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      The North to Shore Festival Comes to New Jersey

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      A new arts festival featuring local and marquee-name talent is coming to the Garden State.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, along with the first lady, Tammy Murphy, had a vision: A new performance festival in their home state that could rival South by Southwest in Texas or Bonnaroo in Tennessee. And they had a plan to distinguish it.“Austin and Nashville are great towns,” the governor said, referring to two famous arts hubs that are connected to notable festivals. “But if you stop to consider the cultural priorities of the states that govern them, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re hoodwinked if you get taken by the coolness.”A festival in New Jersey, they argued, would be produced in a state whose values align with issues like gun safety and reproductive rights, a bragging right difficult to come by in the south. But what organizers are really touting with the event, which is being produced for the first time this summer, is the mix of homegrown talent and national acts (Halsey, Santana, Jazmine Sullivan) performing across three different cities, from the state’s largest city to the coast.The North to Shore Festival will roam from Atlantic City to Asbury Park to Newark throughout the month. Its inaugural run will feature more than 220 acts — including music, comedy, dance and film — in 115 venues. “When you combine all the talent we have in New Jersey with the fact that our values are on the right side of history, we thought, there’s no reason we couldn’t give this a shot,” Mr. Murphy said.In May, the festival doubled in size, in part because of a commitment to local talent. Grants of up to $5,000 were handed out to 58 New Jersey-based artists.“What I love about it is that it’s a combination of the biggest names in entertainment and comedy and film,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which is producing the festival, “but it’s also a chance to turn up the volume on the local folks I call the local heroes — the artists, the creators, the presenters, the producers — who work in these cities 365 days a year.”One example of this kind of artistic convergence is “You Got VERRRSED: NJ Poets vs. New York Poets,” which will take place in Newark on June 24, the day after Marisa Monte, a Grammy Award winner, performs there.In each host city, venues stretch beyond the familiar. Newark, for example, will host “Jersey Club 101,” a combination dance lesson and party, at Ariya Plaza Hall, a local dance club known for hosting private events and the occasional concert, on June 24.On June 9 in Atlantic City, a brewery, The Seed: A Living Beer Project, will host a multidisciplinary event, “From Earth to Cup,” with live music, pottery making and samples of its craft beers. The following afternoon at Sovereign Avenue Field, a popular skatepark, local hardcore and punk bands will play free shows in the “Back Sov Bullies Concert.”While Asbury Park’s famous rock club, the Stone Pony, will see its share of action — with Eric B. & Rakim, Brian Fallon, Demi Lovato and the B-52’s all scheduled to perform — stages at the lesser-known Watermark, down the street, will also be in heavy rotation and can expect to see more traffic than usual.Alexander Simone and his seven-piece band, the Whodat? Live Crew, will play there on June 14. Mr. Simone, 34, who is from the area and the grandson of Nina Simone, won a grant to take part in North to Shore with the band, which leans toward funk and R&B, after being nominated by local fans. The recognition confirmed something he already knew: “I am definitely one of the most known bands in this community,” he said.Now he hopes that other parts of the country will pay more attention to his music. “Artists are coming this way, to Jersey, and bringing people with them the way South by Southwest brings people to Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to see what we have to offer on this end.”Billboards along the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are promoting the festival. Mr. Schreiber said he expects more than 350,000 people to attend. The overall windfall for New Jersey’s economy, he added, could be $100 million. “We’re betting the economic impact in all three of these communities will far outweigh any of the investment we have to make,” Mr. Murphy said.Amanda Towers, a founder of the Seed, a Living Beer Project, which will host a multidisciplinary event with music, pottery and beer in Atlantic City.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York TimesNatalie Merchant, accompanied by New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, will perform in Newark on June 25. “I think it’s really ambitious and impressive,” she said of the idea behind the festival.But her decision to participate did not have much to do with performing in a liberal-leaning state, Ms. Merchant said. “I tend to not penalize my fans in states with political conditions like abortion restrictions.” Instead, “I talk about them onstage.”The North to Shore Festival will take place June 4-11 in Atlantic City, June 14-18 in Asbury Park and June 21-25 in Newark. More

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      Alicia Keys Is Making a Musical. Her Own Life Inspired the Story.

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      The show is a highlight of the Public Theater’s new season, which will also include plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Itamar Moses, Mary Kathryn Nagle and Ife Olujobi.For more than a decade, Alicia Keys has been quietly developing a musical inspired by her own turbulent adolescence growing up among artists in New York City. Now that musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is almost ready for viewing: It will be staged this fall at the Public Theater, the downtown nonprofit where “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton” were born.By any measure, the musical will be big: It has a cast of 20, the biggest budget of any show the Public has ever done, and, of course, music by Keys, an R&B and pop singer who has sold tens of millions of records. The show will feature some of Keys’s best known songs, as well as new material she has written for the musical.“This is my pride and joy,” she said in an interview. “This is a major, major turning point in my journey.”“Hell’s Kitchen” doesn’t precisely track the events of Keys’s own life, but there are strong parallels. Set in the 1990s, it takes place over a few months in the life of a 17-year-old named Ali, who is being raised by a single mother in Manhattan Plaza, a large housing complex where many of the residents are performing artists; there is family tension, sexual exploration and musical discovery. (Ali, like Keys, is transformed by a passion for piano.)Keys has been deeply involved with the show’s development, and her own production company has the commercial rights to whatever life the show might have beyond the Public. “I’m never hands off,” Keys said. “There’s not one page, there’s not one sheet, there’s not one word, there’s not one song, there’s not one melody, there’s not anything that happens in this piece that moves without me completely immersed in it and ensuring its authenticity.”The musical was Keys’s idea, and in 2011 she selected the playwright Kristoffer Diaz (“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity”) to write its book; in 2018, the two asked Michael Greif (“Rent”) to join the project as director, and Greif then brought it to the Public.“It’s very much about a young woman testing boundaries,” Greif said. “It’s a story about a series of collisions she has with very important people in her life when she’s 17, and how those collisions affect the person she was to become.”“Hell’s Kitchen” is scheduled to begin previews Oct. 24 and to open Nov. 19. An emerging actor named Maleah Joi Moon will play Ali; her mother will be played by Shoshana Bean (“Wicked”), and her estranged father will be played by Brandon Victor Dixon (“Hamilton”); Camille A. Brown will choreograph.The Public is already planning to stage “Hamlet” this summer, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Ato Blankson-Wood, as its sole Free Shakespeare in the Park production, but now will follow that with a new Public Works adaptation of “The Tempest,” with songs by Benjamin Velez and directed by Laurie Woolery. The Public Works program, which stages musical adaptations of classics featuring a handful of professional actors and a large ensemble of amateur New York City performers, began in 2013 with a different adaptation of “The Tempest.”“The Tempest” will be the final production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park until 2025; the Public is trying to figure out whether and where it might stage a production next summer while the Delacorte is being renovated.In October, the Public will partner with NYU Skirball to present three Seán O’Casey plays staged by Ireland’s Druid theater.Starting in November at its downtown theater, the Public plans to stage “Manahatta,” a play that connects Manhattan’s Native American history with its contemporary finance industry, written by Mary Kathryn Nagle and directed by Woolery. That will be followed in February by “The Ally,” written by Itamar Moses and directed by Lila Neugebauer, starring Josh Radnor as an atheistic Jew whose social justice commitments are complicated by Middle East politics. In March comes “Sally & Tom,” written by Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, about a contemporary theater company trying to do a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. And in April is “Jordans,” written by Ife Olujobi and directed by Whitney White, a comedy about Blackness in an overwhelmingly white workplace.One thing the Public will not be doing: presenting its previously annual Under the Radar Festival of experimental work. “It’s entirely a financial decision,” said Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director. “This does not mean the Public is abandoning its relationship with downtown experimental artists, but we’re going to be looking for a new way of embodying that.” More

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      Hipgnosis, the Album Artists Who Made Pink Floyd’s Pig Fly

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      The filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s documentary “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)” tells the tale of the London design company devoted to crafting the perfect LP sleeve.In early 1980, Aubrey Powell, the then-33-year-old co-founder of the pioneering British design company Hipgnosis, flew to Hawaii to photograph the cover for the British rock band 10cc’s “Look Hear?” album.The shoot involved a specific sheep (only one was available on Oahu, at a university farm) seated on an old-timey psychiatrist’s couch (which had to be constructed by a Honolulu props company) on the island’s North Shore. The sheep, out of its element and skittish from the crashing waves, ruined the first day of the session, so a veterinarian was called in to tranquilize the animal for day two. Success.The final cost of the sleeve design, including airfare and a sheep wrangler, came to £5,043 — about $26,000 in today’s money and a big sum for the time. (But then again, as Powell, known as Po, said in an interview, back then the music industry “was awash with money.”) In the end, at the behest of Hipgnosis’ other co-founder, Storm Thorgerson, the U.K. version of the LP jacket was dominated by the words “Are You Normal” in large capital letters. The photo of the sheep on the chaise longue was shrunk to about the size of a postage stamp.A scene from the documentary shows the 1980 shoot for 10cc’s “Look Hear?” album artwork, which involved a sheep.Aubrey Powell/Hipgnosis LtdIn an interview, the 10cc singer and bassist Graham Gouldman admitted that though he’d had the album art explained to him in the past, he couldn’t recall what it meant. “But I know it’s a brilliant picture,” he said. As for all that pricey effort for such a tiny image? “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Gouldman said. “It’s art. So it’s got to be done.” He added, “And in Hipgnosis’ case, if you can get the record company to spend the money, then good for them.”The Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn, the director of “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis),” a documentary on the design firm that opens in New York on June 7, had a slightly different take. “It’s just not normal to fly all the way to Hawaii to do that picture,” he said. “But it makes for a good story.”“Squaring the Circle” is full of this and other good stories about the oft-absurd lengths the London-based Hipgnosis traveled in pursuit of the perfect LP sleeve in the era before Photoshop. Among the 415 album covers Hipgnosis made between 1968 and 1983 was Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (1977), for which a 40-foot inflatable pig was photographed floating between the chimneys of London’s Battersea Power Station. Unfortunately, the single cable affixed to the pig snapped, and up the balloon went — into the flight zone for Heathrow Airport.“That was all very exciting, and rather alarming,” recalled the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, whose bandmate Roger Waters came up with the idea for the shoot, “because it was obvious that you could have a major disaster for an airline that happened to fly into the escaping pig.” No planes were harmed in the making of the LP cover, but in the end, Hipgnosis had to resort to a photo collage to achieve the desired effect.The documentary — shot largely in high-contrast black and white by Corbijn, himself a rock photographer and video director known for his work with U2 and Depeche Mode — features new interviews with Powell, plus a number of high-profile former Hipgnosis clients, including all three surviving members of Pink Floyd (David Gilmour, Mason and Waters) and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and Gouldman are also among the talking heads. Noel Gallagher, a fan, provides some modern-day context and comic relief.HipgnosisA selection of Pink Floyd album covers designed by Hipgnosis, clockwise from top left: “Atom Heart Mother,” “Wish You Were Here,” “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Animals.”HipgnosisMuch of the film focuses on the close working relationship between Powell and Thorgerson, who came up together in the Cambridge, England, art scene of the 1960s, where they were friends with young members of Pink Floyd. (Peter Christopherson, a founding member of the British industrial band Throbbing Gristle who died in 2010, became a full partner in Hipgnosis in 1978.) The design studio would end up doing nearly all of Pink Floyd’s album covers, including “Atom Heart Mother” (1970), which was simply a photograph of a cow in a field, and, most famously, “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973), with its iconic image of a triangular prism refracting light into a rainbow pattern. (Hipgnosis’ second-best-known cover also came out in 1973: Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,” which features a group of naked children scaling basalt columns.)The “Atom Heart Mother” jacket in particular represented a major departure from the style of the time, which Mason described as putting “a picture of the lovable moptops on the front.”“We started making demands — which Pink Floyd totally backed us on — saying ‘No title, no name of the band on the cover,’” said Powell, now 76. “This was unheard-of in the world of marketing and record companies.” He described presenting the “Atom Heart Mother” artwork to the suits: “When you walked in there with long hair and earrings, showing them a picture of a cover of a cow, they would go apoplectic.”It tended to be Thorgerson, by all accounts a stubborn genius, driving the record executives to apoplexy. “The greatest line about Storm was that ‘He’s a man who wouldn’t take yes for an answer,’” Mason said. “It was almost inevitable that whatever was done, particularly by the record company, would involve Storm having to shout at them.”Thorgerson and Powell took different approaches to communicating with artists and labels.Hipgnosis LtdThorgerson, who died in 2013, could be confrontational with the musicians as well. “He didn’t care if it was Paul McCartney or Roger Waters, he would express himself quite vehemently,” Powell said. “And often I would have to go around fighting the fires to maintain some kind of credibility. At the end of the day, it kind of worked because I managed to persuade the artists that it was the idea that was important. Forget about Storm’s personality.”Corbijn said that, ultimately, the documentary was a “story of love and loss.” Hipgnosis came to an end at the dawn of a new era, in which music videos ruled and compact discs, with their significantly smaller artistic canvases, became the dominant mode of distribution. (Of course, today most people see album art in miniature on their phones.) Thorgerson and Powell, who were moving over to filmmaking, had a falling out over money and didn’t speak for 12 years after that. “It was like the end of a marriage,” Powell said. The two reunited after Thorgerson fell ill; he died of cancer at the age of 69.In more recent years, Powell said, he’s been heartened to see that Hipgnosis’ album covers have broken “that barrier to be taken seriously as fine art.” He added, “A lot of thought went into those pictures. We didn’t take photographs of the band and slap it on the front with their names big and the title in big white letters. This was work that was taken extremely seriously. And I hope that comes over in the film.”Powell pointed to Hipgnosis’ cover of Led Zeppelin’s final studio album, “In Through the Out Door” from 1979, which involved lovingly recreating an actual New Orleans juke joint in a studio in London. He indicated that making the album’s visuals (which, after all that work, came wrapped in a brown paper bag) likely cost more than it did for the band to record the music itself.“You know,” Powell said with a laugh, “that sums up the period of time.” More

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      Billy Joel Will End Madison Square Garden Residency in 2024

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      The singer-songwriter, one of New York’s most beloved musicians, will conclude his monthly gig at the Manhattan arena after his 150th career concert there.In December 1978, Billy Joel headlined Madison Square Garden for the first time, playing three shows on the tour for his first No. 1 album, “52nd Street.” Dozens more performances followed there over the years, and in January 2014, Joel began a monthly residency as the Garden’s first “music franchise.”Now the monthly gig is coming to an end. On Thursday, Joel and the Garden announced his final 10 shows in the series, saying the residency will conclude in July 2024 with his 104th show in the series, which will be his 150th lifetime performance at the Garden.“I’m kind of flabbergasted that it lasted as long as it did,” Joel said at a news conference at the Garden. “My team tells me that we could continue to sell tickets, but 10 years, 150 shows — all right already!”James L. Dolan, the chief executive of MSG Entertainment, which owns the Garden and other venues, added: “Billy Joel’s franchise run has made history — not only for Madison Square Garden, but also for the music industry overall.”Joel’s run at MSG has been a cultural phenomenon and a business unto itself. Every show has sold out, and aside from a dozen or two standards — you are all but guaranteed to hear “Piano Man,” “Allentown,” “New York State of Mind” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” — the set list varies enough to keep fans coming back again and again. The roster of special guests has included Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, Olivia Rodrigo and Joel’s daughter Alexa Ray Joel.The residency has continued on a roughly monthly schedule since its inception, aside from an 18-month break during the Covid-19 pandemic, returning in November 2021.According to the trade publication Pollstar, Joel’s residency has played to nearly 1.7 million people through its 89th performance in April, and sold $207 million in tickets. By his final show, the residency will have grossed over $250 million.The idea for the residency came about following Celine Dion’s two record-breaking runs in Las Vegas, which started in 2003 and ultimately sold about $660 million in tickets. But Joel balked at traveling there. “I knew I didn’t want to be a resident in a place like Vegas,” he once said. “I don’t even like Vegas.”Joel’s performances at the Garden have become “the Super Bowl of music events,” Dennis Arfa, his longtime booking agent, told The New York Times last year. It has also inspired a new residency model that has lately taken hold in the music business, with some superstar artists preferring longer stays at a smaller number of venues, rather than crisscrossing the map one gig at a time — a move that can reduce touring costs and provide a bit of branding buzz. Last year, for example, Harry Styles played 15 dates at the Garden and, in late 2022 and 2023, another 15 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.Joel, 74, will begin his 10 countdown shows on Oct. 20. A representative for the singer said that while he is ending this run, Joel is not retiring.“There’s only one thing that’s more New York than Billy Joel,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said in a statement, “and that’s a Billy Joel concert at MSG.” More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Morgan Wallen, Indie Sleaze and ‘Survivor’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWelcome to Popcast (Deluxe), a new weekly video show hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli that breaks down essential pop culture. This week’s episode includes segments on:Morgan Wallen, the country singer who continues to top both the Billboard album chart and the Hot 100 despite the postponement of several dates on his stadium tour because of a vocal cord injuryThe Dare, a rising star of New York neo-electroclashThe Hulu documentary “Queenmaker,” about early 2000s It Girls and the blogs that alternately fawned over and savaged themThe season finale of “Survivor,” in which a gaggle of star-level outcasts made it to the end of the gameNew songs from YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Lana Del Rey More

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      Witch, the Zamrock Band, Carries On

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      The group, formed in Zambia, blended psychedelic funk with African influences. At 71, its leader, Jagari Chanda, is putting out his first LP with the band in four decades.During a feverish performance last fall at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Emmanuel Chanda (who uses the stage name Jagari) paused to preach what he called “the philosophy of positivity.”“When a woman doesn’t love you or when someone does you wrong, it’s all right,” the frontman of the Zambian rock band Witch said, flashing a wide smile. “It’s always all right.”For Chanda, “It’s Alright” — the title of a Witch song from 1974 — isn’t a cheap bromide or a rank cliché. It’s an enduring ballast in a life that has encountered an uncommon number of tragedies and hardships, as well as dreams long deferred.In his 71 years, Chanda has seen his landlocked African country experience waves of political turmoil and economic meltdowns as well as the scourge of AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s, which took the lives of every other original member of Witch. At the same time, he has enjoyed a vaunted reputation at home and with cult audiences abroad as a pioneer of the Zamrock movement that exploded in the 1970s when his country, flush from the spoils of its chief economic source — copper mines — provided young musicians access to European and American music, and created a unique sound.At its root, Zamrock melded fuzz-toned psychedelia, chugging garage rock and roiling funk with a broad mix of African cadences and beats. In its heyday, Witch drew thousands of local fans to its shows, enlivening a scene that included bands like Musi O Tunya (led by the Zamrock mainstay Rikki Ililonga), the Ngozi Family, and Amanaz.Between 1972 and ’77, Chanda recorded five albums with Witch (its name stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc) that initially had no impact outside the Zambia region. That began to change in 2010, when reissues and compilations appeared in Europe and the United States. Fans responded passionately enough to support tours by a fresh band that Chanda assembled six years ago featuring mainly young, European musicians. (The keyboardist Patrick Mwondela played in an incarnation of Witch after Chanda departed in 1979, and is the only other Zambian in the current group.)A recent documentary about the band, titled “We Intend to Cause Havoc,” generated more attention, which has helped Chanda finally fulfill one of his greatest dreams: to record new Witch music. This week the band releases “Zango,” the first album to appear under its name since 1984 and the first in over four decades to feature its frontman.Chanda in the documentary “We Intend to Cause Havoc,” which brought renewed attention to the band.Pantheon Pictures“To me, this is a resurrection,” Chanda said in an interview at a Williamsburg coffee shop the day after the concert. “It’s like I went into oblivion, and then was pushed out to continue what I was created to do.”In the years since Witch first made an impact, younger musicians have been paying attention. Sampa the Great, a 29-year-old Zambian rapper with international reach, said she connected “to the defiance and the edginess” of Witch’s music. “To have traditional music and infuse it with rock, that’s what I do with hip-hop,” she added. She collaborated with Witch on a track from her 2022 album “As Above, So Below” and appears on one of the band’s new songs.Ahmed Gallab, a Sudanese American musician whose group, Sinkane, plays a progressive brand of funk, said that Chanda’s role in Witch “showed me how to be an African rock star to the max.”In some ways, Witch’s new music picks up right where the original band left off. Desert Daze Sound, which signed the group in partnership with Partisan Records, insisted that it record at DB studios in Lusaka, Zambia, where the act cut its most vaunted set, “Lazy Bones,” in 1975.“We have the original gear from those records and the same sound engineer,” said Jacco Gardner, the band’s current bassist, who hails from the Netherlands. But, according to Stefan Lilov, the band’s Switzerland-based guitarist, “some of the equipment was in terrible shape. We had to have a guy solder the guitar pedals together as we were recording.”Despite the vintage touches, it’s the band’s mix of European and African players, as well as its contrast in generations (with all the European members in their 30s and the Zambians decades older), that has infused the new music with fresh rhythmic and melodic flourishes.Onstage in Brooklyn, Chanda easily outpaced his younger bandmates, headbanging, jittering and shaking throughout the night. (His old nickname was Jagger, as in Mick, for his stage moves.) “I didn’t want to be in another man’s shadow,” Chanda said, explaining why he added an “i” to the end of his adopted first name to make it Jagari, which means a brewer of brown sugar in a local language. “I Africanized it!”Bands like the Rolling Stones entranced Chanda from an early age. He first heard their music, as well as that of Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath, on jukeboxes at bars and via radio stations based in Zimbabwe. To young Zambians like Chanda, the bold sound of Stratocasters symbolized the feeling of freedom their country had finally won from Britain in 1964. “Every town had a band or two,” the singer said. “My town had five or six.”Chanda learned guitar from a friend’s brother. In 1971, while in high school, he joined Witch, which mixed Western rock with local kalindula rhythms, helping set off the Zamrock movement. “Not to take anything away from the other great Zambian rock bands, but Witch was on another level,” said Eothen Alapatt, who heads Now-Again Records, a U.S.-based label that reissued its classic work. “Over the course of five records, they showcased tremendous range and development.”Chanda put it simply: “Witch was the band everyone wanted to join.”Witch’s mix of European and African players, as well as its contrast in generations, infused the new music with fresh rhythmic and melodic flourishes.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesBut the Zamrock renaissance was short-lived. By the late ’70s, Zambia’s economy had cratered with tumbling copper prices. Conflicts in neighboring countries spilled over into Zambia, leading the government to declare curfews and blackouts that made concerts rare. “Music became a luxury people couldn’t afford,” Chanda said.Then came AIDS, which decimated large portions of the population. With a new family to support, Chanda quit playing music and began teaching it at Lusaka College. Later, he became a civil servant, but he was fired after being accused of picking up a shipment of drugs at an airport in the mid-90s; the charges were later dropped. To keep his family going, he worked in the mines, and got sober and became religious. Even with the influx of money from touring in recent years, Chanda still digs for gemstones in rough earth to make ends meet. “At this age, it’s hard work for me,” he said, “especially in Africa where it’s hotter.”The chance to tour and create fresh music with new musicians has reinvigorated him. “Jagari wasn’t saying, ‘You have to make the exact Zamrock sound,’” Gardner said. “He said, ‘Make it your own.’”Chanda’s new lyrics, which he delivers in English and several languages local to Zambia, cover both personal and political topics. “Stop the Rot,” sung in Bemba, criticizes those who still practice witchcraft in Zambia. “It’s detrimental to a developing country,” he said. “Message From Witch” features entreaties to halt a host of prejudices, including antisemitism and homophobia — a proclamation that represents a considerable risk in Zambia, where gay sexual activity can draw prison sentences of 15 years or more.Given the escalating demand for Witch to tour — the group completed three jaunts in 2022 — Chanda has big dreams for the future. He hopes to make enough money to afford an excavator to ease the toil of his mining, and he wants to fund a music school back home. He admitted that he sometimes thinks back to his fallen bandmates. “I do wish that group was here,” he said.At the same time, his philosophy of positivity and stalwart faith has inspired him to focus on his new chance. “I’m not here because I’m clever,” he said with his reliable smile. “It’s God. His grace has allowed me to live again.” More

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      Connecting Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ With 13 Songs From Her Past

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      Tracing the pop superstar’s evolution by connecting 13 of her newest songs to 13 from her past.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDear listeners,This past weekend, along with more than 200,000 people in the New York metropolitan area, I attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. I saw sights I will never forget: more than one person, in late May, dressed head to toe as a Christmas tree (an inside joke about Swift growing up on a Christmas tree farm … I think?); a father proudly wearing a handmade shirt that read “Real Men Listen to Taylor Swift”; enough sequins per square inch that, when the sun hit it right, MetLife Stadium could probably be seen from space.But, of course, I also saw a generation-defining pop superstar performing at the top of her game, throughout a sprawling, near-three-and-a-half-hour set that highlighted her stylistic versatility, physical stamina and ongoing evolution as a songwriter.Though Swift has long had a flair for both spectacle and intimacy in a live setting, what I couldn’t shake (shake, shake) during this marathon 45-song set was how completely she’s come into her power as a performer. She knows how and when to ham it up — like the frequently memed moment when she gives her flexed biceps a kiss before donning a sparkly blazer for the synth-pop statement “The Man” — but she also knows when to scale back, as she does during the beloved segment of the show when she accompanies herself on guitar and piano and plays two “surprise songs.” (Not to brag, but I got to see “Holy Ground” and “False God.”)In his review of the Eras Tour’s opening night, my colleague Jon Caramanica called Swift, rightly, “pop’s maestro of memory.” The “eras” conceit of the tour allows Swift to reflect on and momentarily embody her past selves; “Are you ready to go back to high school with me?” she asked playfully before her 2008 hit “You Belong With Me.” But she does something similar on “Midnights,” her latest album and the one that feels most directly in conversation with her own vast back catalog (which I noted in an essay shortly after the LP was released).That brings me to today’s playlist. It is, essentially, my own expanded version of “Midnights,” placing each of its 13 tracks as a response to an earlier Swift song.(Listen along on Spotify as you read, and find YouTube links below.)Making your way through its 26 songs, you will hear how Swift’s songwriting, perspective on love, vocal stylings and aesthetic preferences have all evolved over time. The G-rated romantic of “Love Story” becomes the fed-up 30-something bristling at “the 1950s [expletive] they want from me” on the “Midnights” opener “Lavender Haze.” Swift’s adopted home of New York City goes from an idealized abstraction to the locale of a more specific heartbreak in the progression from “Welcome to New York” to “Maroon.” The pining narrator of “Teardrops on My Guitar” feels miles away from the wizened woman singing “Midnight Rain,” who has realized that love and marriage won’t solve all her problems. In the long arc of Swift’s chronology, “Enchanted” gradually becomes, well, disenchanted.Evolutions in instrumentation and production choices emerge, too: not just how banjos and guitars morph into drum machines and synthesizers, but how much darker most of “Midnights” sounds even in comparison to her first “official” pop album, “1989.” Jack Antonoff produced both the bouncy “How You Get the Girl” and the later “Question …?”, which feels like a hazier and more melancholy variation on a similar theme.In losing her illusions, though, Swift gains strength, perspective and resilience — not a bad trade-off. In “Nothing New,” a song she wrote when she was 22 and rerecorded with Phoebe Bridgers in 2021 for the rerelease of her 2012 album “Red” — she worries about the future; a decade later, on the incisive “You’re on Your Own Kid,” she tells her younger self, with earned wisdom, “You can face this.”In the spirit of the Eras Tour, I hope this playlist stands as a testament to the depth and emotional acuity of Swift’s catalog. The specific connections between these songs will be a little easier to clock if you’re already a card-carrying Swiftie, but if you’re only familiar with one side of Swift, this playlist can also serve as a crash course in her many transformations.Feel free to make your own expanded version of “Midnights” — I found it a fun exercise! — but I’m a mastermind, and this one’s mine.You’re on your own, kid,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Midnights (Lindsay’s Version)” track listTrack 1: “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)”Track 2: “Lavender Haze”Track 3: “Welcome to New York”Track 4: “Maroon”Track 5: “You Belong With Me (Taylor’s Version)”Track 6: “Anti-Hero”Track 7: “Enchanted”Track 8: “Snow on the Beach” (featuring Lana Del Rey)Track 9: “Nothing New (Taylor’s Version)” featuring Phoebe BridgersTrack 10: “You’re on Your Own, Kid”Track 11: “Teardrops on My Guitar”Track 12: “Midnight Rain”Track 13: “How You Get the Girl”Track 14: “Question …?”Track 15: “Bad Blood”Track 16: “Vigilante ___”Track 17: “Tolerate It”Track 18: “Bejeweled”Track 19: “Treacherous (Taylor’s Version)”Track 20: “Labyrinth”Track 21: “Mean”Track 22: “Karma”Track 23: “Peace”Track 24: “Sweet Nothing”Track 25: “Blank Space”Track 26: “Mastermind”Bonus tracksAs I mentioned, Swift played some top-notch surprise songs at the show I attended. If you don’t believe me, crank them up: from “Red,” the ecstatic, guitar-driven fan-favorite “Holy Ground,” and from “Lover” (anywhere from my second to my fourth favorite Swift album, depending on the day you ask me) the slick, slinky “False God.” Darling, it was good. More

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      Broadway Musicians Object to David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’

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      The show plans to use recorded music instead of a live band, but a labor union says its contract for the theater requires musicians for musicals.A labor union representing musicians is challenging David Byrne’s next Broadway show, “Here Lies Love,” saying it opposes plans to stage the production with recorded instrumental tracks instead of a live band.The musical — an immersive, dance-driven spectacle about Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines — is scheduled to start previews June 17 and to open July 20 at the Broadway Theater. Byrne co-wrote the music with Fatboy Slim.The musical has previously been staged Off Broadway, in London and in Seattle, each time with a singing cast accompanied by recorded music. There are a few moments in which actors have instruments as part of the action being depicted, but there are no full-time instrumentalists.“Since ‘Here Lies Love’ was first conceived 17 years ago, every production has been performed to prerecorded track; this is part of the karaoke genre inherent to the musical and the production concept,” the production’s spokesman, Adrian Bryan-Brown, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The music for ‘Here Lies Love’ was inspired by the phenomena of ‘track acts,’ which allowed club audiences to keep dancing, much like this production aims to do.”But Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians says its contract with the Broadway League requires the use of 19 musicians for musicals at the Broadway Theater. (The number of musicians required under the contract varies based on theater size.)The union says it is seeking to preserve jobs for musicians and quality for theater lovers.“We’re not going to stand by and let this happen,” said Tino Gagliardi, the local’s president and executive director. “It’s not fair to the public.”Since February, the producing team of “Here Lies Love,” led by Hal Luftig, has been seeking to have the show declared a “special situation,” which is a category in the labor agreement that allows for the employment of fewer musicians. The request is to be assessed by a panel that includes neutral observers as well as representatives of the Broadway League and the musicians’ union; it is not clear how long that process will take, and the ruling can be appealed to arbitration.The League did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but Bryan-Brown said, “This process is ongoing and may ultimately culminate in a final and binding arbitration decision, but until that time, we will continue to work in good faith with the union to move through the steps of the contractual process.”There have been multiple Broadway shows staged with reduced orchestra sizes over the years, but it is rare to have a musical without an orchestra at all. The best-known example was “Contact,” a dance show produced by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater that won the 2000 Tony Award for best musical. In 2011, the union objected to a reduced-size orchestra, along with recorded music, for the Broadway production of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert.” More recently, “The Little Prince” was staged at the Broadway Theater with music sung to recorded tracks; that show was not Tony-eligible and had a short run, so the union did not object.The musicians say they are disappointed that the request is coming from a show associated with Byrne, whom they revere. Byrne’s last Broadway production, “American Utopia,” showcased musicians, with the band onstage playing instruments and dancing with the star.“I was really excited that David Byrne was bringing something else to Broadway,” said Ray Cetta, a bass player and union member who has occasionally played in the band for “Chicago.” “The current situation is very surprising and disheartening. Any musician would want to work with David Byrne and bring his music to life.” More