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      How Disney Created the Hit Single 'We Don't Talk About Bruno'

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      “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto” is a surprise chart topper and TikTok darling. Here’s how Disney created its biggest smash since “Let It Go.”“A seven-foot frame! Rats along his back!” a curly-haired teenager draped in a cloak lip-syncs for the camera.“I associate him with the sound of falling sand,” a busy mom nods appreciatively, bopping along with a vacuum as she embarks on a kitchen dance break.“I’m sorry, mi vida, go on!” a pair of sisters screech, perilously off-key.“Encanto” cautioned against talking about Bruno, but a whole lot of people are obsessed with a song about him.Since that animated Disney film opened in theaters in November and arrived on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, its playful song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” has steadily grown into an international hit. Unlike most Disney breakouts, “Bruno” is not a wistful hero’s solo or a third-act power ballad. It’s a Broadway-style ensemble track that revels in gossip about a middle-age man.Yet the song recently topped the Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes charts in the United States, reached No. 1 on the global YouTube music videos chart and currently sits at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first original song from a Disney animated film to rank that high since the “Frozen” anthem “Let It Go” in 2014. Other “Encanto” tracks, like “Surface Pressure” and “The Family Madrigal,” are also rising. And this week, the film’s soundtrack bumped Adele’s “30” from the top spot on the Billboard 200.“Bruno” has been bolstered by its popularity on TikTok, where tribute clips from the likes of that cloaked teenager, those screeching sisters and that bopping mom have racked up millions of views.“I could look at the TikToks all day,” one of the “Encanto” directors, Jared Bush, said in an interview. “Everyone is finding a different entry point, whether it’s a specific moment or character dynamic. There’s something in it for everybody and, honestly, it’s just delicious.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.In the movie about a Colombian teenager named Mirabel Madrigal (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) and her supernaturally gifted family, Bruno (John Leguizamo) is a mysterious, outcast uncle whose ability to see the future earns the abject scorn of all those receiving bad news. His family and the townspeople share their colorful, often bitter, anecdotes about his prophecies in the song.Germaine Franco provided the “Encanto” score, while “Bruno” and the rest of the songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who had worked with Disney on the soundtrack of the 2016 film “Moana.” The “Encanto” filmmakers said he had delivered the infectious “Bruno” virtually on command.In spring 2020, the directors Bush and Byron Howard; the co-director Charise Castro Smith; and Tom MacDougall, then head of music at Walt Disney Animation Studios, hopped on one of their weekly video chats with Miranda to brainstorm an ensemble track about Bruno that could provide a jolt of energy midfilm.“We could see Lin thinking, and he looked at us and said, ‘It feels like a spooky ghost story, like a spooky montuno,’” Howard said, referring to a Cuban musical pattern. “And he turns to the piano and plays the first three chords. We literally saw him put it together and compose in that very moment. I’ve never had that happen before.” (Miranda was unavailable for an interview.)The character of Bruno had already evolved during the film’s creation. In an early iteration, he was much younger, someone Mirabel’s age. He was also originally named Oscar, but Bush said a legal snag over the existence of a number of real-life Oscar Madrigals in Colombia, led them to explore other name options. He sent Miranda a list of five alternatives, to which the songwriter replied, “Definitely Bruno.”“I couldn’t figure out why he was so definitive,” Bush said, “until two days later when we heard, ‘Bruno, no, no, no.’”Miranda then recorded a demo track in which he sang all 10 parts. “It was like Lin-Manuel on steroids,” said Adassa, the singer-songwriter who voices Dolores, the Madrigal cousin with exceptional hearing. (That demo has not been released, though a popular Miranda impressionist has taken a stab at what it might sound like.)With only storyboard sketches and Miranda’s audio to guide them, the film’s choreographer, Jamal Sims, and his team spent about two weeks in a Los Angeles studio creating the “Bruno” dance moves for the animators to render digitally. Incorporating elements of cumbia, the Colombian national dance that features African, Indigenous and European influences, along with salsa and rumba, they mapped out every moment of the song and shot a reference video in one take as if part of a live musical. Even Bruno’s rats perform intricate steps. (The animation team would later film the dancers from different camera angles.)“We had to build this all from our imagination,” the assistant choreographer, Kai Martinez, said. “What helped make this piece unique is that we had a group of Latinx dancers from Colombia, from Cuba, from Puerto Rico — people who understood the assignment.” (Clips of their choreography shared by Martinez on TikTok have amassed more than 23 million views.)Martinez, who is a first-generation Colombian American, also served as an animation reference consultant and provided the filmmakers with crucial insights into cultural nuances and mannerisms.“It was bigger than a job,” she said. “Being a Colombian woman, this is the kind of film that I would have wanted to watch when I was a kid.”Meanwhile, because of Covid precautions, the voice actors recorded their parts separately in studios across the United States and Colombia. Rhenzy Feliz sang the shapeshifting cousin Camilo’s lines in a rented space near San Luis Obispo, Calif., and said he channeled “theater kid” energy in his character’s dramatic delivery. Adassa recorded in her home studio in Nashville.“At first my rap was going to be an octave higher,” she said of her whispery bars. “I thought, she’s such an intimate speaker, I’m going to do it an octave lower. And it worked.”Despite its huge popularity, “Bruno” won’t get any Oscar love: The studio submitted only “Dos Oruguitas,” an emotional Spanish ballad performed by Sebastián Yatra, for awards consideration. That song, while not as ubiquitous as “Bruno,” made the academy’s best original song short list last month. Should it go on to take the statuette, it would make history as Disney’s first non-English-language winner.“‘Dos Oruguitas’ was so central to the emotional theme of the movie,” Howard said when asked if they had considered submitting “Bruno.” He added, “It’s probably the most critical bit of musical storytelling in the whole film because it has to do with the history of the family and Mirabel understanding her grandmother.”In fact, betting on “Bruno” would have been a bold strategic departure. You’d need to look as far back as “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to find a Disney Oscar winner with a similar theatrical quirkiness. Since then, when the studio has wowed the academy, it has been overwhelmingly for ballads, including “A Whole New World” (“Aladdin”), “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (“The Lion King”), “Colors of the Wind” (“Pocahontas”), “Let It Go” (“Frozen”) and “Remember Me” (Pixar’s “Coco”), along with the occasional Randy Newman ditty.Besides, multiple submissions could have risked the possibility of splitting votes, and Miranda lacks only an Oscar to achieve the rare career E.G.O.T. This wouldn’t be his first nomination: His “Moana” track, “How Far I’ll Go,” lost to “City of Stars” from “La La Land.” (In addition to his work on “Encanto,” he also directed “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and could potentially land a nomination for that film.)Beyond awards season, the “Encanto” directors said they were open to the possibility of a sequel, stage show or spinoff series. “I would love for there to be continuing stories of these characters because they’re real people to us,” Bush said. “Ninety minutes is not enough time to spend with the Madrigals.”And despite some fans’ theories that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — and the repeated reprimand “Silenzio, Bruno!” in the Pixar film “Luca” — show Disney has an anti-Bruno agenda, the filmmakers insist it isn’t so.“At the end of ‘Encanto,’ Bruno turns out to be a great guy,” Bush said. “So, you know, we’ve resurrected that name. I think Bruno should be proud of that.” More

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      He Was an Important Conductor. Also a Great One.

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      Hans Rosbaud was renowned as a modern-music specialist. But newly released archival recordings demonstrate his gifts were far broader.There is precisely one famous story about Hans Rosbaud — though, like its subject, it is not quite as famous as it ought to be.This Austrian conductor was asleep at his home in March 1954 when the telephone rang. On the line was a producer at Hamburg Radio, a little desperate. Could Rosbaud come to cover for the injured Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, and oversee the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron,” a gargantuan opera unperformed since being left unfinished in 1932?Rosbaud had never seen the score. His mind likely drifted to the 1930s: Back then Schoenberg had told Rosbaud forebodingly that he had “not imposed at all any reserve concerning difficulties of execution” in writing the opera. He clearly assumed no one would dare perform it.When was the premiere scheduled, Rosbaud asked the radio producer, fearfully? In exactly one week.This was a difficult prospect, but not the impossible one it would have been for almost anyone else. “One is almost forced to apply the word genius to Hans Rosbaud’s masterful control of the work,” The New York Times later reported of the performance. Genius enough, indeed, that the broadcast was released on record in 1957, the year Rosbaud led the staged premiere of “Moses und Aron” in Zurich — surpassing “even himself,” as a critic wrote.The recording still holds up, a fire coruscating through its lucidity. Had Schoenberg lived to hear it, he might have repeated the thanks he had offered Rosbaud in 1931 for a performance of his “Variations for Orchestra,” when he wrote in awe at having heard his work performed “with clarity, with love, with design.”Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron”NDR Symphony Orchestra, 1954 (Sony)No musician of Rosbaud’s generation did more to canonize its avant-garde. Igor Stravinsky offered a letter of recommendation for “this high-minded musician, this aristocrat among conductors.” Paul Hindemith was a classmate and lifelong friend. Anton Webern was a house guest.“When a composer speaks of Rosbaud the conductor,” Pierre Boulez wrote of the man to whom his masterpiece, “Le Marteau Sans Maître,” is dedicated, “he is speaking in the first place of a friend.”Joan Evans, a musicologist and Rosbaud biographer, has listed 173 premieres that he gave from 1923 until his death in 1962, the beneficiaries running from Fritz Adam to Bernd Alois Zimmermann by way of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Gyorgy Ligeti and Luigi Nono. The Musical Times of London eulogized him simply as “the greatest conductor of contemporary music.”Webern’s “Sechs Stücke” (Op.6, No. 4)SWF Orchestra Baden-Baden, 1957 (Universal Music France)But this “dream figure” who would “always give the future the benefit of the doubt,” as Boulez wrote, chafed at his formidable reputation.“I am not a modern music specialist,” Rosbaud told a German newspaper in 1956. “In Aix-en-Provence I am characterized as a Mozart expert; in Munich, I am regarded as a specialist of Bruckner. It is dangerous to classify musicians in this manner.”Particularly so, for Rosbaud’s own fate. His public stature has never approached the private respect in which musicians held him, in part because of his advocacy for music that has never really caught on. Quiet and scholarly, this “grim, Lincolnesque” man, as a writer once described him, seemed to be the antithesis of a celebrity maestro. His major positions were not with big-name symphonies, but less-prominent radio ensembles. He made few commercial records, superb though those few were. He had no interest in fame.Few conductors, then, have more to gain from an opening of the vaults. More than 700 of Rosbaud’s performances have been languishing in archives, most of them at SWR, the successor to Southwest German Radio in Baden-Baden, his artistic home after 1948.Rosbaud leading his radio orchestra in Baden-Baden, his artistic home after 1948.SWRSince 2017, SWR has released 59 CDs from those tapes, in a project that covers Rosbaud’s work in composers from Mozart to Sibelius. Much remains still to materialize, not least what should be essential boxes of 20th-century music. But despite variable, usually mono sound, what has already emerged is plenty to prove he was far more than his legend. Without question one of the most important conductors of his century, Rosbaud was also one of the finest.He saw his task as primarily to help composers state their own case. But unlike others who have aimed for a similar interpretive modesty, Rosbaud’s approach was never clinical or didactic. It always had at its core that love that moved Schoenberg. His Bruckner had humanity as well as structure; he took Haydn seriously, early and late alike; his Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were not just intelligible, but blazed with intensity.Claudia Cassidy put her pen on Rosbaud’s typical style in 1962. “Rosbaud gave us a blueprint,” this ordinarily truculent Chicago Tribune critic wrote after hearing him lead Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” “Not the kind that lies inert on the drafting table, but the kind that sets skyscrapers soaring, flings bridges into space and sends imagination spinning into orbit.”Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7SWF Orchestra Baden-Baden, 1957 (SWR)Rosbaud had music in his blood. He was born in Graz, Austria, on July 22, 1895, to Anna Rosbaud, a piano teacher who had taken lessons from Clara Schumann. A single mother who died in 1913, Anna never told her four children who their father was; Arnold Kramish, the biographer of Hans’s brother, Paul, traced their paternity to Franz Heinnisser, at one point the choirmaster of the Graz cathedral.Growing up in a musical family, if a destitute one, Hans played at least four instruments. He attended the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and his first appointment as a conductor came in 1921. He later recalled getting used to “the whistling, ranting and raging” with which audiences would greet his Hindemith, Stravinsky and Schoenberg with the Mainz Symphony in Germany.Rosbaud’s main task in Mainz was to run its music school, and he continued this educational approach to his career after 1929, as conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Rosbaud gave talks on the orchestral instruments, writing pieces like a fughetta for three bassoons as illustrations, and he lectured on Wagner before giving act-by-act broadcasts of the “Ring.” Bartok, Stravinsky and other composers came to perform; Schoenberg spoke on his “Variations,” with Rosbaud giving examples, and also sent in thoughts on “Brahms the Progressive.”Stravinsky, left, and Rosbaud, who was one of that composer’s most devoted interpreters in the Germany of his era.SWREven before Hitler took power in 1933, Rosbaud’s tastes were drawing the attention of what he told Stravinsky was a “chauvinistic movement.” Forced to enlist a family friend in Graz as a fake father to demonstrate his Aryan ancestry, Rosbaud found his once-lauded support for a certain strand of new music now brought him trouble, not least when a disgruntled subordinate reported him to the Gestapo in 1936 for seeing music “in a Jewish sense.” He reassured banished composers that he remained on their side, and tried, without success, to find a job in the United States. He left Frankfurt in 1937 for Münster.Rosbaud despised Nazism, and he likely knew that Paul, his brother, was spying on the German nuclear program for Britain. Still, Hans put his abilities to work for the Nazis, reconciling himself to that service with small acts of resistance. To Berlin, he seemed sound enough to be appointed general music director of occupied Strasbourg, a city that the Nazis sought to turn into a colony for their idea of German art, in 1941. But Rosbaud endeared himself to the Alsatians, speaking French, protecting the musicians and acting with sufficient decency that even Charles Munch, the fiercely antifascist Strasbourgian conductor, thought him beyond reproach.Despite Rosbaud’s work in occupied territory, the American military rushed to clear him in denazification proceedings. Shorn of any unfortunate ideological associations in either his politics or his aesthetics, he was general music director in Munich before 1945 was over: a brief, frantic tenure that saw him give Beethoven and Bruckner cycles in bombed-out halls, and reconnect German musical life to its international context, with Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Stravinsky given pride of place.That work would go on, but not primarily in Munich. An offer in 1948 from Baden-Baden could not be refused, coming as it did with the opportunity to imagine an ensemble from scratch and to fulfill a special mandate for new music, which after 1950 included the Donaueschingen Festival, a hotbed of the avant-garde. An energetic Beethoven Violin Concerto with Ginette Neveu from 1949, as well as a lacerating Hartmann Second and a courageous Messiaen “Turangalîla” shortly after, show that Rosbaud quickly brought the orchestra to a high standard.Haydn’s Symphony No. 104SWF Orchestra Baden-Baden, 1952 (SWR)But he never aspired to the ensemble virtuosity of the more commercially-driven orchestras of the day. His vivacious 1957 account of Haydn’s “London” Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic might be crisper than his 1952 and 1962 efforts in Baden-Baden, but what matters about them all is how their warmth and drive enliven Haydn’s structures, without drawing attention to themselves.The joys of what SWR has unearthed are subtle, not sensational. Those who need grand statements in their Beethoven might be disappointed, whatever the grinding insistence of his Fifth Symphony, the liquid flow of his Sixth, the effervescence of his Eighth. Those who want bombast in their Tchaikovsky will doubt his unmissable Fifth, so full of dark psychological shadows that it is almost redolent of Mahler. And in Mahler, Rosbaud’s early advocacy for whom was characteristic of a conductor so often half a beat ahead of his time, he comes close to ideal.“Mr. Rosbaud does not cut it to pieces or disguise it by ‘interpretation,’” Cassidy wrote of a Mahler Ninth in Chicago in December 1962, in words that also apply to Rosbaud’s Baden-Baden recording from 1954. “He gives it clarity, precision and understanding, which is to shed light on it without blinding its mysteries.”Mahler’s Symphony No. 9SWF Orchestra Baden-Baden, 1954 (SWR)The Chicago Symphony, where Rosbaud had long spells as a guest conductor between 1959 and 1962, considered him to succeed Fritz Reiner as music director. This offered American recognition for the first time, and a chance to develop a craft honed not just in Baden-Baden, but also in Zurich, where he held positions with the Tonhalle Orchestra, and in Aix-en-Provence. There he directed the annual summer festival from 1948, leading operatic Mozart that Virgil Thomson once called “perfection” in its “animation and orchestral delicacy,” and venturing into Gluck and Rameau.But Chicago was not to be. Rosbaud had been weakening since kidney surgery several years before, and after that Mahler Ninth and a brief stop in Baden-Baden, where he gave a serene farewell with Brahms’s Second, he died on Dec. 29, 1962, near Lugano, Switzerland. He was 67. More

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      7 Ways to Remember Martin Luther King in New York

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      From in-person and virtual performances to exhibitions and tours, the city offers plenty of options for honoring the civil rights leader this year.Since 1983, just 15 years after his death, the third Monday in January has been designated as a federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. This year, on Jan. 17, cultural institutions all over New York have planned concerts, exhibitions, service opportunities and tours, both in person and online. (Bring your vaccination card, and check mask-wearing and ticketing policies online beforehand.)Here are seven ways to commemorate the legacy of the civil rights leader and learn more about Black history in New York.An Annual Bash in Brooklynbam.org.The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 36th annual tribute to King, held in person and streaming live at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, will feature a dance piece by Kyle Marshall, set to the oratory of King’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” and performances by the singer Nona Hendryx with Craig Harris & Tailgaters Tales and the Sing Harlem choir. A keynote address will also be delivered by Imani Perry, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University. Following the event, visitors can view a display of digital billboards inspired by the writings of bell hooks or attend a free screening at 1 p.m. of the documentary “Attica,” about the violent 1971 prison uprising.The choreographer Kyle Marshall, who created a dance piece set to the oratory of King’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”Steven SpeliotisActivism and the Artsapollotheater.org.The Apollo Theater and WNYC’s 16th annual celebration will hold two virtual broadcasts on Monday, at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., engaging WNYC radio hosts, scholars and community leaders in a discussion about how the struggle for social justice has affected artists like Nina Simone and John Legend. Guests include the Rev. Al Sharpton, the sports journalist William C. Rhoden and Trazana Beverley, who won a Tony Award for her role in “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The free event can be streamed through the Apollo’s Digital Stage.Learn More About the Metropolitan Museum of Art$125 Million Donation: The largest capital gift in the Met’s history will help reinvigorate a long-delayed rebuild of the Modern wing.Recent Exhibits: Our critics review a masterpiece “African Origin” show, an Afrofuturist period room and a round-the-world tour of Surrealism.Behind the Scenes: A documentary goes inside the Met to chronicle one of the most challenging years of its history.A Guide to the Met: From the must-see galleries to the lesser-known treasures, here’s how to make the most of your visit.Discover Seneca Villagecentralparknyc.org; metmuseum.org.Take a tour of Central Park that conjures Seneca Village, the largest community of free African American property owners in early-19th-century New York. Beginning at Mariners’ Gate near the West 85th Street entrance at 2 p.m. on Saturday, your guide will share how the area, once home to around 1,600 residents, provided a respite from the racial discrimination and crowded conditions of downtown Manhattan — until residents were forcibly displaced in 1857 to make way for Central Park. That history is also the subject of a new, vibrant installation across the park, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room” imagines the home of a Village resident as it might still exist if the family had been left to live undisturbed.Make a Craftwavehill.org.Just before leading the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965, King passed through the hamlet of Gee’s Bend and encouraged its 900 residents to vote. They would go on to establish the Freedom Quilting Bee, a group that allowed women of the town to earn an income by making quilts that were sold at Saks and Sears; some textiles have entered the permanent collection of the Met. You can put your own sewing skills to the test on Saturday or Sunday at Wave Hill House in the Bronx, where plentiful squares of fabric will be on hand.Quiltmaking at Wave Hill House in the Bronx. Joshua BrightChoose a Causeamericorps.govSince King’s birthday was first observed, it’s been a tradition for volunteers across the country to devote the day to service. Whether you commit to a few hours or a whole month, the website of the federal public-service organization AmeriCorps has a directory where you can search for volunteer opportunities (including ones specific to the holiday). There are virtual options, too, like tutoring or transcription for the Smithsonian Institution and National Archives.A Streaming Sermontheaterofwar.com“The Drum Major Instinct,” a sermon King delivered in 1968 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, will be presented on Zoom on Monday at 7 p.m. by Theater of War Productions and the office of Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate. Along with the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the city police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, Williams will take part in a dramatic reading of the text, which challenges people to channel justice, righteousness and peace into acts of service and love. Accompanying them will be performances of music composed in honor of Michael Brown Jr., the 18-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.‘Activist New York’mcny.orgAn ongoing exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York chronicles 350 years of social activism in the city, including civil rights, immigration, transgender activism and women’s rights. It begins with the struggle for religious tolerance during the Dutch colonial period, encompasses debates over nudity, prostitution and contraception in New York, from 1870 to 1930, and ends more recently, with the Movement for Black Lives. New material is added regularly, so it’s one to revisit. More

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      After Its Odds-Defying Run, John Cariani Says Bye to ‘Caroline, or Change’

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      For a little while on Sunday evening, after the final performance of “Caroline, or Change” at Studio 54, the actor John Cariani disappeared from backstage to have his portrait taken upstairs. No one had told the boys, though, and when Cariani reappeared, his young castmates — some of whom had played his son — flocked around, teasing him and hugging him. They were palpably pleased he hadn’t given them the slip.Stuart Gellman, the lost-in-grief clarinetist in Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s Broadway musical, is the first father Cariani has ever played. Stuart — a widower newly remarried to Rose, played by Caissie Levy — is also the first character to tap Cariani’s clarinet skills, dormant for more than 30 years. When the pandemic shutdown delayed the revival of “Caroline” by a year and a half, he used that time to polish them.Clockwise from left: Stuart Zagnit, John Cariani, Adam Makké and Joy Hermalyn in “Caroline or Change.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs the production’s director, Michael Longhurst, said: “He could play a bit, and now he can play astonishingly, which is just a dream.”In a precarious theater season pocked with cancellations, “Caroline” made it the full three months and one day from its first preview to the scheduled end of its limited run without missing a performance. So did Cariani, 52, last seen on Broadway in 2018 in “The Band’s Visit.” (Some actors in that musical played instruments, but he did not.)Cariani’s previous Broadway shows, including “Something Rotten!” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” all continued after his contract with them was up, so giving a closing performance as an original cast member was new to him. On Saturday night, it took him by surprise when sadness crept into his voice midshow. Usually, he said, his feelings wait until later.By Sunday evening, sitting down for an interview in his dressing room, he was only beginning to process his experience with the production. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.In an interview after the final performance on Sunday, Cariani said that his character, Stuart, lives through his clarinet.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTell me about your evolution as a clarinetist.I played from age 10 to probably 19. Seriously, too. In college, I played in the pit orchestra for “Sweeney Todd.” And I didn’t know what the play was. I kept getting in trouble because I was watching instead of playing. And that’s when I realized I don’t want to do this. Whatever that is, that’s what I want to do. And then over the pandemic, I played every day because it was the one thing I knew I could do every day.Did developing your facility as a musician on this show coexist with deepening the character of Stuart?Yeah, the clarinet helped me with the singing and the singing helped with the clarinet. Ann Yee, our choreographer, said, “Remember, it’s all of a whole. So don’t think of it as the clarinet and the part.” It was just continuing to realize how much he communicates through his clarinet and getting to keep learning to communicate through the clarinet.Remarkably, “Caroline, or Change” made it through its entire limited run without missing a performance.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWell, that’s the only part of him that’s not recessive.Exactly. It’s the part that explodes. What was interesting is that means going for broke and making mistakes in front of a thousand people sometimes. I made mistakes in front of people, and I survived. And it was just great.You had three different children playing your son. How did that affect your presence?When I do musicals, I become more of a technician than when I do plays. And then finding freedom within the form is hard. Because I had three different kids, I just felt like — and we all felt this — you have to show up with the kid who’s there. And they’re all very different. One was sweet as can be, and so you want to take care of him. One is funny and wry and probably smarter than me. And that’s fun. And then one is mean. And they all work, because the text supports all three of those interpretations.Tony Kushner, Sharon D Clarke and Jeanine Tesori embraced during the curtain call after the last performance.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHow has doing this show during the pandemic compared with any other Broadway experience you’ve had?It hasn’t felt like Broadway. It hasn’t felt like “The Band’s Visit.” I’m going to say that. Because I feel like they were equally received, very warmly received, which is a blessing. I think the pandemic changed numbers. It’s that simple. The number of people who came. I remember when Omicron hit, I heard that the box office completely stopped, like no one was buying tickets. It was noticeable. Because you could see — and people will probably give me a hard time because I shouldn’t [say this] — but the lights come up sometimes, and I can see the audience. And you see pairs [of seats] all over the place, empty.Some of them are because they didn’t sell, and some of them are because people tested positive.They tested positive; they canceled. I had friends who were going to come this last week. Six couples, all tested positive, couldn’t come. I will say that the past five shows have felt like Broadway. Because it’s our last week, we’ve had really good houses, electric audiences.Audience aside, ticket sales aside, how has it been? You’re not going, I assume, to a closing night party, right? Was there an opening party?We didn’t do any of those things.The show was “so much fun,” Cariani said. “Because it’s a mountain to climb every night.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWhile audience numbers were affected by the pandemic, the show ended strong, Cariana said. “Our last week, we’ve had really good houses, electric audiences.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHow careful have you had to be to make it all the way through?We don’t go out together as a company. You know, you don’t go visit. It’s just not smart right now. You don’t get to know people. That’s the other hard thing. We don’t get to know each other the way other casts have known each other. I had to ask one of the cleaning guys to take his mask off so I could know what he looks like. We wear our masks all the time backstage. We have to remind each other to take them off before we go on sometimes.Really?I wore my mask on for the J.F.K. sequence, when I don’t have to say anything, but I’m up there looking at the TV. Caissie didn’t even notice. You know who noticed? The boys were watching.“I made mistakes in front of people, and I survived,” Cariani said of playing the clarinet onstage. “And it was just great.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesHave you felt safe?The hardest part for me was the commute. I ride on the subway for about 40 minutes total. The first 15 minutes of that ride, most of the people, I would say a good portion of the people, are not masked. A lot of young people, you know? It changes as you go deeper into Manhattan. And then it’s the opposite as you leave.Has this production brought you joy?Caissie and I said this the other night: Right before we come on after “Salty Teardrops,” I was like, “Remember when this was impossible and we said we’re never going to have fun with this? Can you believe how much fun it is?” It’s so much fun. Because it’s a mountain to climb every night.“The Band’s Visit” wasn’t technically difficult for me at all. I had to sing a couple songs, say some words; I had to be there, be present, you know what I mean? But I do think that Sam Sadigursky, who was our clarinet player in “The Band’s Visit,” was a huge influence on me — getting to listen to him every night. And then, I’m not going to lie. It’s fun when Jeanine Tesori comes up to you and says, “I cannot believe you’re playing it all. This is so thrilling.” Because the character plays, and it’s thrilling for her to see the character play. And Tony said that, too. Hugest moment of my life.For any other actor in the part of Stuart, what’s your advice?Remember that half of your role is the clarinet. In rehearsals, I was so focused on getting my singing and my talking right that I was forgetting about living through that clarinet. Even if you don’t play it, figure out how to live through that clarinet. More

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      ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Ousts Adele From No. 1

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      The album of music from the latest Disney animated film climbs to the top of the Billboard 200 after first arriving in November.The soundtrack to “Encanto,” the new Disney animated film, has reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart, displacing Adele’s “30” after a six-week run at the top.The “Encanto” album, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda that draw on salsa and hip-hop and are performed on traditional Colombian instruments, came out in November — initially landing at No. 197 — and has had a steady climb to the top. After the film’s streaming release on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, the soundtrack entered Billboard’s Top 10.One of its numbers, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” is currently the most-streamed song on Spotify, beating out a slew of new tracks by the Weeknd. (The Weeknd’s surprise album, “Dawn FM,” released on Friday with just a few days’ notice, is expected to open with huge numbers on next week’s chart.)The “Encanto” soundtrack, which also features pieces from the film’s score by Germaine Franco, had the equivalent of 72,000 sales in the United States last week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total includes 88 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package. “Encanto” is the first soundtrack to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s chart since “Frozen 2” in late 2019.Adele’s “30” fell to No. 2, while Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 3 in its 52nd week out. While Wallen has been publicly snubbed by the music industry after being caught on video last year using a racial slur — he received no Grammy nominations — “Dangerous” has been an enormous success, with steady fan loyalty.“Dangerous” was the most popular album of 2021, with the equivalent of 3.2 million sales in the United States, according to MRC — beating out “30” and other hits by Olivia Rodrigo and Drake by a wide margin. Since it came out last January, “Dangerous” has remained in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart every week except one, last month, when it was pushed out by a number of Christmas albums.Wallen is scheduled to begin a tour of arenas in February, including a date at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 9.Also this week, Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 4 and Taylor Swift’s Red “(Taylor’s Version)” is No. 5. More

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      Marilyn Bergman, Half of an Oscar-Winning Songwriting Duo, Dies at 93

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      With her husband, Alan, she wrote the lyrics to “The Way We Were” and “The Windmills of Your Mind,” as well as a number of memorable TV themes.Marilyn Bergman, who with her husband, Alan Bergman, gave the world memorable lyrics about “misty watercolor memories” and “the windmills of your mind” and won three Academy Awards, died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93. A spokesman, Ken Sunshine, said the cause was respiratory failure.The Bergmans’ lyrics, set to melodies by composers like Marvin Hamlisch and Michel Legrand, were not everywhere, but it sometimes seemed that way. For many years their words were also heard every week over the opening credits to hit television shows like “Maude,” “Good Times” and “Alice.”The Bergmans and Mr. Hamlisch won the 1974 best-song Academy Award for “The Way We Were,” from the Robert Redford-Barbra Streisand romance of the same name. (The album of that movie’s score also won the Bergmans their only Grammy Award.) Their other best-song winner, “The Windmills of Your Mind” (“Round, like a circle in a spiral/Like a wheel within a wheel”), was written with Mr. Legrand for the 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Their third Oscar was for the score of Ms. Streisand’s 1983 film “Yentl,” also written with Mr. Legrand.The Bergmans with Barbra Streisand at the premiere of “Yentl” in New York in 1983. They shared an Oscar with Michel Legrand for that film’s score.Ron Galella/Barbra Streisand, via ReutersAside from the Oscar winners, their other popular songs included the title track of Frank Sinatra’s album “Nice ’n’ Easy,” written with the songwriter Lew Spence; the poignant ballad “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” from the 1969 movie “The Happy Ending,” with music by Mr. Legrand; and “Where Do You Start?,” written with Johnny Mandel and covered by artists like Tony Bennett, Michael Feinstein and Ms. Streisand.Ms. Streisand released an album of the Bergmans’ songs, “What Matters Most,” in 2011. The compilation “Sinatra Sings Alan & Marilyn Bergman” was released in 2019.Television was a significant part of the Bergmans’ careers as well. They won three Emmy Awards: for the score of the 1976 TV movie “Sybil,” written with Leonard Rosenman; the song “Ordinary Miracles,” written with Mr. Hamlisch and performed by Ms. Streisand in a 1995 concert special; and “A Ticket to Dream,” another Hamlisch collaboration, written for the American Film Institute’s 1998 special “100 Years … 100 Movies.”But their lyrics were probably heard far more often by viewers of popular late-20th-century television series. They wrote the words to the bouncy theme songs for the hit sitcoms “Maude,” “Alice” and “Good Times,” as well as the themes for the nostalgic comedy series “Brooklyn Bridge” and the drama series “In the Heat of the Night.” Their hit “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” best known as a duet by Neil Diamond (who wrote the music) and Ms. Streisand, was originally written for Norman Lear’s short-lived series “All That Glitters.” Early in her career, Ms. Bergman was one of relatively few women in the songwriting business. In a 2007 interview with NPR, she recalled attending meetings of the performance rights organization ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) at which the only women “would be me and a lot of the widows of songwriters who were representing their husbands’ estates.” She was the first woman to serve as president of ASCAP, a position she held from 1994 to 2009.The Bergmans in 1980. “Our experiences in the theater and film have shown us that the two require entirely different kinds of writing,” Ms. Bergman once said, and movies were always the couple’s first love.Associated PressMarilyn Katz was born on Nov. 10, 1928, in the same Brooklyn hospital where Alan Bergman had been born four years earlier. The daughter of Edith (Arkin) and Albert Katz, she attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, now LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.A school friend introduced her to an uncle, Bob Russell, who wrote the lyrics to the Duke Ellington hit “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and would later write the lyrics to “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Marilyn regularly went to his home after school to play piano for him as he wrote.By the time she had earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and English from New York University, she had set aside ideas of a music career and planned to become a psychologist. But a fateful accident sent her back to the arts.In 1956 she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her shoulder. Seeking help during her recuperation, she flew to Los Angeles to stay with her parents, who had moved there. So had Mr. Russell, and when she looked him up he suggested that she do some songwriting herself. Unable to play the piano because of her injury, she recalled many years later, she could not compose and so decided to write lyrics instead.Working under the name Marilyn Keith, she took a job with Mr. Spence, who also worked with Alan Bergman. Mr. Spence introduced the two, and their musical partnership began immediately. They were married two years later.Asked in 2010 on the television program “CBS News Sunday Morning” how she and Mr. Bergman managed to work together while staying married, she said: “The way porcupines make love. Carefully.”Ms. Bergman’s husband survives her, as do their daughter, Julie Bergman, and a granddaughter.In a 2002 interview with American Songwriter magazine, Ms. Bergman defined the difference between an amateur and professional songwriter as “the ability to rewrite” and “not to have fallen so in love with what you have written that you can’t find a better way.”The Bergmans were inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and jointly received a Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2013.Although best known for their movie and television work, the Bergmans did try writing for the Broadway stage, although they did not have much success. “Something More!,” starring Barbara Cook and Arthur Hill, for which they wrote the lyrics and Sammy Fain wrote the music, lasted less than two weeks in 1964. They fared better, but not by much, in 1978 with “Ballroom,” an adaptation of the 1975 TV movie “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” with music by Billy Goldenberg. Despite being produced and directed by Michael Bennett, whose previous Broadway show had been the monster hit “A Chorus Line,” “Ballroom” closed after three months.“Our experiences in the theater and film,” Ms. Bergman told The New York Times in 1982, “have shown us that the two require entirely different kinds of writing.” And movies were always the couple’s first love.“We found we must be more abstract when writing for film,” she said, “because film really speaks more to the preconscious part of the brain, the part of us that dreams.” More

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      Stephen Lawrence, Whose Music Enriched ‘Sesame Street,’ Dies at 82

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      He composed the title song of the landmark album “Free to Be … You and Me.” He then moved on to Big Bird and friends.Stephen Lawrence, who provided a soundtrack of sorts for countless childhoods as the music director for the landmark “Free to Be … You and Me” album and television special and as a longtime composer for “Sesame Street,” died on Dec. 30 at a medical center in Belleville, N.J. He was 82.His wife, Cathy (Merritt) Lawrence, said the cause was multiple organ failure.Mr. Lawrence had a gift for catchy tunes and song constructions that would appeal to young minds.“One of the most effective devices, and for children one of the most important, is repetition,” he wrote in “How to Compose Music for Children,” an essay on his blog. “Did you write a first line you like? Why not repeat it?”The essay went on to show how composers from Beethoven to John Lennon had done just that, and Mr. Lawrence employed the device often on “Sesame Street” classics like “Fuzzy and Blue (and Orange),” a jaunty 1981 number with lyrics by David Axelrod.One of Mr. Lawrence’s most captivating tunes was also one of his first for the children’s market: the title track of “Free to Be … You and Me,” the star-studded 1972 album and book conceived by Marlo Thomas. The record, full of songs and stories celebrating tolerance and busting gender stereotypes, became an enduring hit and was recently selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry of culturally significant works.Mr. Lawrence, working with the lyricist Bruce Hart, was given the task of coming up with the opening number. A memorable folk melody recorded by the New Seekers, it begins with a banjo, an instrument not often heard in the pop and rock music of that time.“Banjo was perfect for the introduction of this song,” Mr. Lawrence said on the radio program “Soundcheck” in an interview marking the 40th anniversary of the album. “It is sort of timeless. It says joy. It says non-sophistication — although some of the album is quite sophisticated. It says: ‘Listen up. This is an unusual instrument you don’t hear every day. It’s going to set up a song you’re going to like.’”Ms. Thomas had recruited a formidable roster of stars to perform on the record. In addition to writing the music for several of the songs, Mr. Lawrence, as the project’s music director, had the task of overseeing recording sessions. That meant working with a quirky array of performers, some of them professional singers and some of them, like Mel Brooks and the football player Rosey Grier, not.Mr. Lawrence was a relative unknown at the time. Recording Diana Ross singing “When We Grow Up” (another “Free to Be” song for which he wrote the music) at Motown’s studios in Los Angeles provided him with a pinch-myself moment.“I arrived at Motown Studios and thought about the many famous recording artists who had recorded there, none more famous than Diana Ross,” he wrote on his blog. “I realized that the entire ‘Free to Be’ project was lifting my career to new heights.”The album was a runaway best seller, and Mr. Lawrence went on to compose more than 300 songs for “Sesame Street.” Beginning in 1989, he was nominated repeatedly, along with the show’s other composers and lyricists, for Daytime Emmy Awards for music direction and composition. He won three times.Mr. Lawrence didn’t work only on children’s material. He composed the music for the 1973 baseball drama “Bang the Drum Slowly,” the 1976 horror movie “Alice, Sweet Alice” and other films, and collaborated on several stage musicals.Ms. Thomas, though, said he was the perfect choice to reach young audiences.“‘Free to Be … You and Me’ was first and always a children’s project,” she said by email, “so it required a composer and musical director who could create songs that sparked the imaginations and touched the hearts of girls and boys everywhere. Stephen was that person. I loved him and I loved working with him.”Stephen James Lawrence was born on Sept. 5, 1939, in Manhattan. His father, Allan, was head of a manufacturing company, and his mother, Helen (Kupfer) Lawrence, was a homemaker.He grew up in Great Neck, on Long Island. He started taking piano lessons at 5, and at 17 he won a New York radio station’s jazz piano contest; the prize was lessons with the pianist Mary Lou Williams.While majoring in music at Hofstra College (now Hofstra University), where he graduated in 1961, he composed music for student shows and other entertainments. One was a musical, “The Delicate Touch”; the book and lyrics were by a fellow student, Francis Ford Coppola.Mr. Lawrence came to the “Free to Be” project through Mr. Hart, with whom he had written some songs and whose wife, Carole Hart, was producing the project with Ms. Thomas. The two women asked Mr. Hart and Mr. Lawrence to come up with a song that would introduce the album and convey what it was about. It was Mr. Hart who came up with the phrase “Free to be you and me” and built that idea into a full song lyric, which he presented to Mr. Lawrence.Marlo Thomas and friends in a scene from the 1974 television special “Free to Be … You and Me,” based on the record album of the same name. Mr. Lawrence was the music director for both.“As sometimes happens,” Mr. Lawrence recalled in his blog, “I got an idea right away and completed the song in one day.”The label, Bell Records, told the group to expect to sell about 15,000 copies. Instead sales soared past the million mark. A 1974 television version, with Mr. Lawrence as music director, added to the phenomenon.The Harts (he died in 2006, she in 2018) and Mr. Lawrence worked together on other projects, including the 1979 television movie “Sooner or Later,” which yielded the Rex Smith hit “You Take My Breath Away,” written by Mr. Hart and Mr. Lawrence.Mr. Lawrence began writing for “Sesame Street” in the early 1980s and continued to do so for years. The job gave him a chance to indulge in a wide assortment of musical styles. One of his earliest compositions for the show was “Kermit’s Minstrel Song” (1981, lyrics by Mr. Axelrod), which called to mind Renaissance-era tunes. Ms. Lawrence said one of her favorites was “Gina’s Dream” (lyrics by Jon Stone), in which Mr. Lawrence did a pretty good job of imitating Puccini.Mr. Lawrence lived in Bloomfield, N.J. His marriage to Christine Jones ended in divorce in 2000. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Hannah Jones Anderson; Ms. Lawrence’s sons, Sam and Nicholas Kline; and a grandson. More

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      The Vitality of Black Criticism

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      Before his death, Greg Tate spoke with four other critics at the Pop Conference about the need for Black writers to face down racist institutions and take the lead in cultural conversations.Last month, popular music lost one of its greatest philosophers and storytellers: The critic, scholar, teacher, musician and New York City grass-roots cultural icon Greg Tate, a towering intellect and a modern-day griot, died at 64. His singular critical prose — in The Village Voice and Vibe, among other outlets, and collected in two anthologies — seamlessly fused dense, dazzling vernacular wisdom and street corner wit with equally intricate ivory tower analytic discourse.When I set out to organize the “dream team” lineup for a round-table session titled “Black Critics Matter” for the 2021 Pop Conference — an annual gathering of journalists, academics, musicians and other creatives — Tate was the first person I contacted. In his 40-year career as a working critic, he revolutionized the form and content of music journalism by centering Blackness as both the analytic framework to engage and experience popular music as well as the language to tell the story of the music itself in living color.Our April session included three other pioneering writers: the critic, poet, novelist, playwright, librettist and scholar Thulani Davis; the New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris; and the veteran music journalist Danyel Smith, the host of the “Black Girl Songbook” podcast and author of the forthcoming “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.” Below are edited excerpts from the hour-plus panel. (The full conversation is available here.)The conversation was wide-roving: at turns, intimate and candid, funny and incisive, moving and brutally honest, and consistently reflective and mindful of the under-acknowledged import of Black critical voices and the role that they play in challenging the racism at the foundations of cultural institutions, and the taste-making power those institutions continue to wield.We started by affirming simple truths: that Black critics have been setting the record straight and engaging Black citizenry “in the making of its own story,” as Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang wrote in 2019, across the centuries, from Frederick Douglass’s sharp observations about blackface minstrelsy to the barrier-breaking journalism of theater and music columnists like Pauline Hopkins, Sylvester Russell and Lester Walton in the late 19th and early 20th century. The long Harlem Renaissance gave us figures like Nora Holt, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. And Amiri Baraka and Phyl Garland wed Black nationalist desire with fierce, experimental music criticism in the Black Arts era.Their work helped lead an intellectual revolution in writing and thinking about the importance of Black sound, but also more broadly showcased the meaning of being an informed, opinionated and passionate listener dedicated to inviting readers into felt and meaningful conversations about the culture that matters to them. Greg Tate carried that tradition forward with a combination of potent love for Black peoples and a swagger fueled by that same deep and unbridled affection. In April, when the annual PopCon holds its 20th anniversary gathering in Brooklyn, it’ll be a second-line lovefest for one of its greatest voices.DAPHNE A. BROOKS Many of us have been thinking for some time about the absolutely crucial role that critics of color, that women critics, that L.G.B.T.Q. critics can and have played in shifting and opening up and challenging the kinds of conversations, the value systems, taste-making, and gatekeeping rituals and processes that have long dominated mainstream popular music criticism. If 2020 reminded us of anything, it’s that the struggle for African American autonomy in the American body politic is a multifaceted one tied to necessary and interlocking social, political as well as cultural revolutions in valuing Black life. Culture critics, we know, play a pivotal role in identifying and narrating the dimensions of that value. But in the history of popular music culture across the 20th and 21st centuries, how often have we extensively imagined Black folks as critics, as knowledge producers in relation to their own expressive cultures?GREG TATE I discovered that music critics existed because I was doing research for a comic book I wanted to write back in the early ’70s. I went to the library and got all the books about music that I could find, one of which was Amiri Baraka’s “Black Music.” And after that, I exchanged comic book superheroes for great Black music superheroes, because the way Baraka wrote about Sun Ra, Archie Shepp and Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor elevated them to the level of superheroes to me.The way he was able to bring his poetics into writing about music and left these indelible lines — these things, they’ve formed my own critical perspective, my own critical understanding of the way in which the opportunity to talk about the music is of course the opportunity to bring our whole lives to who we are. And it’s also the reason that most of us who were writing in the ’80s and ’90s really became, or were, multidisciplinary artists. We never thought that criticism was the be all and end all of what we had to offer.Between I’d say 1977 and 2000, there was a community of Black writers in New York: The Voice first, but then The Source and then Vibe. So all of us come into the game thinking of Black criticism is something we do as a gang. And because you had the near instant gratification of response from the community, you knew what you were writing was having impact. With The Voice, if it came out on Wednesday, you knew by Saturday what people were thinking of it.WESLEY MORRIS At some point I figured out that there were definitely some gaps in terms of who was speaking and who was writing about what. I would spend hours on end watching BET, VH1 and MTV, and you start to see that there are people being put in boxes by these programmers. I mean Joan Armatrading? She was never on MTV. I could see that there were things that needed to be addressed, or redressed, in terms of who was being acknowledged, whose existences were being acknowledged. There are Black women who’ve made music that changed my life that have never received a review in any magazines. The thoroughest description I got was Vibe, when it showed up. Because I had been waiting for that. I had been waiting for people to acknowledge that there was some merit to this music.I’ve noticed in the last 10 years, say, but it’s probably even older than that, that there is a real reluctance to seriously engage with the work and the craft of the work and what pop music is doing, what it sounds like. I don’t know if that’s a fear of getting it wrong. I don’t know if that’s a fear of what Twitter might do to you if you do get it wrong. This is related to a question of ethics, which is what is falling in that lacuna between greatness and crap that only criticism can both explicate and reify in some way. To me, it feels like a crisis that nobody’s really acknowledging, but I think that’s because there still aren’t enough Black people to pick that work up and do something.DANYEL SMITH Listen, it’s the criticism that’s missing in action without question. I am consistently, constantly in a mild panic about the music that has been created over the last 15 to 20 years that has not been listened to like it’s real music. I am concerned about artists like Cardi B and Drake, who are literally the biggest stars in the entire world, and their music is not talked about with a lot of seriousness. Comparing it to what happened in the past, comparing it to what could happen in the future, the context of when it came out to when it didn’t. Again, as an editor, I say, what about the knowing, deeply reported stories and the profiles that are not being written? The columns?It has to do, I think with there being a generation of Black writers who have not really ever worked with Black editors. And I think, flawed as we were, at Vibe, XXL, The Source, Essence — there were hip-hop magazines all over — there has not been enough of “I’m a Black editor that knows a lot; and I’m a Black writer that wants to know more.” I don’t know where they’re happening. Not nearly enough, anyway.TATE Well, I’ll first say, and this is in response to Wesley: Internet killed the Black music journalist star or the Black music star publication. But that was a different world we existed in just in terms of the power that labels had, right? If you wanted your music, you had to get it in a CD form from a major label. So the work we did as independent writers, and as “Blacketty-Black” as we were in the writing, it was very much tied to the commercial life of those publications: the ads The Voice got, Vibe got, Source got from labels. So on just a base level, what we were doing was glorified consumer reporting. That’s why those voices mattered, but what also happened around 2000 and in the arts was that the published pool of writers on hip-hop shifted more from Black to white. Why? Most of our colleagues by that time had just moved out of doing music journalism at all. People grew up, they had marriages, they had kids, kids needed to be fed and properly clothed and sent to the right school. And hip-hop at that point blew up in the suburbs in a major way. But the thing was that notion of Black writing being essential to one’s understanding of the culture, where the culture was no longer the culture as we’d known it in ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.BROOKS: But let’s be real, right. We know historically that jazz and blues criticism has been the domain of white men.TATE Yeah and certainly, that’s the radical transformation that hip-hop criticism offers. It was the first time in the history of the music that Black writers were writing about it authoritatively as it was being created.THULANI DAVIS But I want to say there, you all are talking out of a wealth of information …. This is the moment to teach young people that they’re in a continuum, because I don’t know that they’re aware of that. The one thing about the ’60s and the ’70s was everybody got some education about what happened before them and what the continuum was like. This is a particularly good time to ask, “What is it that the critic needs to know?” Because any critic of anything needs to know something more than the last 25 years of their lives. They need to know everything you all have been talking about.I think also there’s this idea that everybody has a platform, everybody can be a platform …. I do think people have to think about working together, because one of the things about the culture right now, it’s one star at a time. The collective conversation would be useful. We need to keep asking how do we push awareness, taste, interesting writing styles? How do we push forward? I think it can’t be one at a time. I don’t think that’ll work in the way that information is disseminated now.TATE I just want to paraphrase Baldwin: “Ours is a story that must be told again and again and again, because the erasure goes on as the culture is emerging.” You can’t reboot the institutional access that we had in that particular moment because of how incendiary the culture was in that period. People were coming up with new paradigms for what hip-hop or rap was every week, it changed. There was just an understanding that there needed to be writers who were on the ground, who got it, who lived it, embodied it at a certain level.We haven’t even tracked the kind of self-making, cultural transformation of the landscape that got affected by all this writing, by these gangs of folks being at these institutions at that particular time. The conversation about hip-hop that is still sustained is the one that we created in the ’80s and ’90s. And it extended, of course, to what was happening in Black academia, what was happening in Black film.BROOKS So it means that at the point in which we’re writing about popular music, for instance, we’re asking questions that start with, “What are the conditions that created this music in the first place?” We need to start at that level. We need to start at 1619 before we can actually get to the place of critics being able to dissect and write really beautifully about the richness, the depth, the urgency and complexity of what our music is, why we made it, what it means to us. It’s a 400-year story. More