12 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY BEN PASSMORE
It’s natural to want to compare EarthGang to OutKast: both duos, both
from Atlanta, both cut their hip-hop equally with soul and idiosyncra-
sies. But it would be a disservice not to meet the younger pair on their
own terms; they carry the torch rather than shrink in its shadow. Using
Southern culture, aesthetics, and values as a rule, EarthGang—who
perform Feb. 13 at Warsaw, in Brooklyn, and Feb. 14 at Gramercy
Theatre, in Manhattan—orient their music around the storied legacies
of Afrofuturism and fantasy. “Mirrorland,” their début album, from
September, is at once space-age and down-home. On it, they bask in a
freewheeling eclecticism, playing with sounds and textures as they pay
homage to their home town, which they’ve affectionately dubbed the
Land of Oz, in reference to one of the record’s primary inspirations,
the classic film “The Wiz”: “It’s black people just being unafraid and
unapologetically creative.”—Briana YoungerHIP-HOP
dedicated a live remake of their single “Love
Me No More” to the late French producer
Phillippe Zdar.—M.M. (Feb. 15.)
El Gran Combo
Radio City Music Hall
Puerto Rico has long been home to some of
the biggest commercial smashes in contem-
porary salsa, and a showcase at Radio City
brings in three heavy hitters to continue
the decades-long musical dialogue. The
central draw is El Gran Combo, the nearly
sixty-year-old orchestra often touted as the
world’s most successful salsa group; the
legendary Tito Nieves and the romancer
Jerry Rivera make it an even higher-wattage
night.—J.L. (Feb. 15.)
Sahba Motallebi & Rahim AlHaj
Merkin Hall
The musical traditions of Iran and Iraq
stretch back centuries, and improvisation
is built into the music-making of both cul-
tures, allowing contemporary string virtu-
osos such as Sahba Motallebi (she plays the
tar, a Persian lute) and Rahim AlHaj (an
oud practitioner, once a political prisoner in
his native Baghdad) to tinge these ancient
modes with shades of modernity. Playing
separately and together in a remarkable,
one-of-a-kind concert, both honor the roads
they’ve travelled from the war-torn Middle
East to renown in the West.—K. Leander
Williams (Feb. 15.)“The Thrill Is Gone”
Capitol Theatre
Although B.B. King died in 2015, the blues
doyen was an unfailing stage presence for
so many decades that it can be hard to re-
member that he’s no longer on the road. This
whopping two-night tribute concert enlists
an army of artists to fill the void. Spread
across two distinct bills, performers include
the steel-guitar whiz Robert Randolph, the
deliciously randy blues veteran Bobby Rush,
the soul crooner Anthony Hamilton, and the
singular Buddy Guy, the wildfire guitarist
who currently wears the genre’s crown.—J.R.
(Feb. 16-17.)U.S. Girls
The Dance
Where experimental musicians may tend to
accompany outré sounds with vague lyrics
and a rejection of pageantry, U.S. Girls flip
the script, performing glassy, danceable pop
songs that smolder with radical undercurrents.
The group is the brainchild of Toronto’s Meg
Remy, and its music can be impenetrable—and
sometimes seem misguided—but rarely fails
to intrigue. A forthcoming album, “Heavy
Light,” employs disco, spoken word, and a
bona-fide E Street Band member to dive into
Remy’s professed theme of retrospection; deep
thoughts lurk behind its every beat.—J.R.
(Feb. 18.)Jill Scott
Radio City Music Hall
July will mark the twentieth anniversary of
“Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol.1,”
Jill Scott’s staggering début, and, in honor
of the occasion, the singer is setting out on
tour. The album, which matches an around-
the-way-girl lyricism with the sensuality and
soul of Scott’s showstopping voice, has held
up well over the years—the emotional and
carnal ecstasies of love and the roller coaster
of heartbreak will always be universal. Scott,
who has since made a foray into Hollywood,
remains ever iconic.—Briana Younger (Feb. 20.)Trio 3
Jazz Standard
The saxophonist Oliver Lake, the bassist
Reggie Workman, and the drummer Andrew
Cyrille—all veterans of a heady era when the
basic conventions of jazz were morphing into
challenging new forms—have now convened as
Trio 3. For this engagement, they’re joined by
Vijay Iyer, David Virelles, Marilyn Crispell,
and Jason Moran, four of the most flexible
and adventurous pianists working today, for
an intergenerational meeting of aligned spir-
its.—S.F. (Feb. 20-23.)Fatoumata Diawara
Town Hall
Fatoumata Diawara’s videos are hyper-vivid
and screaming with color, but, even if you
were to remove the visual elements from her
work, the Malian artist’s music would still be
luminous. Her Grammy-nominated album,
“Fenfo,” from 2018, is a clear example of how
she embraces brightness: she amplifies Af-
rican rhythms and Wassoulou traditions of
storytelling with her deep, commanding voice
and unrelenting electric guitars, which rip
through her songs like beautiful streaks of
lightning.—J.L. (Feb. 21.)Kojey Radical
Baby’s All Right
“Man upon a mission, still a martyr for the
vision,” the British-Ghanaian rapper Kojey
Radical announces in the opening seconds
of his EP “Cashmere Tears.” That sense of
hunger mixed with grand purpose underlies
the project, which expertly blends hip-hop