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      Rhiannon Giddens Reflects on Biscuits and Banjos Festival

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      Not long ago, Rhiannon Giddens knew every Black string musician. The dedicated few were largely collaborators and colleagues, many of whom met a generation ago at the landmark Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C.Giddens, the folk musician and recipient of all the accolades (Grammys, a Pulitzer, a MacArthur), no longer knows everyone who followed her path. That expansion, she figured, was reason to celebrate.She did so the last weekend of April at her inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival in Durham, N.C., a jamboree featuring twangy banjos, groovy basses, clickety bones and, yes, the devouring of many flaky, buttery biscuits.Festivalgoers dance at the Biscuits & Banjos festival in Durham, N.C.Kate Medley for The New York TimesThe festival culminated in a reunion by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Black string band led by Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson. The group met at the Boone gathering, taking apprenticeship under the old-time fiddle player Joe Thompson.The Grammy-winning band resuscitated styles like Piedmont string music, presenting them to a broader audience.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 Music

      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sonny Rollins

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      Walter Theodore Rollins: the “saxophone colossus.” Jazz’s Prometheus, its Siddhartha and its heavyweight champ. Or, as Nate Chinen once put it in a New York Times review of one of Rollins’s marathon-like concerts, “the great unflagging sovereign of the tenor saxophone.”Growing up in 1940s Harlem, Sonny Rollins idolized swing-era heavyweights like Coleman Hawkins and jump-blues saxophonists like Louis Jordan. But when he heard Charlie Parker and the torrid improvisations of Parker’s bebop revolution, which was overtaking Harlem’s clubs, Rollins’s world changed. “He was going against the grain,” Rollins is quoted saying of Parker in “Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins,” Aidan Levy’s authoritative biography. “Highly intricate, involved, complicated, intellectual.”Sonny Rollins at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2012.Jack Vartoogian/Getty ImagesFor Rollins, bebop’s emphasis on physical tenacity and fast-paced intellect became a personal religion. Many of the tunes he wrote have become jazz standards — including some on the list below, like “St. Thomas,” “Oleo” and “Airegin” — but as soon as he composed them, he invariably set about tearing them apart, recasting them, allowing the substance to push against the limits of its own form until it burst, and then to see how that bursting could be multiplied.Sonny Rollins’s sound is as uncapturable as it is memorable, so you’re left with nothing to do except to keep on listening. In the same way that, over his seven-decade career and across more than 60 albums, Rollins wanted nothing more than to simply keep playing. Rollins, who will turn 95 this summer, has not performed publicly since 2012, for health reasons. But he remains indefatigable as a listener. Interviews with him are still liable to veer toward his favorite contemporary saxophonists — some of whom weigh in on the list below.Read on for a ride through Rollins’s catalog, guided by a team of musicians, scholars and critics. Find playlists embedded below, and don’t forget to leave your own favorites in the comments.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

      ‘Sinners’ and Beyoncé Battle the Vampires. And the Gatekeepers, Too.

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      This moment might call for excessive, imaginative Black art that wants to be gobbled up. That’s Ryan Coogler’s new movie. That’s “Cowboy Carter.” Let’s throw in some Kendrick, too.When Beyoncé wails, in the opening moments of her “Cowboy Carter” album, that “them big ideas are buried here,” I’ve imagined “big” standing in for “racist” but have never hit pause to wonder about the GPS coordinates. That song’s called “Ameriican Requiem,” so the cemetery is everywhere. And yet partway through Ryan Coogler’s hit “Sinners,” I thought, Oh, this is where ‘here’ is, inside a movie about a 1932 juke joint whose music is so soulful that vampires, who are also a white minstrel trio, want to suck its blood.She’s envisioning utopia — a place where a Black woman feels free to make any kind of music she wants, including country. He’s imagined a nightmare in which Black art is doomed to be coveted before it’s ever just simply enjoyed. She’s defying the gatekeepers. He’s arguing that some gates definitely need to be kept. To that end, the movie keeps a gag running wherein vampire etiquette requires a verbal invitation to enter the club, leading to comic scenes of clearly possessed, increasingly itchy soul junkies standing in a doorway begging to be let in. People have been calling certain white performers interested in Black music vampires for years. Here’s a movie that literalizes the metaphor with an audacity that’s thrilling in its obviousness and redundancy.There’s never a bad time for good pop art. There’s never a bad time for Black artists to provide it. But these here times? Times of hatchet work and so-called wood-chipping; of chain saws, as both metaphor and dispiriting political prop; a time of vandalistic racial gaslighting. These times might call for an excessive pop art that takes on too much, that wants to be gobbled up and dug into, an art that isn’t afraid to boast I am this country, while also doing some thinking about what this country is. These here times might call for Black artists to provide that, too, to offer an American education that feels increasingly verboten. That’s not art’s strong suit, pointing at chalkboards. But if school systems are being bullied into coddling snowflakes, then perhaps, on occasion, art should be hitting you upside the head and dancing on your nose.Beyoncé on the opening night of her “Cowboy Carter” tour in Los Angeles last month.The New York TimesNow, it’s true that the knobbiest moments on “Cowboy Carter” and in “Sinners” are the equivalent of diagramed sentences. The album uses elders to do its explaining. Before “Spaghettii” gets underway, the singer and songwriter Linda Martell stops by to dissertate on the limitation of genres; Dolly Parton connects her “Jolene” to the home-wrecker in Beyoncé’s now nine-year-old “Sorry”; and Willie Nelson, as the D.J. on KNTRY, Beyoncé’s fictional broadcast network, turns his dial past some real chestnuts to tee up “Texas Hold ’Em.” They’re vouching for the validity of her project’s scope and sincerity, while, especially in Martell’s case, spelling everything out.The spelling in “Sinners” happens right in the middle of its young protagonist’s first big blues number. Earlier, we’d gotten a taste of what Sammie (Miles Caton), a preacher’s boy, could do. Caton’s molasses baritone and impaling guitar work were really doing it for me when the sound muffles, and in come not one but two micro lectures about this music’s power to “pierce the veil between the present and the past.” And as these explanations of Black music tumble forth, I was surprised to find a very Funkadelic fellow making love to an electric guitar right next to Sammie. Over by the kitchen twerks a woman arguably conjured from some extremely City Girls place. The temperature of instruments changes from live drums to what sound like drum machines. And I soon spy dashikied tribesmen, b-boys, a ballerina and, I’m pretty sure, a decked-out Chinese folk singer, and they’re all gettin’ in the way of the blues.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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      Baltimore’s Brandon Woody Channels His Hometown on ‘For the Love of It All’

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      “To get here, it hasn’t been a yellow brick road. Even now, it’s not no damn yellow brick road,” the trumpeter and composer Brandon Woody said on a video call from a Fort Myers, Fla., hotel room. It was mid-March and Woody, 26, was in between tour stops supporting Luther S. Allison. In the weeks leading up to the release of his first album as a bandleader, his eyes glimmered with vigor.The road he spoke of was both metaphorical and literal. Woody has earned a fortunate position among 20-something peers like Allison and the Toronto electro-jazz group BadBadNotGood (with whom he toured this spring). To get there he traveled a serpentine, sometimes-rocky path through institutionalized jazz education that has, for others, been a prerequisite for obtaining a record deal with a grande dame of jazz labels. It took him from Boston to Stockton, Calif. to New York, in search of a breakthrough that he eventually got — in his hometown, Baltimore.“I’m always going to be a little bit jagged around the edges,” he said of his music. “You’re going to hear my struggles, but you’re also going to hear my celebrations and my successes. This is a homegrown thing, and it’s going to stay that.”“I’m always going to be a little bit jagged around the edges,” Woody said.Kyle Myles for The New York TimesOn Friday, Blue Note Records will release “For the Love of It All,” an album he and his Baltimore-based band Upendo (Swahili that translates roughly to “love”) honed not in the studio, but in front of audiences, primarily in his hometown. At club performances over the past half decade, fans would find ways to request songs that had never been recorded and weren’t yet titled. “People would remember the songs and be like, ‘Yo, when are you going to do,’ — and just sing it because they know the melody,” Woody recalled.The multidisciplinary artist and fellow-Baltimore native Nia June helped title some of the tracks that appear on his album. After “telling her about the story line and what the songs meant to me,” he explained, she worked to synthesize the ideas as titles. June, a filmmaker, poet and writer who has worked with Woody extensively since 2020, described the common thread of artists in the city: They are “brave, real and radically vulnerable.” She added, “The people here possess an unnatural resiliency — an unashamed, relentless will to survive. And with style.”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 Music

      André 3000 Drops Surprise Album After Met Gala Piano Statement

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      The rapper and musician’s miniature Steinway teased his new album, “7 piano sketches,” which he released on Monday.It can be a challenge to make an impression on the Met Gala’s red carpet, especially when the competition includes Diana Ross wearing a feathered overcoat with an 18-foot-long train, Bad Bunny toting a bag fit for a bowling ball, and Rihanna arriving fashionably late — with a baby bump.But there are spectacles and there are spectacles, and André 3000 fit nicely into the latter category when he showed up to the festivities on Monday night with a grand piano strapped to his back.“I’m sorry,” the actress Natasha Lyonne said while being interviewed on the red carpet, “there’s a piano coming.”It was a statement piece and a nifty bit of marketing by André 3000, a rapper and musician whose appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit coincided with the release of his new album, “7 piano sketches,” which he described in an Instagram post as “improvisations” and included a drawing of himself in a version of his Met Gala outfit. The instrumental piano album follows one in which he focused entirely on the flute — a sharp departure from his days in the rap duo Outkast.Beyond the promotion of his new album, his outfit on Monday was carefully planned, both to highlight the event’s theme, which centered on Black style and dandyism, and its dress code, “Tailored For You.”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

      The National Endowment for the Arts Begins Terminating Grants

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      The endowment told arts organizations that it was withdrawing or canceling current grants just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in the next fiscal year.The National Endowment for the Arts withdrew and canceled grant offers to numerous arts organizations around the country on Friday night, sending a round of email notifications out just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in his next budget.The move, although not unexpected, was met with disappointment and anger by arts administrators who had counted on the grants to finance ongoing projects.In Oregon, Portland Playhouse received an email from the endowment just 24 hours before opening a production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” an acclaimed work that is part of the playwright’s series of 10 dramas about African Americans through the course of the 20th century. The N.E.A. had recommended a $25,000 grant for the show, which would have paid about one-fifth of the production’s personnel costs.“Times are tough for theaters — we’re already pressed, and in this moment where every dollar matters, this was a critical piece of our budget,” said Brian Weaver, the theater’s producing artistic director. “It’s ridiculous.”The emails were sent to arts administrators from an address at the endowment that did not accept replies. “The N.E.A. is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the president,” the emails said. “Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.”The emails went on to say that the endowment would now prioritize projects that “elevate” historically Black colleges and universities, and colleges that serve Hispanic students. The emails also said the endowment would focus on projects that “celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster A.I. competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.”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 Music

      AriAtHome Walks the Streets, Making Beats (and New Friends)

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      On the SoHo corner where Prince and Elizabeth Streets meet, dog walkers, errand runners and lunch breakers squinted through the April sun at the part man, part beat-emanating automaton approaching them.Ari Miller, 25, known by his artist name AriAtHome, is a New York-based wayfaring musician who turns heads with his mobile beat-making rig. Donning a get-up that looks like a cross between a Ghostbusters proton pack and a ballpark-vendor tray, he dishes out on-the-spot hip-hop, neo-soul, funk and house beats throughout the city’s streets, all created entirely from scratch without breaking stride.“I built the rig with New York City in mind,” Miller said. “When you make a good song with a stranger in the street it’s like, ‘Whoa, did we just become best friends?’”Ari Miller (a.k.a. AriAtHome) at work, with his videographer Dylan Goucher capturing the scene and livestreaming. Miller making his way up subway stairs wearing 55 pounds of gear.The guts of the machinery Miller and a friend assembled for his mobile music project.Crammed with keyboards, a looper, six speakers and a controller with dozens of knobs and faders, Miller’s Frankenstein instrument offers a buffet of drum, keyboard and bass sounds, interfaced through the music software Ableton. In the back, a mess of cables hides a Mac Mini M4, a modem and the hot-swappable camera batteries that power it all.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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      Jill Sobule, Singer of ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ Dies in House Fire

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      Ms. Sobule, 66, died Thursday morning in Woodbury, Minn., her publicist said. She had been scheduled to perform songs from her musical later in the week.Jill Sobule, the singer and songwriter whose hit “Supermodel” and gay anthem “I Kissed a Girl” were followed by three decades of touring, advocacy and a one-woman musical, died on Thursday morning in a house fire in Woodbury, Minn., according to her publicist. She was 66.The Public Safety Department in Woodbury, a Minneapolis suburb, said that firefighters had responded at 5:30 a.m. to a house that was engulfed in flames. The homeowners said one person was possibly still inside. Firefighters found the body of a woman in her 60s inside the house, the department said.The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.Ms. Sobule was scheduled to perform songs from her one-woman musical, “F*ck7thGrade,” on Friday at the Swallow Hill Music venue in her hometown, Denver, according to her publicist. She was staying with friends in Minnesota while she rehearsed for the musical, the publicist said.A free, informal gathering will be held in Ms. Sobule’s honor instead.On her 1995 self-titled album, Ms. Sobule, who was bisexual, featured “I Kissed a Girl,” which tells the story of a woman kissing her female friend. The song came out when it was “dicey” to be a queer musician, Ms. Sobule recalled. But it broke into the mainstream, making its way onto the Billboard charts.“Supermodel,” a rebellious rock song from the same album, was included on the soundtrack of the romantic comedy “Clueless” and further cemented Ms. Sobule’s popularity.“People call me a one-hit wonder,” Ms. Sobule said in a 2022 interview with The New York Times. “And I say, ‘Wait a second, I’m a two-hit wonder!’”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