2019-08-19_The_New_Yorker

(Ann) #1

THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019 5


ILLUSTRATION BY ERIN ROBINSON


The music promoter and artist manager Doris Muñoz has a secret weapon
to combat the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies: Selena
Quintanilla. In 2017, Muñoz was so terrified that her undocumented
parents might be deported to Mexico that she began raising money for
their visa petitions through a series of live-music fund-raisers. One of these
was Selena for Sanctuary, an electrifying dance party that brought together
several artists to cover the late Tejano superstar’s songs. The celebration was
such a success that it has become a recurring event, highlighting nonprofit
organizations and other initiatives that help immigrants find a path to
citizenship. The latest iteration, a free concert on Aug. 18, at SummerStage
in Central Park, features a lineup of Latinx artists, including Kali Uchis,
Cuco, Ambar Lucid, and Helado Negro.—Julyssa Lopez

LATINXMUSIC


1


NIGHTLIFE


Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.

Backstreet Boys
Barclays Center
The Backstreet Boys might seem like a
relic of nineties-and-early-two-thousands
pop culture, but the band’s five members
continue to fill stadiums with screaming
fans, even as they approach middle age.
It’s tempting to chalk up their longevity
to nostalgia, but the guys have balanced
throwback concerts—including the fastest-
selling Vegas residency in history—with
shining new music. The group’s latest
album, “DNA,” from January, marked its
first chart-topping record in nearly twenty
years, a testament to how a moment in the
spotlight has bloomed into decades of vi-
tality.—Julyssa Lopez (Aug. 15.)

Mabel
Bowery Ballroom
Music might as well be in Mabel’s DNA. Her
parents are the British producer Cameron
McVey (known for his work with Portishead
and Massive Attack) and the Swedish singer
Neneh Cherry; her stepgrandfather is the
pioneering jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. But
Mabel is charting her own path, with bubbly
anthemic tunes that are less idiosyncratic
than those of her relatives but equally pol-
ished. Her début album, “High Expecta-
tions,” which was released earlier this month,
is a glossy collection of songs that, lineage
aside, suggests her gaze is set on pop music’s
pantheon.—Briana Younger (Aug. 15.)

Azar Lawrence Experience
Jazz Standard
The fulsome tenor and soprano saxophonist
Azar Lawrence doesn’t disguise his admi-
ration for John Coltrane—his bona fides
include work with the Coltrane associates
Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner—but a fond-
ness for earthy R. & B. has earned him his
own loyal following; his seventies recordings,
including “Bridge Into the New Age,” are
widely regarded as essential listening. Here,
he performs with Experience, his fortified
septet, which includes the guitarist Julian
Coryell, the son of the fusion pioneer Larry
Coryell.—Steve Futterman (Aug. 15-18.)

DJ Python
Nowadays
The Queens native Brian Piñeyro makes an
array of dance music under several aliases—
DJ Wey, Luis, Deejay Xanax, and DJ Python
among them. As the latter, Piñeyro makes
what he calls “deep reggaetón,” a fusion of
Puerto Rican street pop’s rhythmic erup-
tions with ambient music and I.D.M. It’s a
hypnotic combination that peaks on “Be Si
To,” a track from Python’s recent EP “Der-
retirse.”—Michaelangelo Matos (Aug. 16.)

Makaya McCraven
Industry City
To hear Makaya McCraven play is to en-
counter something at the precise moment
of both its birth and its death. A titan jazz
drummer and producer, his songs aren’t
crafted so much as they unfold in real time,
invoking the genre’s spirit of improvisation
and hip-hop’s eternal swagger. Even his re-
cordings—the latest of which is the ultra-col-
laborative album “Universal Beings,” from
last year—sound like covertly captured jam
sessions. And yet, despite its of-the-moment
feel, his “organic beat music,” as he calls it,
brims with a knowledge of where we’ve been
and a vision of where we’re headed.—B.Y.
(Aug. 16.)

Taylor Ho Bynum 9-Tette
Jazz Gallery
The cornettist and composer Taylor Ho By-
num’s new nonet may not have the capacious
might of his elaborate fifteen-piece PlusTet
ensemble, but it is nonetheless overflowing with
A-list avant-garde musicians, including Mary
Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Ingrid Laubrock, and
Stomu Takeishi, all of whom share his expan-
sive imagination. This performance touches

on music from Bynum’s upcoming recording,
“The Ambiguity Manifesto.”—S.F. (Aug. 16.)

Beck
Forest Hills Stadium
A quarter century ago, Beck’s “Loser” was
that era’s “Old Town Road,” a fluke hit awash
in folk and hip-hop elements that seemed
to emanate from both everywhere and no-
where. Beck’s subsequent career has been a
paradigm of range and ingenuity. In advance
of an upcoming album, produced with Phar-
rell Williams, he co-headlines a tour with
Cage the Elephant; Spoon, whose music,
like Beck’s, has a pervasive air of cool; and
Sunflower Bean, a young group with a pleas-
ing nineties sound.—Jay Ruttenberg (Aug 17.)

The Bird and the Bee
Elsewhere
David Lee Roth might seem to be an unlikely
guiding light for the Bird and the Bee, the
art-pop pairing of Inara George and Greg
Kurstin, whose songs are as bubbly and con-
trolled as Van Halen’s are torrid. On the duo’s
new, oddly effective Van Halen-tribute LP,
Kurstin’s jazz-nurtured piano replaces Eddie’s
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