduled to take place on Monday night before an invited audience, will feature Broadway artists performing songs and readings. The concert, hosted by Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, is being called “Love Is Love,” a slogan used by the gay rights movement and quoted by the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda when his show won at the Tony Awards in 2016.“What’s happening in the world is deeply concerning, but even in our darkest hours, we must continue to seek out the light,” Mr. Hickenlooper said in a statement. “The L.G.B.T.Q. community has long embodied this resilience, maintaining joy and creativity in the face of adversity.”Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February after purging its previously bipartisan board of Democratic appointees and replacing them with his allies. He denounced its programming as too “wokey” and promised to usher in a “Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”The senators, who exercised a prerogative extended to members of Congress to rent space in the center, chose this week for the event because June has long been when supporters of the gay community have celebrated Pride Month.Mr. Trump, in a departure from previous presidents, has not acknowledged Pride Month, and some of his actions in recent months have prompted concern in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Since his takeover of the center, several groups have canceled events there, saying they no longer feel welcome.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