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‘Wakanda Forever’ Forges International Alliances on a Somber Soundtrack
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Disco Is Back. And So Is Donna Summer.
Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWesley Morris and Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Donna Summer’s 1977 hit “I Feel Love” is the inspiration for the final track on Beyoncé’s new album, “Renaissance.” Summer became the queen of disco in the ’70s, but her catalog goes much further than that. You can hear her legacy in decades of electronic and R&B. “She is an architect of the pop culture we experience today,” J says.In this episode, J and Wesley revisit her 1982 album, “Donna Summer” — and explore why, out of all of her music, this self-titled album is the most distinctly Donna.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photo by Harry Langdon/Getty ImagesHosted by: Wesley Morris and J WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley, Hans Buetow and Christina DjossaEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrSpecial thanks: Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Eslah Attar and Julia Moburg. More
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Jovan Adepo and Thundercat on Jazz, Superheroes and Ego Death
Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the “Watchmen” actor and the musician.The anime-loving singer and jazz-trained bassist known as Thundercat occupies such a specific place in popular music, it’s easy to forget how ubiquitous he is: Apart from his own funk- and jazz-inflected R&B releases, the 38-year-old artist (born Stephen Bruner in Los Angeles) has collaborated over the years with everyone from Erykah Badu to Kendrick Lamar to the California crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies.The 34-year-old actor Jovan Adepo, born in England but raised mostly in Maryland, is also approaching his own left-of-mainstream breakout: He first gained notice in the 2016 film version of August Wilson’s “Fences” (1986), acting opposite Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, the latter of whom directed the movie and became something of a mentor. After appearing in HBO’s “Watchmen” in 2019 as the masked vigilante Hooded Justice, Adepo will next be seen in the director Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” (out Christmas Day), in which he plays the fictional jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer in a historical epic set in 1920s Hollywood, as it transitioned from silent films to talkies.Having just played a trumpeter — he first tried his hand at the instrument in middle school — Adepo’s been thinking a lot about musicians he admires, and Thundercat topped the list: Both have tattoos honoring the goofy 1980s cartoon that inspired the latter’s mononym, and they also have overlapping interests in jazz, superheroes and the power of faith in making art, all of which informed a conversation in October at a studio in Los Angeles, in the middle of the city they also share.Jovan Adepo: Thundercat, we’ve actually met before — we have a mutual friend, and you were playing in England and I came to see you, but we missed the set because my friend and I stopped for food.Thundercat: You can’t ever let him live that down.J.A.: We stayed and watched the rest of the show: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were performing, and then I had a couple of drinks and was like, “I may never meet this dude, so I’m going to say what’s up.” My dad told me, “Be cool about it. You’re a grown man. Shake his hand.” That’s exactly what I hope I did, but I was mad awkward.T.: I remember it, it’s cool. You should always say something, always give the person their flowers while they’re alive. But I’ve definitely been cussed out a couple of times for trying to say hi: once with Drake’s security team — nobody has put hands on me like that other than my dad.T Magazine: Does being in the business and knowing how it works make it harder to form close relationships with other artists?T.: You attract what you are, but Los Angeles is the epitome of turned-on-its-head: Whatever you thought, it can change at the drop of a hat. You can go from being poor to the richest man in the world. Your life can end within five minutes of you touching a substance. You meet a lot of fake people — a lot of people who can’t wait to project and let you know who they think they are. But when the real ones come around, it’s timeless.Adepo as Sidney Palmer in “Babylon” (2022), directed by Damien Chazelle.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesT Magazine: Jovan, when did you start following Thundercat’s work?J.A.: I first got introduced to his music in college — I was obsessed. And then I got this tattoo [inspired by the 1985-89 “ThunderCats” cartoon] in 2020. Mine was a gift from a tattoo artist in Los Angeles after my Emmy nomination [for “Watchmen”].I grew up with music: My dad was big on jazz, and that’s partly why I wanted this part in “Babylon.” One of my favorite songs is John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s “Lush Life” (1963). It’s incredibly depressing, but a beautiful song. I have it on vinyl, and that’s played in my house all the time.T Magazine: Thundercat, you were in a jazz band in high school. What’s your relationship to the genre now?T.: For me, it’s about composing and writing. The act of improvisation, it’s built into my DNA. That’s the only way I can describe it. Jazz can be a shade or hue of something — and it’s important to always express the jazz in the music, because that’s not only our history [as Black people and Americans] but it also represents the want for something different, the stab in different directions.But it’s always in relation to what’s going on in pop culture at the time. Everyone loves what Kendrick did [with 2015’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” to which Thundercat contributed]. That’s one of the highest points of jazz music, but it always takes something new to remind people what jazz is.T Magazine: It goes back to the fundamentals. Jovan, how did you develop yours with acting?J.A.: I was playing football in college, but I was trash. If you ever have a dream of going pro, you’re sometimes the last to realize if that’s not an attainable goal. I was also doing church plays, and there was a lady who came up to me and said, “You’re so good. You should get into acting. I have a sister in Los Angeles who’s doing her thing.” Fast-forward, I decide I want to come out to L.A. just to write screenplays, and her sister was Viola Davis. That’s how I met her, in 2013, and she told me, “You need to study everything. You didn’t go to Juilliard. So you need to go to every acting class. And if there’s anything that you can do better, make a living doing that.”My first job was “The Leftovers” [from 2015-17]. That was with no résumé, but the creator of the show, Damon Lindelof, saw my audition and was like, “That guy.” He took me out of Inglewood, working at Sunglass Hut.T.: Being a musician is also its own terror — there was never a point in my life where I wasn’t one, but there were a couple of summers that I worked at the comic store.J.A.: Being discovered doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a collection of small happenings. When I met with Viola and her husband [Julius Tennon], it wasn’t like, “We’re gonna put you in our next gig.” It was like, Get to work. And maybe we’ll run into each other in line.T.: In the great words of Floyd Mayweather: “Hard work.”J.A.: Heart first.T.: For me, I look at my albums more like snapshots or photos of where I am. I don’t like talking about this, but I spent many years as an alcoholic. There were different degrees, but it was very cloudy for me for a long time. Even with the album “Drunk” (2017), there came a moment where I had to be honest with myself about what that was. It served a purpose. If I was still dealing with those things, I would probably be dead.T Magazine: How do you get around your ego when first collaborating with folks like Washington and Lamar, and still make great art?J.A.: My ego was nonexistent.T.: Ego death is a real thing.J.A.: It behooves you to come in with your palms open and be able to learn. And that’s served me well. I’ve always been good at confiding in older actors, and I just like hanging around older people better. They make fun of you: Denzel called me “peanut head.”T.: I toured with Erykah Badu for many years, recording on the [2000s “New Amerykah”] albums. Once, we were in prayer before going onstage. And she had this moment where she was like [to the rest of the band], “I don’t know if any of y’all knew, Thundercat is an artist. I just want you to understand he’s different.” She used to put me right up front with her and we would dance. That woman changed my life. She showed me what it means to be an artist.T Magazine: You both have a deep fondness for comics. There’s an argument that, in a more secular world, superheroes act as our gods. Do you think of them like that?J.A.: That’s a hard question to answer —T.: Superheroes have attributes that are otherworldly for sure. Art is meant to inspire, and you’ve got different generations when it comes to comics: “Superman” was [originally] important [in the 1930s] because it made kids’ minds wander. A lot of times — even when you read things like the Bible — you hear these stories, but you’re wanting to touch and feel them. Comics create a tangibility.This is not me saying God is or isn’t real. I grew up Christian. You get different versions and different iterations, but those connections create respect at a young age. It stays with you.J.A.: That’s also my upbringing. My mom was a missionary in our church, and my dad is a deacon. They would always call when I was going in for little roles and I’d say, “I don’t know why I’m an actor, I’m not that great,” to which they responded, “When was the last time you prayed?” That question makes you feel awkward, like, you know you’re gonna lie. But then they’re always like, “I’m praying for you, a lot of hands are praying for you.” You gotta have something like that to keep you centered.T.: Oh, yeah. This world will kill you.T Magazine: How do you define success?J.A.: It’s funny because I feel like a lot of actors, when they get questions like that, say that they do this solely for the art. But if that were the consensus for all actors, we could just do monologues in our basement, you know? I want people to see me.T.: It’s multifaceted.J.A.: You want to be able to vibe with your music, but then you also want to be able to feed your family and see the fruits of your labor. But I think, for me, it just starts with wanting to be remembered.This interview has been edited and condensed.Grooming: Simone at Exclusive Artists Management. Photo assistant: Jerald Flowers More
- in Theater
Review: In ‘Where the Mountain Meets the Sea,’ Missed Connections
A father and a son recall parallel journeys that reflect shared experiences of otherness in Jeff Augustin’s play, performed with music by the Bengsons.Migration doesn’t necessarily have a set endpoint. Looking for belonging in an unfamiliar place, and lingering over memories of what’s been left behind, can result in a perpetually itinerant state of mind. For the Haitian schoolteacher who legally gains passage to the United States in “Where the Mountain Meets the Sea,” that means giving up a fulfilling vocation to handle strangers’ baggage at the Miami airport while hoping to find love and start a family.It’s evident that Jean (played with an almost childlike wonder by Billy Eugene Jones) gets his wish, because he’s joined onstage by his son, Jonah (Chris Myers), who has moved across the country to study linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles — another act of flight toward the unknown. Set apart in time and place, father and son each carry a microphone and address the audience in alternating confessional monologues. In Jonah’s present, Jean is already dead, his ashes waiting to be retrieved and spread. Jonah intends to retrace in reverse a road trip his parents took from Florida to California when his mother was pregnant, to experience America as they did and perhaps understand something about his roots.Myers, foreground, with the Bengsons, far left, and Jones, far right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a bit of cross-pollination, that heritage includes folk music from the American South, or what Jean calls “mountain music,” which offered him echoes of Haiti and became a conduit for both the melancholy and joy of his adventures in displacement. This part-concert-style staging of Jeff Augustin’s play, a Manhattan Theater Club production that opened on Wednesday at New York City Center, is performed with music by Abigail and Shaun Bengson, a husband-and-wife duo known as the Bengsons whose musical setup on the blond-wood, semicircular set (by Arnulfo Maldonado) includes acoustic banjo and guitar. Their mournful, evocative songs — about longing, loss and unresolved feelings — are interspersed throughout the men’s recollections, punching up the emotional tenor.Father and son recall parallel journeys that reflect shared experiences of otherness and their psychic separation. Jean remarks on moments of alienation he experienced as a Black immigrant, and Jonah points to those he encounters as a Black gay man. Both relay their histories by way of past lovers, an illustration of mutual appetites. But the depth of their characterizations are unevenly balanced, and the play is considerably more insightful about the psychology of its immigrant father than of his queer son. While Jean’s talk of lost loves tends to reveal more about who he is and what he wants, Jonah’s descriptions of conquests linger on surface details — a ginger daddy’s Haitian-blue eyes, a Nigerian’s lean muscular arms — that tend to deflect attention away from their observer. In performance, too, Jones lends Jean a warm and wistful soul-searching quality, while Myers’s more mannered take keeps Jonah at a distance.Under the direction of Joshua Kahan Brody, “Where the Mountain Meets the Sea” feels like a kind of formal experiment, combining spoken text, live music and, occasionally, freestyle movement to capture the nomadic experience of building a life without a homeland. The 80-minute show is most poignant when these elements work in concert rather than run alongside each other, as when Myers and Shaun Bengson (stepping in as a guy Jonah meets on the road) engage in a loose-limbed dance-off, or when Jones’s Jean sings a forlorn refrain. But at other times, the connective thread between the show’s different modes of performance feel tenuous and less than fully realized.That formal fragmentation, and the fact that Jean and Jonah don’t directly interact, highlights the ache and frustration of their estrangement. But at least some of that frustration may be passed along to the audience, particularly since Jonah’s interior life remains elusive even as he assumes a kind of dishy posture. The plainest glimpse we get into what he wants comes from sentiments that his father regrets leaving unspoken — that his son is smart, beautiful and enough — the kind of obvious wish fulfillment it would be tough to begrudge anyone, even a relative stranger.Where the Mountain Meets the SeaThrough Nov. 27 at New York City Center Stage I, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More
- in Music
Aaron Carter, Singer, Dies at 34
Mr. Carter, who released his first album at age 9 and “Aaron’s Party” at age 12, was the younger brother of Nick Carter, a member of the Backstreet Boys.Aaron Carter, the singer and actor who briefly became a teenage sensation in the early 2000s and who was known for the hit song “I Want Candy,” was found dead on Saturday at his home in Southern California. He was 34.Taylor Helgeson, a representative for Big Umbrella, an entertainment management company, confirmed Mr. Carter’s death but declined to comment on the cause.The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call at Mr. Carter’s home in Lancaster, Calif., on Saturday and found a person dead at the residence, according to Deputy Alejandra Parra, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department. Officials said they could not yet confirm that it was Mr. Carter.Mr. Carter, who released his first album at age 9 and the popular album “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)” at age 12, became a fixture of teenage programming and magazines and made appearances on shows like “Lizzie McGuire.”“Aaron’s Party” peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 list, selling some three million copies. He released five studio albums and was a contestant on the show “Dancing With the Stars.”His career later stalled, and in recent years he has been embroiled in legal trouble and has shared his struggles with addiction. In 2018, he released his first album in some 15 years, “Love,” to lukewarm reviews.Aaron Carter performing at the South Street Seaport in New York City in 2003.Stuart Ramson/Getty ImagesMr. Carter, who was described in The New York Times as a “tween heartthrob,” began performing at age 7, singing lead for the band Dead End for two years, according to an online biography.At 9, he was opening for the Backstreet Boys in Berlin for his first solo appearance. (His older brother, Nick Carter, was a member of the band.)The performance led to a record contract and then the release of his first single, “Crush on You.” He also opened for Britney Spears.Mr. Carter was also an actor, guest-starring in shows like “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “7th Heaven.” He also performed on Broadway, appearing in “Seussical,” the Dr. Seuss-themed musical, and “The Fantasticks,” the world’s longest-running musical.On his sophomore album, Mr. Carter also released the song “That’s How I Beat Shaq,” with a music video featuring the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, who has said that Mr. Carter once beat him in a game of HORSE and later asked if he could make a song about it.In 2019, Mr. Carter’s brother, Nick, and sister, Angel, said they had filed for a restraining order against him. In a statement at the time, Nick Carter said his brother had confessed to having violent thoughts about his wife and that family members “were left with no choice but to take away every measure possible to protect ourselves and our family.” Aaron Carter at the time denied the allegations. The news of the restraining order came one day after he canceled his 2019 tour, according to E! News, saying he needed to put his “health first.”Mr. Carter has been open over the years about his mental health struggles. He told People magazine in 2018 that he felt he had “hit a rock bottom personally and emotionally,” and that he had sought treatment at a wellness facility.Mr. Carter, who appeared on the Nov. 2 episode of the “No Jumper” podcast, said he was focusing on selling real estate and that he had been “Cali sober” for five years, though he said that he occasionally smoked marijuana and had been prescribed anti-anxiety medication. (“Cali sober,” short for “California sober,” is loosely taken to mean avoiding addictive substances with the exception of marijuana and alcohol.)Adam Grandmaison, the host of the podcast on YouTube, said that a close friend of Mr. Carter’s told him about his death.“I just interviewed him a couple weeks ago and it was pretty clear he wasn’t in a great place,” Mr. Gandmaison wrote on Twitter. “He was a good guy despite all the demons he was battling. I’m sad to see him go.”Throughout the interview, Mr. Carter said he considered himself a rapper, a singer, a producer, an artist and an actor, and that he was especially proud of his most recent album. He also said he hoped to make a new one soon.“I cover all bases,” he said. “It means so much more to me than the stuff I did growing up because I wrote and produced it all.”Mr. Carter said he was “never going to give up” on making music and that despite the turbulence, he had enjoyed his career. He also vowed to regain custody of his son, who Page Six reported was temporarily placed in the care of Mr. Carter’s fiancée’s mother amid domestic violence and drug use concerns.“I’m about to be 35 years old,” Mr. Carter said. “I’m a grown man and it’s time to start behaving that way and doing the right thing and focusing on myself, my career, my kid and my family.” More
- in Theater
Barbra Streisand on Her Early Recordings: ‘That Girl Can Sing’
“Live at the Bon Soir,” a restored set of songs from November 1962, allows listeners today — and Streisand, herself — to rediscover the sounds of a star being born.For about 60 years, Barbra Streisand has had the same manager, Marty Erlichman. He’s 93 now and still remembers the night he knew there was nobody like her.It was 1960. She was 18 and had earned a gig performing at the Bon Soir, a small, chic club in New York’s West Village. Over the phone earlier this week, he recalled sitting at a front-row table with some other reps, including a guy from William Morris, and Jack Rollins, who managed Woody Allen at the time. When Streisand started her set, one of them leaned over and said, “See, it’s acts like that need someone like me.” She was doing it wrong. Why was she opening with a ballad? Why was she opening with a ballad in those clothes?Streisand’s two-week gig was extended to 11, then rebooked over the next two years, becoming a drag-your-friends, word-of-mouth must-see. The songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman caught it and had the same experience Erlichman did: cartoon birds flying around their heads. The Bergmans would go on to write the lyrics for the Streisand gems “The Way We Were,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” (with Neil Diamond) and the songs for her directorial debut, “Yentl.” But that night, they were simply in awe. Alan, who’s 97, told me over the phone that “the minute she sang less than eight bars, Marilyn was in tears.”What they all witnessed was a star, this singular source of incandescence — pillow-soft singing that was pow-right-in-the-kisser, too; phrasing that could turn a song into a literary event; and timing most stand-ups wish they had.Now, 60 years later, we can hear what they saw, on “Live at the Bon Soir,” a pristinely restored recording of three dozen songs from late November 1962 that’s due Friday. During the Bon Soir run, Erlichman got Streisand signed with Columbia Records, which arranged a recording of the show but shelved it in favor of an 11-song studio version, “The Barbra Streisand Album,” from 1963. So what was supposed to be the first Barbra Streisand album is actually the umpteenth.To Streisand, it’s just as well. “I was only, what, 20 years old, and I didn’t like the sound,” she said from her home in Los Angeles, describing speakers poised over her head the size of shoe boxes. “You could hear the hiss.” Now, technology can solve almost any sonic dilemma. So Streisand finally handed over the recordings from her vault to the engineer and musician Jochem van der Saag, who excavated the pure sound of the original show and restored what the Marty Erlichmans and Alan and Marilyn Bergmans of the world would have heard: something close to perfection.At 80, Streisand isn’t going out of her way to listen to music she’s already made. By her own admission, she’s too busy worrying about the state of the country to fuss over her work. But what she heard surprised her. “I didn’t realize, actually, that my vocals were that good ’til they played me the new one,” she said, before laughing. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. That girl can sing.’”That, of course, is the shock of “Live at the Bon Soir.” We’re hearing a voice that’s been at the center of American singing for more than half a century being heard for just about the first time. We thought we knew everything it has done, every way it could sound. And yet it’s mind-blowing to discover all it could do, in a little nightclub, with a crack four-man band and the crowd eating out of her hand — giddy and coquettish, yet accomplished and skilled, lunatic yet in control.Streisand is the kind of performer who, more than a year into her Bon Soir run, jokes to an audience, “People complain that I don’t do standards. Well, here’s a standard,” then launches into “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” with an impossible featherweight world weariness. The range of her singing isn’t just a matter of octaves. It’s the diversity of characters the voice can find for one song. On “The Big Bad Wolf,” it’s story time and operetta, Big Mama Thornton and Ethel Merman. For “Lover, Come Back to Me,” it’s something to rival Ella Fitzgerald in the way she can already take a tune, especially in concert, from botanical garden to boxing match. That performance certainly ranks up there with the supreme Streisand interpretations of anything. By 20, she’d achieved this near-mastery all with, what, by 1962, were standards, grandma music.That, of course, was what made the suits nervous: a repertoire that included Tin Pan Alley and show tunes, those dreaded ballads and jazz; Oscar Hammerstein, Harold Arlen and Fats Waller. Where were the big pop songs? The contemporary stuff. The “Surfin’ U.S.A.” The “Walk Like a Man.” The “Be My Baby.” The “Fingertips.” The “It’s My Party.”When Erlichman took her to audition — live — for Capitol, RCA and Columbia, “Everyone said the same thing,” he recalled. “‘She has a good voice.’” (If he ever wrote a book, he said, he’d call it “Good Closes on Wednesday.”) Obviously, she was capable of great art. “She wasn’t singing commercial songs,” Erlichman said. And “executives, they’re frightened to break new ground.”But Streisand could appreciate the splendor of an old object. That’s what the vintage outfits she’d wear onstage were all about. “I always bought antique clothes,” she said, “because I thought they were so beautiful. I admired the craftsmanship.” The craftsmanship of the 1890s.“Opening night, I wore a black, high-necked velvet beaded top,” she said. “I had my tailor make me a little black velvet skirt that went with that top. But I didn’t know you’re not supposed to dress like that. I didn’t know that when you sing in a nightclub, you’re supposed to have kind of a gown or something elegant, made out of fabulous silks or satins.” At some point on “The Bon Soir,” you can hear her tell the audience that she’s wearing her boyfriend’s suit. She told me that “the masculine and the feminine was what felt comfortable on me.”That admiration she harbors for well-made things obviously extends to the Great American Songbook: superior craftsmanship. Its hundreds of dynamic, adaptable songs rely on characters, stories, wordplay and variations on a theme. For a singer, figuring them out is like doing math or the crossword or architecture. They’re also an opportunity to act, which is what Streisand says she wanted to do in the first place. During the Bon Soir run, she was splitting her days between nightclubs and Broadway, where she was loudly making a name for herself as the secretary Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale.”The wit and drama of the Songbook lyrics lend themselves to a theatrical approach. An imaginative singer can phrase a standard any way she likes. And, in that regard, Streisand has one of the great imaginations. Each Bon Soir song, she said, had a different character for her to play. And what comes through now is a devastating understanding of tone, shading, pitch, diction but also emotional variability. At the Bon Soir, she makes “Cry Me a River” an exploding torch song. When she finishes, one of her musicians — the guitarist Tiger Haynes or the bassist Averill Pollard — says, “Let’s go home now, let’s go home.” Yes, because Streisand just burned the place down.“She wants to know every single word, and if a word doesn’t make sense to her, she’ll stop and go, ‘I don’t understand. Why this word?’” the composer, conductor and arranger Bill Ross said in a video call. He’s been collaborating with Streisand on live shows since the early 1990s, and said one thing that makes Streisand Streisand is that she’ll spend so much time, “just on the lyrics trying to make sure they make sense to her.” Once she’s got that down, only then can she ask what the melody is. “I’ve never seen any other artist like that,” he said.Streisand is such a rigorously engaged interpreter yet also a kind of Method performer that she can’t imagine herself doing anything the same way twice. “I want to be in the moment,” she said. “That’s what you learn as an actress, that you have to be in the moment. That’s why no two takes of mine are the same. You know, it’s hard to edit me because I don’t phrase it the same. If I’m in the moment, I can’t sing the same. That’s why when I did ‘A Star Is Born,’ I said I have to sing live.”With that approach, if the soundtracks, say, for “Funny Girl” or “Hello, Dolly,” get recorded months in advance, “Well, how do I know how I’m going to feel when I’m singing ‘My Man’ at the end of ‘Funny Girl’?”That spontaneity is what made an impression on van der Saag, the engineer who spent months deep inside the “Bon Soir” recordings. He told me a great vocalist ought to have superb intonation, phrasing and sense of melody. Besides Streisand being “absolutely the best” on those first three, she has “this other thing,” that’s probably a result of being an actor, what he calls transference of emotion.Someone can get a song technically correct, which is a feat. “But to be able to just sing to the listener wherever they are and make them feel an emotion,” he said, “and to that extent? That is another level. And, you know, it’s very rare that you come across vocalists who have that.”Streisand’s use of Jewish American humor, Jewish American vibrancy (throwaway lines, ba-dum-bum comedy, the border she permeates between Brooklyn and Buckingham Palace) is also an emotional transmission. “This next song is from a record-breaking show,” she says before doing a quickie called “Value.” “It lasted nine previews and one performance. It was called ‘Another Evening with Harry Stoones.’” Streisand extends the “o” in Stoones for a lick of derision then, lowering her voice a touch, buries her dagger: “No wonduh …” It’s expert comedy. The song is a riot so fast and moving, uninhibited and exhibitionist, that it’s as close as singing gets to streaking.Streisand said she grew up around all kinds of people and all kinds of life. She moved through the city with an open heart. “I lived as a young girl in Williamsburg,” she said. “You know, Williamsburg was not what it is today with highfalutin apartments and fancy shops. I was in a Black neighborhood with a church across the street. And I loved bowing to the fathers and the sisters because I didn’t have a sister or a father. And my best friend was Joanne Micelli, who was Christian. I mean, we had an Italian grocery across the street.”That’s what Streisand evokes on “The Bon Soir.” A single person doing the work of an entire neighborhood. Sixty years later, her neighborhood has become the world. And Streisand frets about its future. But there’s something else on this new album — some other emotional transmission. And it’s the opposite of catastrophic. It’s confidence and poise and security and daring and honesty and a belief in the power of a perfect song, great bandmates and raw talent.Barbra Streisand was giving all of that to people, first at the Bon Soir, then everywhere that was smart enough to book her. That’s what else you can hear on this album, what Streisand herself heard upon rediscovering this long lost self. It’s hope. More
- in Music
For ‘KPOP,’ a Broadway Transfer Is More Like a Reinvention
The show’s creative team talks about revamping the immersive Off Broadway hit so that it moves “around the audience” at Circle in the Square Theater.Back in 2017, the musical “KPOP” had the kind of Off Broadway premiere that showbiz dreams are made of. The buzz around the production — which had the rare distinction of being about a specifically Asian pop-music style and having a largely Asian creative team — was so intense that desperate New Yorkers were pleading for tickets to its sold-out run at the small A.R.T./New York Theaters in Midtown Manhattan.Talk of a Broadway transfer started quickly thereafter, but, for a variety of reasons including the pandemic, it took five years for “KPOP” to finally make the jump. Now, at long last, the show is in previews, with an opening night set for Nov. 20.The musical Broadway audiences will see, however, is a very different beast from the one that opened in 2017: This is not so much a transfer as a reinvention.The original Ars Nova production, presented with Ma-Yi Theater Company and Woodshed Collective, was an immersive spectacle in which audience members followed a bunch of artists from room to room on two floors, and discovered how the Korean music industry relentlessly drills its stars (called idols) into poptastic precision.None of the 41 Broadway theaters could accommodate this sort of staging. But at least the one the show finally grabbed, Circle in the Square Theater, has a unique asset: It’s in the round.“I like to say it’s the world’s smallest arena — it’s a postage stamp of Madison Square Garden,” the director, Teddy Bergman, said. “For a show that traffics in pop, that collective energy and that collective effervescence felt like something we could capture like lightning in a bottle.”To preserve the sense that the audience is getting behind-the-scenes insights, the book writer, Jason Kim, altered the framing device: The show is now set up like a mockumentary about an upcoming American tour for a K-pop entertainment company’s roster — the boy band F8, the girl group RTMIS and the solo singer MwE.“At Ars Nova, the audience moved around and in this production we’re very much trying to move the piece around the audience,” Kim said. “I think the spirit of the show has been preserved, although it is a different format, and we are trying to engage the audience in very much a different way. We loved that the new theater casts an extra member, which is the audience.”The show is now set up like a mockumentary about a K-pop label’s roster, which includes the boy band F8, the girl group RTMIS and the solo singer MwEF8.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKevin Woo, center, in “KPOP,” now in previews at Circle in the Square Theater. There’s a “whole new appreciation and understanding and reception of this music in the States,” the show’s director said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother reason for the transformation is the fact that the moment “KPOP” originally aimed to capture has changed dramatically. In 2017, most Americans had no knowledge of K-pop, save perhaps for the song “Gangnam Style,” by Psy. Nowadays, Korean acts like Stray Kids routinely top the U.S. music charts and in May a K-pop artist, AleXa, won NBC’s “American Song Contest” on behalf of Oklahoma, where she was raised.Over the past five years, Bergman said, “BTS happened and ushered in a whole new appreciation and understanding and reception of this music in the States.”He added: “We wanted to focus on what is the journey, the cost, the joy, the exhilaration, the sacrifice of these pathbreakers who are journeying into new territories and spreading this music. I didn’t have to come from a position of having to explain much, or really anything to the audience. It really freed us up to be able to dig deeper psychologically, emotionally.” (The show’s close relationship with South Korea means the deadly crowd surge in Seoul was deeply felt; the Broadway production made a curtain speech last weekend and had a moment of silence, and posted a statement on social media.)One beneficiary of this change in focus has been the character of MwE, played Off Broadway by Ashley Park and now portrayed by Luna, a South Korea-based actress and former member of the K-pop girl group f(x).“What I’m very excited about in this version is the examination of the female characters,” said Helen Park, who wrote the bilingual score with Max Vernon, and orchestrated and produced it for Broadway. “They all have different ambitions, different journeys, different histories, different characteristics. As an Asian woman, that’s something so special.”While MwE, only in her mid-20s, is already a battle-hardened music-industry vet, the new character of Brad is at the start of his idol career and struggling because he is being shunned by his F8 bandmates. Not only was he the last to join the band, but his being mixed race becomes a factor as well. The role had resonance for the actor playing him, Zachary Noah Piser, who has Chinese and Jewish roots: This spring he became the first Asian American actor to play the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen” full time on Broadway.“Brad’s whole situation is very kind of meta because it was very me — I was a newcomer to the Broadway production of ‘KPOP’ and he is the Asian white boy from Connecticut who gets plucked up and placed in this group,” Piser said in a video chat. Brad acts as an entry point into issues centering on identity — which were already present in the first version, but have since been retooled.“When we first started writing, the main idea behind the show was ‘How could K-pop cross over in America?’ — it’s what these Korean artists have to sacrifice in their authenticity in order to be palatable to an American market,” Vernon said on the phone. “Obviously K-pop crossed over, so we asked different questions, like, ‘What’s going on in these artists’ mental state behind the scenes? What kind of pressure is that exerting on their psyche, on their relationships with other people in their band?’”Luna, who got her start in K-pop before turning to musical theater in South Korea (starring in shows like “Legally Blonde,” for example), pointed out that “KPOP” nails the genre’s emphasis on rigorous training.“There are such detailed scenes that are really rooted in the reality of that world,” Luna said via an interpreter in a video conversation. “I feel that people who are actually K-pop singers or who are trainees will really relate. It also gives a sense of consolation for the immense amount of effort and hard work put into creating K-pop.”From left: Park, Kim, Weber, Bergman and Vernon.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesSUCH AN OVERHAUL of the show’s concept and characters also required a reshaping of the score, which The New York Times’s Ben Brantley described as being “as synthetically sweet and perversely addictive as the real thing” in his review. When asked about the balance between old and new songs, the creative team agreed that it was about half and half — “maybe more new than old,” Park said.She and Vernon also had to reflect the changes in the genre at large: The acts that were popular when they started working on the show, back in 2014, are different from the current ones, and fans were sure to notice dated references.“We were responding to Exo, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, Psy, Big Bang, but K-pop music changes every three to four years so it would be like doing a show called ‘Pop’ and all the music sounds like Britney rather than Billie Eilish or whatever the great artists are that you’re listening to right now,” Vernon said on the phone. “Sometimes by the time musicals are on Broadway, it feels like they’re lagging 15 years behind the culture — we did not want that.”Similarly, the choreographer Jennifer Weber, who is also handling the Max Martin jukebox musical “& Juliet,” had to work within the specific parameters of K-pop dancing. Key elements are point moves, which are the visual answers to the songs’ hooks (one of the most famous remains Psy’s horse-riding gimmick in “Gangnam Style”).And because members of a group trade vocal lines at a quick pace, careful integration is needed to make the choreography work. “You have to almost break it down mathematically about who’s singing at what time,” Weber said on the phone. “You need to constantly be revealing who’s singing, so that person needs to pop out of the formation for their line — and that line could be as little as two bars.”Another way to assure that the show recreates the wondrous, kinetic excitement the best K-pop acts generate was to hire performers who had spent time in the trenches and could share their experience: In addition to Luna, the cast includes BoHyung, a former member of the girl group Spica; Min, formerly of Miss A; and Kevin Woo, once in U-KISS.“A lot of my questions in the first weeks were like, ‘How do you breathe? How do you execute this incredibly intricate choreography?’” Piser said. “The biggest response I got from the K-pop idols in our show was, ‘You’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to be good to yourself and you’ve got to trust the process.’”With “KPOP” now on Broadway, its creators are aware that the show is not just going up against other musicals but against actual K-pop artists — and this time again, the intimacy of Circle in the Square could come through.“We’re competing with Blackpink and BTS,” Bergman said, laughing, “but I don’t know where else you’re going to see BTS with 600 other people. Unless you’re Jeff Bezos or something.” More
- in Music
For Ghana’s Only Openly Transgender Musician, ‘Every Day Is Dangerous’
Maxine Angel Opoku has found a new audience for her music with songs opposing a proposed law that would make it illegal to identify as gay, transgender or queer.ACCRA, Ghana — When Maxine Angel Opoku was still an upstart musician, relatively unknown and struggling to stand out in Ghana’s competitive music scene, she sang about love, romance and being sexy.Then, in August 2021, lawmakers in the country’s Parliament introduced a bill that would imprison people who identify as transgender, as Ms. Opoku does, and her art urgently turned to advocacy. Her music began to attract both legions of new fans as well as powerful adversaries.“Dear Mr. Politician, fix the country right now. The people who voted for you, are disappointed in you,” Ms. Opoku sings in one of her latest songs. “Kill it, kill it, kill the bill.”The subject of the song is the “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill,” which, if passed, would make identifying as gay, transgender or queer a crime punishable with a maximum prison sentence of five years.As Ghana’s only openly transgender musician, Ms. Opoku, who is known on stage as Angel Maxine, is one of the most visible targets of the proposed legislation in a country where the gay and transgender community is largely closeted.Ms. Opoku, preparing for the day last month in Accra, Ghana.Francis Kokoroko for The New York Times“Music is the tool for my advocacy,” Ms. Opoku said in an interview in Accra, the capital of Ghana. “This is the only way my voice can reach the politicians, the president, the homophobes, the layperson.”Same-sex sexual acts are already criminalized in Ghana, in part because of a British colonial-era law, but it is currently not a crime to publicly identify as gay, transgender or queer.In response to the proposed legislation, Ms. Opoku released a song called “Kill the Bill” and, shortly before that, another song, “Wo Fie,” which means “in your home,” in the Akan language, one of the most widely spoken in Ghana.“Wo Fie” talks about how L.G.B.T.Q. people may be part of every family, and calls for tolerance and respect. In the lyrics, Ms. Opoku sings about being unapologetically herself.Ms. Opoku, the oldest of five children, was born in Accra on Sept. 3, 1985, to a fashion designer mother and a civil servant father.“Everybody that saw her would say: ‘Hey, you have a beautiful girl,’” her mother, Faustina Araba Forson, 60, recalled. “Then I would say: ‘No, it’s a boy.’”“She loved wearing girls’ dresses, playing with the girls,” her mother added. “She was a girl trapped in a male body.”Still, it took Ms. Forson many years to accept her daughter’s identity. Ms. Opoku recalled that mother and child would frequent churches to hear pastors, including the controversial Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua, seeking to “cast the gay out.”“One day I was praying, and I heard God say, ‘I created her in my own image and I love her,’” Ms. Forson said.Ms. Opoku started out singing at home during morning devotional prayers with her family, and as a teenager shadowed members of a now defunct girl group. She began performing music as a woman in 2008 while studying hospitality management in Koforidua, a city north of Accra. It was a dangerous endeavor. Once, during a set, a bottle was thrown from the audience, striking her in the head, she said.With no label to back her or to sponsor recording sessions, she put her music — whose sound is a fusion of Afropop, dance hall and the increasingly popular Afrobeats — on hold and instead moved between jobs in the hospitality sector as a cook and waitress, where she faced issues such as misgendering.Ms. Opoku and her mother, Faustina Araba Forson.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesEven before the threat of prison in the impending legislation, to be openly gay or transgender in Ghana was extraordinarily risky, with those identifying — or perceived to be — as such facing acts of violence from both strangers and their own families. Employment and housing discrimination is common.“Some get forced into marriages, get thrown out of their homes; some of them drop out of school because they no more have support,” said Leila Yahya, executive director of One Love Sisters, Ghana, an advocacy organization for L.G.B.T.Q. Muslims, and a friend of Ms. Opoku.Ms. Opoku returned to music in 2018, and while defiance has won her followers online at home and abroad, it has also marked her out. Her home was ransacked and looted by a mob last year, forcing her to scale back on public appearances. Ms. Opoku was not at home when the mob attacked.“They could have taken me to the police station, maybe I could have even died,” said Ms. Opoku, who now performs rarely, and only in private. “I could have been lynched.”After Ms. Opoku’s home was attacked, the maverick musician Wanlov the Kubolor and his sister, known as Sister Deborah, helped her find a safe space and began a professional and personal relationship. The siblings, long viewed as social contrarians in Ghana’s music industry, are featured on both “Kill the Bill” and “Wo Fie.”“It blew me away, the stuff she was living with from day to day: financially, psychologically, physically,” said Wanlov the Kubolor. “I don’t think I could have survived that life.”Ms. Opoku said she also wants to be known for music unrelated to her activism. But that has been an unrealized ambition, so far. A completed mini-album of non-advocacy songs remains unreleased because of a lack of sponsorship, she said.Ms. Forson with a picture of Ms. Opoku as a child next to her aunt.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesFor Wanlov the Kubolor, the recent rise in Ms. Opoku’s public stature has been equal parts joyful and painful.“It is painful because she could have bloomed much earlier, because she has a super talent, and she could have been a world star already,” he said.Recently, the song “Wo Fie” went viral on TikTok outside Ghana, and he believes Ms. Opoku’s increasing international visibility — although fraught with safety risks — could also serve as a protective factor for her.But Ms. Opoku isn’t so sure. “Every day is dangerous for me,” she said. “I cannot walk on the street as a normal person.”Taking a bus is out of the question, she said, as is going to the market. “I cannot do a lot of things,” she said.Her daughter’s safety is front of mind for Ms. Forson, too. “I fear for my daughter a lot,” she said. “She is a vociferous person and so she is a target, and I always pray that God should protect her.”If passed, the bill would criminalize positive portrayals of queer life in the media, codify the widely discredited pseudoscience of conversion therapy and compel the families and neighbors of L.G.B.T.Q. people to report them to the authorities.Those who are arrested can avoid prison by undergoing psychiatric and endocrinological treatment “to overcome their vulnerabilities.” The bill also states that allies who give any form of assistance to L.G.B.T.Q. people, such as housing, could be sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison.Ms. Opoku, with friends, at a hotel before a workshop she facilitated for people in Ghana who identify as transgender.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesThe proposed legislation is backed by the country’s powerful religious leaders, politicians from the two leading parties and large sections of the local media. It also has broad popular support in a country where a 2019 survey found that 93 percent of Ghanaians would dislike having a homosexual neighbor.The bill has also galvanized outspoken opposition from a small but influential coalition of local academics, lawyers and rights activists.Last month the Speaker of Parliament, who has previously expressed support for the legislation, said it was a priority and would be passed before the next elections in 2024.Thanks in part to the L.G.B.T.Q. antipathy fomenting around the bill, Ms. Opoku said it was difficult to see a future for herself in Ghana. It’s nearly impossible for her to perform freely in public now; the bill would make it legally impossible.“I don’t see a life here for me,” she said. “If I cannot come out openly, go on the streets to move about my daily life, if I cannot get a job, how do I sustain myself? This is no life.”Despite the difficulties, she remains resolute about speaking up for Ghana’s L.G.B.T.Q. community in the face of this rising hostility.Her next song, she said, will encourage at-risk people to sign up for the H.I.V. prevention pill PrEP.“I feel like it is a responsibility,” Ms. Opoku said. “If I win, people like me will also win.”She added, “People like me will also be happier, people like me will also feel free.”Ms. Opoku, at home.Francis Kokoroko for The New York TimesReporting for this story was supported in part by the Pulitzer Center. More
