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      Timmy Thomas, Singer Whose Biggest Hit Was an Antiwar Anthem, Dies at 77

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      His “Why Can’t We Live Together” rose to the top of the Billboard charts in 1973. He could never match its success.In the summer of 1972, the singer and keyboardist Timmy Thomas was watching the “CBS Evening News” and heard Walter Cronkite tick off the day’s death count of American and Vietcong soldiers.“I said, ‘what?!’ You mean that many mothers’ children died today?” Mr. Thomas told Spin magazine in 2015. “In a war that we can’t come to the table and sit down and talk about this, without so many families losing their loved ones?’ I said, ‘Why can’t we live together?’”His question became the title of his best-known song: a soulful, plaintive statement against the Vietnam War which he sang to his own accompaniment on the electric organ and drum machine. With a sentiment similar to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” from a year earlier, Mr. Thomas sang on “Why Can’t We Live Together”:No more wars, no more wars, no more warUmm, just a little peace in this worldNo more wars, no more warAll we want is some peace in this worldEverybody wants to live togetherWhy can’t we live together?The song, released on the Glades label, a subsidiary of the Miami-based TK Records, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 3 on its Hot 100 chart in early 1973 and sold upward of a million copies.Mr. Thomas never again had a hit anywhere as big as “Why Can’t We Live Together,” but the song had a lasting impact. Forty-two years later, Drake sampled it on “Hotline Bling,” his hit about late-night cellphone calls from a former lover, which rose to No. 1 on the Billboard rap chart and No. 2 on the Hot 100.“He had an opportunity to use Snoop Dogg beats, Dre beats, all these new beats,” Mr. Thomas told Miami New Times in 2018. “He went all the way back … and used my original.”“Why Can’t We Live Together” has also been covered by artists including Sade, Joan Osborne, Santana, Steve Winwood and Iggy Pop, who recorded it with the jazz organist Lonnie Smith for Mr. Smith’s 2021 album, “Breathe.”Mr. Thomas died on Friday at a hospital in Miami. He was 77.His wife, Lillie (Brown) Thomas, said the cause was cancer.Timothy Earle Thomas was born on Nov. 13, 1944, in Evansville, Ind. His father, Richard, was a minister, and his mother, Gwendolyn (Maddox) Thomas, was a homemaker. By the time he was 10, he told Blues & Soul magazine, he was playing organ at his father’s church. “I always had a good ear for music,” he said. “I was one of 12 kids and most of them were into music, but I guess I pushed a little harder.”After graduating from high school in 1962, he spent a week studying at a Stan Kenton summer music clinic at Indiana University, Bloomington, where his teachers included the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the trumpeter Donald Byrd.While attending Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., from which he would graduate in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in music, Mr. Thomas recorded a few songs in Memphis for the Goldwax label and was a session musician at Sun and Stax Records.Even as he pursued a career in music, he worked as a financial aid director at Lane and a vice president of development at Jarvis Christian College, in Hawkins, Texas, and Florida Memorial University, in Miami Gardens.He later shifted his focus to teaching. In 1993 he became the choir master at Miami Norland High School, and from 1996 to 2005 he taught music at Shadowlawn Elementary School in Miami. He earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale in 1997.Mr. Thomas in 2017. His 1973 hit has been covered by Sade, Steve Winwood and others.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for BMIIn addition to his wife, Mr. Thomas is survived by his daughters, Tamara Wagner-Marion and Li’Tina Thomas; his sons, Tremayne and Travis; 12 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; his sisters, Diane Winton, Mary Davis and the Rev. Velma Thomas; and his brothers, Ray, Kenneth, Roland, Jerome and the Rev. Jeffery Thomas.More than a dozen of Mr. Thomas’s songs landed on the Hot R&B chart between 1973 and 1984, but the outsize success of “Why Can’t We Live Together” cast him as a one-hit wonder. And he understood that it was difficult to replicate the success of his megahit.He recalled that he once asked Henry Stone, the co-founder of TK Records, what he thought the problem was.“He said, ‘Timmy, your major problem was what you said was so profound that you could never back it up,’” Mr. Thomas said, recalling the conversation to Spin magazine. He added, “I thought about it, I said, ‘You know, that’s tough. … ’ I had some nice regional records after that, but nothing that worldwide.” More

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      Florence + the Machine’s Conflicted Coronation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Bonnie Raitt, Kehlani, Mahalia and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Florence + the Machine, ‘King’Career vs. family. Artistic inspiration vs. a stable life. “The world ending and the scale of my ambition.” Florence Welch takes them all on in “King,” which affirms both the risks and rewards of her choices. Like many of the songs Welch writes and sings for Florence + the Machine, “King” moves from confessional to archetypal in a grand, liberating crescendo, while its video elevates her from a tormented partner to something like a saint. JON PARELESBonnie Raitt, ‘Made Up Mind’It’s an old story: the bitter end of a romance. “Made Up Mind,” written and first recorded by a Canadian band called the Bros. Landreth, tells it tersely, often in one-syllable words: “It goes on and on/For way too long.” On the first single from an album due April 22, “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt sings it knowingly and tenderly, after a scrape of guitar noise announces how rough the going is about to get. PARELESKehlani, ‘Little Story’Kehlani has long narrated tales of devastating romance, but “Little Story,” the latest single from the forthcoming album “Blue Water Road,” opens a portal to a world of candor. Sounding more self-assured and tender than they have in years, the singer (who uses they/them pronouns) curls the honeyed sways of their voice over the delicate strumming of an electric guitar. “You know I love a story, only when you’re the author,” Kehlani sings, pleading for a lover’s return. Strings crescendo into blooming petals, and Kehlani makes a pledge to embrace tenderness. “Workin’ on bein’ softer,” they sing. “’Cause you are a dream to me.” ISABELIA HERRERACarter Faith, ‘Greener Pasture’A bluesy lite-country simmerer in which the cowboy does not stick around: “I was his Texaco/A stop just along the road/I shoulda known I ain’t his last rodeo.” JON CARAMANICANorah Jones, ‘Come Away With Me (Alternate Version)’With the 20th anniversary of Norah Jones‘s millions-selling debut, “Come Away With Me,” arrives a “Super Deluxe Edition” featuring this previously unreleased alternate take of the title track, with the band work shopping the song. There’s a constant, pendulum-swinging guitar part in this version, matching the songwriter Jesse Harris’s lulling bass figure and pushing the band along. Ultimately you can see why this take didn’t make the cut: The biggest draw is Jones’s matte, desert-rose voice, and it seems most at home when in no hurry, cast in lower contrast to the rest of the band. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPorridge Radio, ‘Back to the Radio’One electric guitar chord is strummed in what seems to be 4/4 time, repeated, distorted and topped with additional noise for the first full minute of “Back to the Radio.” Then Dana Margolin starts singing, decidedly turning the 4/4 to a waltz as the lyrics push toward a confrontation with someone who matters: “We almost got better/We’re so unprepared for this/Running straight at it.” The song is pure catharsis. PARELESMahalia, ‘Letter to Ur Ex’The threat is both restrained and potent in “Letter to Ur Ex” from the English songwriter Mahalia. She’s singing to someone trying to maintain a connection that has ended: “You can’t do that any more,” she warns. “Yeah, I get it/That don’t mean I’m gonna always be forgiving.” Acoustic guitar chords grow into a programmed beat and strings; her voice is gentle, but its edge is unmistakable. PARELESEsty, ‘Pegao!!!’The Dominican American artist Esty collides genres and aesthetics like a kid scribbling on paper. “Pegao!!!,” from her new “Estyland” EP, mashes up the singer’s breathy, coy raps and sky-high melodies with razor-sharp stabs of synth and a skittish, percussive dembow riddim. She declares her imminent ascent in the music industry, whispering, “They say I’m too late/But I feel like I’m on time.” Her visual choices are part of the plot too: between the anime references, her love for roller skating (which has made her famous on TikTok) and a head full of two-toned braids, Esty’s aesthetic is a kind of punk dembow, her own little slice of chaotic good. HERRERAMura Masa featuring Lil Uzi Vert, PinkPantheress and Shygirl, ‘Bbycakes’Here is how layered things can get in 21st-century pop. The English producer Mura Masa discovered “Babycakes” by the British group 3 of a Kind. He pitched it up and sped it up, keeping the catchy chorus hook. He also connected with Pink Pantheress, Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl. The new, multitracked song is still both a come-on and a declaration of love, but who did what is a blur. PARELESR3hab featuring Saucy Santana, ‘Put Your Hands On My ____ (Original Phonk Version)’Saucy Santana’s “Material Girl” is the optimal viral hit — easy to shout along with, organized around a catchy phrase, full of performative attitude. For Saucy Santana, onetime makeup artist for the rap duo City Girls turned reality TV star, its emergence as a TikTok phenomenon a couple of months ago (more than a year after the song’s initial release) was a classic case of water finding its level. And now, a future full of promising party-rap club anthems beckons. This easy-as-pie collaboration with the D.J.-producer R3hab is an update of Freak Nasty’s “Da Dip,” one of the seminal songs of Atlanta bass music, and a bona fide mid-1990s pop hit as well. It doesn’t top the original, but it doesn’t have to in order to be an effective shout-along. CARAMANICALil Durk, ‘Ahhh Ha’The first single from the upcoming Lil Durk album, “7220,” is full of exuberant menace. Lil Durk raps crisply and with snappy energy while touching on awful topics, including the killing of his brother DThang and of the rapper King Von, and instigating tension with YoungBoy Never Broke Again. In the middle of chaos, he sounds almost thrilled. CARAMANICAKiko El Crazy, Braulio Fogón and Randy, ‘Comandante’On “Comandante,” two generations of eccentrics — the Dominican dembow newcomers Kiko el Crazy and Braulio Fogón, alongside the Puerto Rican reggaeton titan Randy — join forces for a send-off to a cop who threatens to arrest them for smoking a little weed. Randy drops a deliciously flippant, baby-voiced hook, and Fogón’s offbeat, anti-flow arrives with surprising dexterity. When that timeless fever pitch riddim hits, you’ll want every intergenerational police satire to go this hard. HERRERACharles Goold, ‘Sequence of Events’The drummer Charles Goold and his band are hard-charging on “Sequence of Events,” the opening track to his debut album as a bandleader, “Rhythm in Contrast.” He starts it with a four-on-the-floor drum solo that has as much calypso and rumba in it as it does swing. When the band comes in — the slicing guitar of Andrew Renfroe leading the way, with Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, Taber Gable’s piano and Noah Jackson’s bass close on his heels — that open approach to his rhythmic options remains. Goold graduated from Juilliard, probably the premiere conservatory for traditional-jazz pedagogy, but he’s also toured with hip-hop royalty. All of that’s in evidence here, as he homes in on a sincere update to the midcentury-modern jazz sound. RUSSONELLO More

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      Irma Thomas, a Soul Queen Far Beyond New Orleans

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      As she turns 81, the singer whose intimacy matches her grandeur is the subject of a PBS documentary, “Irma: My Life in Music.”The singer Irma Thomas has long been known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans, a title that feels both richly deserved and far too provincial. Her songs never topped the Billboard pop chart, but they did climb it. And even today, they’re covered by bar bands and in blues jams across the country.Still, if the title suggests a mix of regality and relatability, it makes decent sense. Irma Thomas is, first and foremost, a straight shooter. You feel it in conversation, where she’s neither unduly humble nor conceited. And you can hear it in her singing, which achieves the grandeur often expected from R&B singers in the early 1960s, but has always retained a special kind of intimacy; she often sounds a bit like a more plain-spoken Etta James.“Straight From the Heart,” from her breakthrough 1964 album, “Wish Someone Would Care,” is a demand for sincerity that might be a manifesto, and a standout in a catalog studded with gems. As is made clear in “Irma: My Life in Music,” a documentary debuting on PBS stations across the country this month, Thomas has treated baring her soul as serious work for the past six decades. And she has her rules, rooted in faith and practice: Gospel doesn’t belong in an R&B set. One ought to take requests, she said in a recent interview, to be sure an audience “won’t leave disappointed.”It’s the same attitude that made Thomas an indispensable musical partner for the famed producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint: “He knew he could depend on me,” she said.Thomas, who turns 81 on Friday, began singing professionally in her teens, while already raising four children, and by the mid-1960s her career was taking off. A stint in Los Angeles in the late ’60s and ’70s resulted in frustration — as did watching the Rolling Stones score a smash hit off “Time Is on My Side” after they’d heard her version. But she returned home in the mid-70s to a hero’s welcome, and has been a fixture at nearly every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since it began more than half a century ago.More recently, she’s found a new generation of fans through Netflix’s “Black Mirror,” where her haunting doo-wop hit, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand),” frequently cameos. In a phone conversation this month from her home in New Orleans East, Thomas was amicable and down-to-earth as ever — “You ask the questions, and I’ll answer ’em,” she said as we began — as she talked about growing up and thriving in New Orleans, and revealed which of her many songs she treasures the most. These are edited excerpts from the interview.Thomas said she got her start singing in church, and noted, “I’m in the choir at church even now.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen did you begin to realize that you really had a passion and a talent?Well, singing was something I did all the time. I mean, I can’t remember when I wasn’t singing. From a wee child, even living in Greensburg, La., I sang “The Tennessee Waltz” for my elementary schoolteacher’s play, “Cinderella.” I thought everybody did it. I didn’t think it was anything unusual.We did a lot of singing, keeping each other company or entertaining each other on the front porch during the week, when we weren’t working in the field. That was in the country. Then when I came to the city, we used to play and sing in the complex where we were. There were several kids who were playing music in school, and on weekends they would be playing music and we were singing whatever the most recent record that was out at the time. To me, I didn’t have such a big deal of a voice. Everybody around me was, you know, musically inclined to sing or play whatever instrument they were playing.You didn’t feel like you got a special response when you sang?Well, they applauded — they didn’t boo me! [Laughs]Your love for singing actually cost you work early in life, correct?I enjoyed singing for pleasure, so I was singing to keep myself company when it got me fired the first time, working the 11-to-7 shift. The second time I got fired for singing on the job, I was supposed to be waiting tables. So rather than waiting tables — or, in between waiting tables — I would get up and sing with the band that was playing at the club.How did your relationship with Allen Toussaint take shape? Was it clear immediately that you two had a special connection?It grew over time. There was just no hardships involved whenever I was working with him. He would have me sing a lot of his demos for people that he was writing songs for. I was a quick learner. When he wanted something done, he knew he could depend on me to sing it the way he wanted it sung. I never knew who he was presenting these songs to, I was just doing the demos for him.But you also made some special records together.Oh yeah, of course. He was one who wrote songs specifically for the artists: He knew my vocal ability and he would write a song that he knew would fit. And there was never a song he wrote that I turned down.One thing we haven’t talked about yet is your relationship to gospel music.I grew up in the church, so naturally I would be singing gospel music. Every Sunday when I’m not working, I still sing in church. I’m in the choir at church even now. Most of us grew up in the church, and a lot of us got our influences in the church. So it would be a natural progression to sing and to be a part of the gospel scene, whenever you could.After Katrina, Quint Davis decided that he would like for me to do a tribute to Mahalia Jackson, which I started doing. And I’m still doing the gospel set at JazzFest every year. I do a gospel set, then I do an R&B set. That’s just the natural thing to do. [Laughs]“He knew my vocal ability and he would write a song that he knew would fit,” Thomas said of working with the famed producer Allen Toussaint. “And there was never a song he wrote that I turned down.”Camille Lenain for The New York TimesHow big was Mahalia Jackson’s influence on you?I grew up listening to Mahalia Jackson’s music as a child. My parents had some of her records, back when it was 78s, and then in New Orleans we had radio stations that had gospel programming during the day. But we heard all kinds of music locally on the radio back then, because the radio stations were owned by local producers and owners. So they played a lot of local music as well as a lot of national music.So people who are my age, who grew up here in New Orleans, we had the best of both worlds because we were hearing it all. And then we didn’t have to fight to have a local record played. Nowadays, you’re lucky to hear your record once a year, because it’s not owned by local people. It’s, you know, ClearChannel or something like that, and they couldn’t care less. When you hear one hour, that’s what you’re going to hear all day long. So you don’t get a chance to call in and request what you would like to hear.Hurricane Ida had a big impact on New Orleans. It was nothing like Katrina, but the city appears to still be struggling in the wake of it.Yeah, because now supplies are hard to come by, because of the problems with shipping replenishing them. And so many people lost the roofs on their houses, so you have to wait in line, I guess. But New Orleans is a city that, you know, we’re resilient. We don’t run away. We stay here, and we snap back and move on.I’m sure almost everyone who interviews you must ask about “Time Is on My Side.” But could you talk about why you gave up playing it for a while in the middle of your career?Well you know, after a while, when you sing something that you know you’ve recorded, and you did the first national version of it, and when you’re singing, somebody tells you: “Oh, you’re doing a Rolling Stones song,” I got tired of explaining that I did it before the Rolling Stones. After a while that gets to be old. And so I stopped doing it, because I got tired of explaining that. They didn’t do their homework, they made assumptions. And so at some point you get tired of repeating yourself. Even now, I don’t do it as much as I do others. I sing it, but a lot of times it’s requested before I think about doing it, because I have so many other songs I can do.I have a large enough repertoire that by choice I can either do all of my own material or I can do a few cover songs that I like. And by taking requests, it makes it simpler, because then you are doing what your audience wants to hear. And I’ll put it this way: Most folks leave satisfied that they’ve heard their favorite song.In fact, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is” — I recorded that back in 1964. I was at a show on the East Coast somewhere, and somebody in the audience asked me to play “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is.” I said, “Wow, I haven’t heard that request in a long time.” I sang it for them, and then when I got through, I asked them: “What album did you get that from?” They said, “We didn’t get it off an album. We heard it on ‘Black Mirror.’” You never know where you’re going to get a request from, or where they heard the song. And so I prepare — I put as much of my own material in my iPad, lyrically, so in case someone asks for it, I’ll do my best to do it for them.Is there one song that you consider nearest to your heart?The only one that I could say I’m closest to would be the one that got me my first big hit, which was “Wish Someone Would Care.” It became No. 17 in the nation, and if it hadn’t been for the British Invasion, it might have gone a little higher in the charts. There were some personal things going on in my life and I wrote the song because of those things. So that would be the closest to me. More

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      Betty Davis, Raw Funk Innovator, Is Dead at 77

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      “Nasty Gal” and her two other 1970s albums influenced generations of R&B and hip-hop.Betty Davis, the singer and songwriter whose raunchy persona, fierce funk grooves and Afrofuturistic style in the early 1970s made her a forerunner of R&B and hip-hop to come, died on Wednesday in Homestead, Pa., the town outside Pittsburgh where she had lived. She was 77.Her reissue label, Light in the Attic, distributed a statement from her friend of 65 years, Connie Portis, announcing the death of a “pioneer rock star, singer, songwriter and fashion icon.” The cause was not specified. Ms. Davis, who first recorded as Betty Mabry, got her last name from her one-year marriage to the jazz bandleader Miles Davis. The music she made in the early 1970s didn’t bring her nationwide hits, but it directly presaged the uninhibited funk of musicians from Prince to Janet Jackson to Janelle Monáe.On the three albums she released from 1973 to 1975, Ms. Davis growled, moaned, teased and rasped through songs that were lascivious, bluesy and hardheaded. She posed in lingerie, in neo-Egyptian regalia and in space-warrior garb, with her hair in a towering Afro; she performed in silvery thigh-high boots, short shorts and a bustier. The poet Saul Williams described her as “the burning secret of Black womanhood and sensuality as expressed through song.”In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Ms. Davis said, “I wrote about love, really, and all the levels of love,” proudly including carnality. “When I was writing about it, nobody was writing about it. But now everybody’s writing about it.”In the 2000s, Light in the Attic reissued Ms. Davis’s albums with her approval.“Nasty Gal” would be her last studio album released near the time it was recorded, and she never had a certified hit. As the 1980s began, she left the music business almost completely. Yet listeners and musicians have repeatedly rediscovered her, and Davis gained ever-increasing respect as her music was sampled — by Ice Cube, Method Man and Lenny Kravitz among others — and reissued. “This lady was hip before hip was hip,” Mr. Kravitz tweeted.She was born Betty Gray Mabry on July 26, 1944, in Durham, N.C., to Henry and Betty Mabry and grew up in rural North Carolina and in Homestead. Her father was a steelworker, her mother a nurse. In the 2017 documentary film “Betty: They Say I’m Different,” she recalled listening as a little girl to the blues and rock ’n’ roll — Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Chuck Berry — and singing along with the record player. She was 12 when she wrote her first song, “Bake a Cake of Love,” and she sang in local talent shows.As a teenager, Ms. Mabry went o New York City to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology; she brought along a notebook full of songs. She worked as a model for the Wilhelmina agency, appearing in Glamour and Seventeen magazines and as a pinup in Jet magazine. She also worked as a club hostess, and she savored the city’s 1960s nightlife and met figures like Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix.Her first single, in 1964, was “The Cellar.” According to Danielle Maggio, an ethnomusicologist and adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh who wrote her dissertation on Ms. Davis, the song was named after a private club at Broadway and West 90th Street. Ms. Mabry became its M.C., disc jockey and hostess, and the club drew artists, musicians and athletes.In 1967, the Chambers Brothers recorded one of her songs, “Uptown.” The South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, then her boyfriend, produced a 1968 single for her, “Live, Love, Learn.”Ms. Davis with her husband, Miles Davis, at their home in New York in 1969. During their yearlong marriage she introduced him to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, catalyzing his move into rock and funk.Baron Wolman/Getty ImagesShe met Miles Davis at a jazz club and became his second wife in 1968. A photograph of her is the cover of Davis’s 1969 album, “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” which includes a tune titled “Mademoiselle Mabry.” Ms. Davis introduced her husband to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, catalyzing his move into rock and funk.While Mr. Davis was working on a later album, he considered calling it “Witches Brew”; his wife suggested “Bitches Brew,” the title that stuck. She also convinced him to trade the dapper suits of his previous career for flashier contemporary fashion. “I filled the trash with his suits,” she recalled in the documentary.Mr. Davis encouraged her to perform. In 1969, he produced sessions for her, choosing musicians including Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter from Davis’s quintet and Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox from Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. His label, Columbia Records, rejected the results, which remained unreleased until 2016.The marriage was turbulent and sometimes violent before ending in 1969. “Miles was pure energy, sometimes light but also dark,” Ms. Davis recalled in the documentary. “Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis.”She kept the name as she returned to songwriting. Material she wrote for the Commodores brought her an offer to record for Motown, but she turned it down because she insisted on keeping her publishing rights.Ms. Davis subsequently moved to London — where a new boyfriend, Eric Clapton, offered to produce an album for her — and then to the Bay Area, where Michael Lang, who had promoted the 1969 Woodstock festival, signed her to his label, Just Sunshine. Greg Errico, the drummer from Sly and the Family Stone, produced her debut album, “Betty Davis”; it opened with “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and included “Anti Love Song,” which warned, “Just as hard as I’d fall for you, boy/Well you know you’d fall for me harder.”Ms. Davis wrote all the songs on her albums, and she produced the next two herself: “They Say I’m Different” and “Nasty Gal,” which brought her to a major label, Island Records. The music and arrangements were hers; she sang each part to her band members. Her songs were aggressive, jaggedly syncopated funk that was anything but shy. In “Nasty Gal,” she boasted, “You said I love you every way but your way/And my way was too dirty for you.”But while Davis conquered club audiences, she found little traction on radio, denying her any commercial success. In 1976, she recorded another album, which included the autobiographical “Stars Starve, You Know.” The song complains, “They said if I wanted to make some money/I’d have to clean up my act.”Island shelved the album, which went unreleased until 2009, and dropped Ms. Davis. “The doors in the industry kept closing,” she said in the film. “All these white men behind desks telling me to change. Change my look, change my sound. ‘Change your music, Betty.’”In 1979, she found independent financing to make another album, “Crashin’ With Passion,” recording it in Los Angeles with musicians including Mr. Hancock, Martha Reeves (of Martha and the Vandellas) and the Pointer Sisters; it, too, went unreleased. Ms. Davis felt that the music business was done with her. In 2018, she said: “When I was told that it was over, I just accepted it. And nobody else was knocking at my door.”The death of her father, in 1980, deepened her isolation and depression. On a yearlong visit to Japan in the early 1980s, she played some club dates with a Japanese band, her last live performances. She left no immediate survivors.But as the decades passed, she was far from forgotten. In the 2000s, Light in the Attic reissued her albums with her approval, along with the Columbia sessions produced by Mr. Davis and her unreleased 1976 album, “Is It Love or Desire.” Hip-hop samples made clear how hard-hitting her productions still sounded, and the 2017 documentary brought new affirmations that Ms. Davis had been ahead of her time.“Being different is everything,” she said in the film. “It is the way forward.” More

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      Syl Johnson, Soul Singer With a Cult Following, Dies at 85

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      He released dozens of records on an array of labels across five decades, and his work was heavily sampled by rappers. He enjoyed a career revival in his 70s.Syl Johnson, a Chicago soul singer and guitarist who built a cult following for his raw sound on 1960s songs like “Is It Because I’m Black” and, decades later, was heavily sampled by rappers, died on Sunday in Mableton, Ga., at the home of one of his daughters. He was 85.The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Syleecia Thompson said.Although never a chart-topping star, Mr. Johnson was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs, and for a versatile vocal style that could match James Brown’s grunting gusto or Al Green’s lovelorn keening. He released dozens of singles and albums on an array of record labels across five decades, and he enjoyed a career revival in his 70s after an exhaustively researched boxed set, “Complete Mythology” (2010), introduced his work to a new generation.Mr. Johnson was also one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside. He proclaimed himself a “multifaceted genius” and compared himself favorably to giants of the genre like Mr. Brown, Mr. Green and Marvin Gaye.Mr. Johnson in an undated publicity photo. Although never a chart-topping star, he was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs and his versatile vocal style.When Mr. Johnson’s performing career began slowing down in the 1980s, he opened a seafood restaurant in Chicago, invested in real estate and found a lucrative side business seeking out his royalties. Grooves and stray growls from tracks like “Different Strokes” (1967) and “Is It Because I’m Black” (1969) had become go-to samples in hip-hop, used hundreds of times by artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Whodini, Public Enemy, Kid Rock and N.W.A; even Michael Jackson used some of Mr. Johnson’s music.For help hunting down unauthorized samples, Mr. Johnson enlisted his children and their friends.“He would tell people in the neighborhood, ‘If you find any rapper who has sampled my music, I will pay you,’” Ms. Thompson told The New York Times in 2010. “And so all the kids, we would go buy cassettes and listen to see if we could hear his ‘wow!’ and his ‘aw!’”Mr. Johnson went after those royalties, sometimes through litigation. In recent years, his targets have included Jay-Z and Kanye West, who settled a case with Mr. Johnson in 2012.“I’m sitting in the house that Wu-Tang built with their money,” Mr. Johnson told The Times.Mr. Johnson was one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside.via The Numero GroupHe was born Sylvester Thompson on July 1, 1936, near Holly Springs, Miss., the sixth child of Samuel and Erlie Thompson, who farmed cotton and corn. Samuel Thompson sang at a local church and played the harmonica, and Sylvester and his older brothers Jimmy and Mack all took up the guitar. By 1950, the family had moved to Chicago.By the late 1950s, Sylvester was accompanying blues players like Junior Wells and Jimmy Reed, and in 1959 his first single, “Teardrops,” with echoes of the R&B crooner Jackie Wilson, was released under the name Syl Johnson on the Federal label. His stage name was chosen by Syd Nathan, the impresario behind King Records, of which Federal was a subsidiary.Mr. Johnson’s brothers also had extensive careers in music. Mack Thompson, a bassist and guitarist, died in 1991. Jimmy Johnson became a prominent blues guitarist in Chicago and died on Jan. 31 at age 93.Syl Johnson released singles on a variety of labels throughout the 1960s, with limited success, before signing with Twilight Records in 1967. Songs he recorded for the label like “Come On Sock It to Me,” “Dresses Too Short” and “Different Strokes,” with their gritty funk grooves and powerful vocals, raised his profile. “Different Strokes” — whose frequently sampled opening features Mr. Johnson’s deep grunts alongside giggles from the singer Minnie Riperton — reached No. 17 on Billboard’s R&B chart. (After learning that another label already owned that name, Twilight Records eventually rechristened itself Twinight.)“Is It Because I’m Black,” written as a response to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., added a note of bitter social commentary. “Something is holding me back,” he sang. “Is it because I’m Black?”In 1971, Mr. Johnson signed to Hi Records in Memphis, Al Green’s home, where he worked with Willie Mitchell, the label’s house producer. Mr. Johnson’s time there — his output included a cover of Mr. Green’s “Take Me to the River” in 1975 — gave him perhaps his greatest exposure, though he later said he wished he had continued to record in Chicago.Mr. Johnson in performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn in 2009.Piotr Redlinski for The New York TimesHe continued recording into the 2000s, including an album with his brother Jimmy called “Two Johnsons Are Better Than One.” But he had mostly retired from music when he was approached in 2006 by the Numero Group, a Chicago label known for its extensive research, about a reissue project. Distrustful of record companies, he rebuffed the company for nearly four years.When he finally agreed, the label produced a six-LP, four-CD monolith with crisp historical photos and detailed liner notes. The boxed set cemented Mr. Johnson’s legacy and established Numero’s credentials as an authoritative outlet.“There is no Numero without Syl Johnson,” said Ken Shipley, one of the founders of the label, which has continued to represent Mr. Johnson as the owner of his music publishing rights and most of his recordings.In 2015, Mr. Johnson was the subject of a documentary, “Any Way the Wind Blows,” directed by Rob Hatch-Miller.In addition to his daughter Syleecia, Mr. Johnson’s survivors include three other daughters, Sylette DeBois, Syleena Johnson and Michelle Thompson; a son, Anthony Thompson; two sisters, Vivian and Marva Thompson; and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Mr. Johnson could be bitter in recounting his experiences with the music industry, but in later years he often expressed gratitude for being given another chance to make his mark.“Back in the day I didn’t get the proper chance, like a lot of people,” he told The Times after “Complete Mythology” came out.“But I didn’t drop out of my dreams,” he added, “and now these people went back and picked it up and said, ‘This is gold right here, man, you missed the gold.’ And I think that once you check it out, you’ll like it.” More

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      Kamasi Washington Blasts Into a Fresh Era, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Koffee, Lucy Dacus, Sasami and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Kamasi Washington, ‘The Garden Path’ (Live on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’)The Los Angeles-based saxophonist and spiritual-jazz revivalist Kamasi Washington, 40, made his American late-night TV debut this week, performing on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” With over a dozen instrumentalists and singers arrayed around him onstage, all draped in desert whites and golds, he presented a new composition, “The Garden Path.” Washington’s basic musical components haven’t changed since the release of “The Epic,” his breakout album: polyrhythmic funk and rock beats; a full blast of horns over a meaty rhythm section; scant harmonic or melodic movement in the song’s theme. The biggest source of magnetism here came from downstage right: It’s the voice of Dwight Trible, a Los Angeles jazz fixture, whose lush baritone carries the plangent lyrics in harmony with Patrice Quinn: “Bright minds with dark eyes/Speak loud words, tell sweet lies/Lost without a trace of a way/To get out of this misery.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKoffee, ‘Pull Up’The Jamaican firebrand Koffee, who made history as the youngest person and first woman to win a Grammy for best reggae album in 2020, has good reason to arrive triumphantly on “Pull Up,” the beatific new single from her long-awaited debut album, “Gifted,” due March 25. A liquid beat from the masterful British-Ghanian producer Jae5 trickles between Afrobeats and reggae; in the video, Koffee grins from ear to ear, mouth full of braces, as she leans out of the window of a drifting car and lets the barbs flow: “Zero to a hundred in two/Yeah, so me flex pon you.” ISABELIA HERRERAMachine Gun Kelly featuring Willow, ‘Emo Girl’A love song in which both MGK and Willow bemoan falling for the emo girl who’s just out of reach, sulkily celebrating her the way songs in the 1950s serenaded the prom queen. If this doesn’t inspire and soundtrack a Netflix awkward-teen meet-cute rom-com by this time next year I’m canceling my subscription! JON CARAMANICALucy Dacus, ‘Kissing Lessons’The songs on Lucy Dacus’s 2021 album, “Home Video,” revisited childhood memories, many of them fraught with difficult self-discoveries. “Kissing Lessons” is more cheerful. It’s a two-minute pop-punk reminiscence of being in second grade and learning to kiss from a girl who was a year older, sharing childish thoughts about what grown-up romance would be: a fond, brief, revelatory interlude. PARELESTate McRae, ‘She’s All I Wanna Be’Tate McRae has a dry, wiry voice that’s well suited to this convincingly mopey and skittish punk-pop thumper about envy: “If you say she’s nothing to worry about/then why’d you close your eyes when you said it out loud?” CARAMANICASasami, ‘Call Me Home’With each single she releases from her upcoming album “Squeeze,” the Los Angeles artist Sasami Ashworth shows off another subgenre of rock that she can pull off with effortless and idiosyncratic style. “Say It” was an industrial banger, “Skin a Rat” flirted with metal and “The Greatest” indulged in some slow-burning garage rock. Her latest, “Call Me Home,” is a lush, nostalgic blast of AM-radio psychedelia, suggesting that she’s not yet done revealing the many sides of her eclectic talent. LINDSAY ZOLADZArlo Parks, ‘Softly’The track cruises along easily, with a light boom-bap beat, a sprinkling of piano notes, leisurely guitar chords and a canopy of strings. Arlo Parks tries to keep her voice nonchalant. But she’s all too aware that her romance is ending: “Has something changed? Have I just missed the memo?” She’s shattered, and all she can do is beg her lover to “Break it to me softly.” PARELESKassi Ashton, ‘Dates in Pickup Trucks’A gifted soul vocalist hiding out in country music, Kassi Ashton sings with resonant wistfulness on “Dates in Pickup Trucks,” a lovely breeze of a song about what to do when there’s absolutely nothing to do. CARAMANICAObongjayar, ‘Try’Obongjayar is Steven Umoh, who was born in Nigeria and moved to London in his teens. He won’t be pinned down; “Try,” from his debut album due in May, jump-cuts among spacious, quasi-orchestral ambience to gently crooned electronic R&B to deep-growl toasting to a big, yearning chorus with an Afrobeats undertow. “All we do is try,” he sings, and there’s palpable ambition in every stylistic leap. PARELESMy Idea, ‘Cry Mfer’My Idea is a duo of two prolific New York-based indie musicians who also happen to be friends: Nate Amos of the experimental dance band Water for Your Eyes, and Lily Konigsberg of the art-rockers Palberta (who also released an excellent solo album, “Lily We Need to Talk Now,” late last year). “Cry Mfer,” from a forthcoming album of the same name, is less confrontational than its title might suggest, revolving around a looping, hypnotic track and Konigsberg’s reflections on a collapsing relationship: “I could be the one that makes you cry, I could be the one that makes you — ouch.” ZOLADZIlluminati Hotties, ‘Sandwich Sharer’To describe the genre of her eclectic project Illuminati Hotties — or perhaps just to thumb her nose at the absurdity of genre itself — Sarah Tudzin coined a term: “tenderpunk.” “Sandwich Sharer,” her latest one-off single, oscillates restlessly between those two adjectives. At first it seems like this song will showcase the softer side of Illuminati Hotties: “Restarted kissing,” she begins over a dramatically strummed, slow-motion chord. But before the listener can gain footing at that tempo, Tudzin suddenly kicks the song into a spunky gallop, punctuated by her humorously offbeat lyrics (“You thought I was bleeding but that’s just my spit!”). Tudzin often paints vivid and lifelike portraits of modern human relationships, and the shape-shifting nature of “Sandwich Sharer” captures the feel of one that’s constantly in flux. ZOLADZWhatever the Weather, ‘17ºC’Whatever the Weather is a new pseudonym for the English electronic musician Loraine James, who thrives on concocting dance-floor rhythms that she skews with gaps, interjections and disorienting shifts of texture. “17ºC” — from a coming album of tracks named after temperatures — ratchets up a beat from hisses, thumps, boops and blips, but continually disassembles and reformulates it: with hollows of reverb, with street and party noises, with disembodied vocal syllables, with clusters of keyboard tones and with sudden drum-machine salvos. The pulse persists, even when it’s only implied. PARELESAyver, ‘Reconciliación Con la Vida’For nearly two decades, the Peruvian label Buh Records has showcased the esoteric and avant-garde sounds of Latin America, from forgotten electroacoustic legends of the ’70s to contemporary noise artists. That mission returns in its latest release, a compilation of new faces in the Peruvian electronic scene. “Reconciliación Con la Vida,” its standout, bottles a wide spectrum of emotional textures. Lying somewhere between profound tragedy and wistful wonder, tender piano keys and sweeping string crescendos bleed into trembling beauty. It is intimate but heart-rending, like the soft caress of a lover you may never see again. HERRERAPeter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, William Parker, ‘Historic Music Past Tense Future, Side C’“Historic Music Past Tense Future” is the first in a planned series of albums on the Black Editions Archive label that will exhume previously unreleased live recordings of Milford Graves, the drummer and polymath who died last year amid a late-career re-emergence. This is the first album featuring Graves alongside the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and the bassist William Parker — all lions of the avant-garde. The third of four freely improvised, quarter-hour-long tracks, “Side C” starts as a quiet conversation between Graves and Parker, then gets lit up by Brötzmann’s tone-smashing saxophone. Midway through, Graves guides things back down to a simmer, Brötzmann drops out, and Parker begins to play a repetitive, rhythmic drone, almost like something you’d hear in Gnawa ritual. Stroking his deeply resonant, hand-altered drums, Graves brings the energy back up slowly by playing around Parker’s plucks, adding rhythms that keep his drone dancing. RUSSONELLO More

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      Rosa Lee Hawkins, Youngest Member of the Dixie Cups, Dies at 76

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      The singing group’s debut single, “Chapel of Love,” rose to the top of the charts in 1964, displacing the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.”Rosa Lee Hawkins, the youngest member of the musical trio the Dixie Cups, whose hit single “Chapel of Love” reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 in 1964, died on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. She was 76.The cause was internal bleeding resulting from complications during surgery at Tampa General Hospital, said her sister Barbara Ann Hawkins, who was also a member of the group, along with Joan Marie Johnson, who died in 2016 at 72.The Dixie Cups epitomized the harmonizing sound of the 1960s girl group. “Chapel of Love,” their debut single and most well-known song, quickly replaced the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” as No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1964. It was later heard on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War film, “Full Metal Jacket.”Rosa Lee Hawkins was born on Oct. 23, 1945, in New Orleans to Hartzell Hawkins, a self-employed carpenter, and Lucille (Merette) Hawkins, a state worker who registered voters.While in high school in 1963, Barbara brought Rosa along to sing with her and Joan Marie in a high school talent show. The trio initially called themselves the Meltones, only to discover later that the name had already been taken. Since they were from the land of Dixie, and “cups are cute,” Barbara said in an interview, they came up with the name Dixie Cups (playing on the name of the popular paper cup).Joan later discovered that the Hawkins sisters were actually her cousins.While they did not win the talent show, a talent scout in the audience, impressed by their rich harmonies, invited the group, along with other Louisiana musicians, to perform for Red Bird Records. The Dixie Cups sang “Iko Iko,” a song that was traditionally sung during Mardi Gras and that was a favorite of the Hawkins sisters’ grandmother. They signed a recording contract soon after.The Dixie Cups received two Gold Records, for “Chapel of Love” and another hit, “People Say.” They were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.The group recorded a total of four albums, their last in 2011. Ms. Johnson, ill with sickle-cell anemia and weary from touring, left the group and was replaced by a number of singers through the years. The Hawkins sisters remained, though, and kept singing just as they did in high school, with harmonies as vibrant as ever.“When the audience smiled and applauded, it made her happy because she knew she put a smile on their faces, if only for that time,” Barbara said of her younger sister.In addition to Barbara, Ms. Hawkins is survived by another sister, Shirley; a son, Eric Blanc; and two grandchildren. More

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      James Mtume, Whose ‘Juicy Fruit’ Became a Hip-Hop Beat, Dies at 76

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      In a wide-ranging career, he went from playing percussion with Miles Davis to writing and producing sleek R&B to a long stint on political talk radio.James Mtume, the musician, songwriter, producer, bandleader and talk-radio host whose 1983 hit “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled in more than 100 songs, died on Sunday at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 76.His cause was cancer, his family said.Mr. Mtume started his career as a jazz percussionist. He was in Miles Davis’s band for the first half of the 1970s, appearing on Davis’s landmark 1972 jazz-funk album “On the Corner” and its successors.But in the late ’70s he pivoted to R&B: He co-wrote hits for Roberta Flack and Stephanie Mills, produced albums and formed a group, Mtume, which had major hits with his songs “Juicy Fruit” and “You, Me and He.” His sparse, sputtering electronic beat for “Juicy Fruit” gained an extensive second life in hip-hop when it was sampled on the debut single by the Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy,” a No. 1 rap hit in 1994.Mr. Mtume was born James Forman on Jan. 3, 1946, in Philadelphia. His father was the jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, but he was raised by his stepfather, James Forman, a jazz pianist also known as Hen Gates who had played with Charlie Parker, and his mother, Bertha Forman, a homemaker.Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane were frequent family visitors, and the young James Forman grew up playing piano and percussion; his biological uncle, the jazz drummer Albert (Tootie) Heath, gave him his first conga drum.He was a champion swimmer in high school, winning the Middle Atlantic title for backstroke, and attended Pasadena City College on an athletic scholarship.In California, he joined the US Organization, a Black nationalist cultural group that introduced the holiday Kwanzaa, and he took an African last name: Mtume, Swahili for messenger. He also turned seriously to music.In 1969, Albert Heath recorded four modal, Afrocentric jazz compositions by Mr. Mtume on his album “Kawaida,” featuring Mr. Mtume on congas alongside Herbie Hancock on piano, Don Cherry on trumpet and Jimmy Heath on saxophones. Mr. Mtume also worked with Art Farmer, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard and Gato Barbieri.He joined Miles Davis’s band in 1971 as it was making the transition to the jagged, open-ended, rhythm-dominated funk of “On the Corner.” In an extensive Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014, Mr. Mtume said that Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” He worked with Davis until 1975, touring and appearing on the albums “Big Fun,” “Dark Magus,” “Agharta,” “Pangaea” and “Get Up With It,” which included a Davis composition titled “Mtume.”Working with Davis, Mr. Mtume expanded his sound with electronic effects. “You don’t fight technology, you embrace it,” he said in 2014. “It’s like fire. It’ll burn you, or you learn how to cook with it.”In 1972, Mr. Mtume made his recording debut as a leader with “Alkebu-Lan: Land of the Blacks” on the Strata-East label, credited to the Mtume Umoja Ensemble. It opened with a spoken manifesto that praised “the role of Black music as a functional organ in the struggle for national liberation.” He released a second jazz album, “Rebirth Cycle,” in 1977.Mr. Mtume with Miles Davis in 1973. In a 2014 interview, he said Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” R. Brigden/Express, via Getty ImagesWhen Davis stopped performing in 1975, Mr. Mtume and the guitarist Reggie Lucas, another member of the Davis group, joined Roberta Flack’s band. Their composition “The Closer I Get to You,” which she recorded as a duet with Donny Hathaway, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 and was later remade by Beyoncé and Luther Vandross.They formed Mtume-Lucas Productions to write and produce songs. Among the artists they worked with were Phyllis Hyman, Teddy Pendergrass, the Spinners and Stephanie Mills, for whom they wrote the 1980 hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” a Grammy Award winner for best R&B song. On Instagram this week, Ms. Mills praised Mr. Mtume, writing, “He was so brilliant and an amazing music mind.”Between production jobs, Mr. Mtume and Mr. Lucas recorded with their core musicians as the group Mtume, which featured the singer Tawatha Agee. Mr. Mtume described the group’s first albums as “sophistifunk,” using plush harmonies and elaborate orchestrations.But one day, Mr. Mtume recalled, he realized that “I was playing something that sounded just like something else I had done. I got up and I walked away, and I disbanded the band, and I decided not to do any more productions.”He put together a second lineup of Mtume, without Mr. Lucas, and turned to a style he described as “neo-minimalism,” using just a handful of instruments and fewer effects. The new Mtume lineup recorded “Juicy Fruit.” At first, Mtume’s record label, Epic, dismissed the song as too slow for daytime radio, but it became a No. 1 R&B hit.The title song of Mtume’s 1984 album, “You, Me and He” — a confession of polyamory — reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart. On the group’s final album, “Theater of the Mind,” released in 1986, Mtume turned to sociopolitical commentary in songs like “Deep Freeze (Rap-a-Song) (Part 1).” That same year, Mr. Mtume wrote the score for the film “Native Son” and produced a solo album for Ms. Agee.In a radio interview in 1988, during a freewheeling era of hip-hop when samples were widely used without payment or credit, Mr. Mtume denounced hip-hop’s reliance on sampling, calling it “Memorex music” and complaining that the originators were ignored. The hip-hop group Stetsasonic responded with “Talkin’ All That Jazz,” which argued, “Rap brings back old R&B/And if we would not, people could’ve forgot.”Eventually, sampling — by then licensed and credited — would keep Mr. Mtume’s music on the radio. “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled by Alicia Keys, Warren G, Jennifer Lopez, Keyshia Cole, Faith Evans and dozens of others, and many of Mr. Mtume’s other songs and productions have made their way onto new tracks.In 1994, Mr. Mtume scored the TV series “New York Undercover.” At his urging, the show’s story lines featured a nightclub, Natalie’s, where an older generation of musicians, including B.B. King and Gladys Knight, got new TV exposure and younger performers revived old songs. During the 1990s he also produced songs for Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, and K-Ci & Jojo.Yet by the mid-1990s, Mr. Mtume had grown dissatisfied with the music business. He moved into talk radio, and was a co-host from 1995 to 2013 on the weekly show “Open Line,” heard first on WRKS-FM (Kiss-FM) in New York and then on WBLS-FM when the stations merged, discussing politics, activism, news and culture alongside Bob Slade and Bob Pickett. Over the years, he also traveled to Cuba, Libya, Sudan and South Africa. He recorded a TED Talk in 2018, “Our Common Ground in Music,” in which he discussed “the cross-pollination of culture, politics and art.”He is survived by his wife, Kamili Mtume; his brother, Jeffrey Forman; two sons, Faulu Mtume and Richard Johnson; four daughters, Benin Mtume, Eshe King, Ife Mtume and Sanda Lee; and six grandchildren.“Pressing the boundaries. To me that’s always what it was about,” Mr. Mtume said in 2014. “Never give yourself a chance to look back, because that’s always easier. Looking forward is always harder.” More