Christopher R. Weingarten

Beyoncé’s show brought more than a century of black musical traditions to America’s biggest music festival, with quotations and techniques joining her hits with Houston’s slowed-down screw music, Washington, D.C.’s percussive go-go rhythms, New Orleans’ brass bands and bounce artists, the Nigerian Afrobeat of Fela Kuti, the Jamaican dancehall of Sister Nancy, the Atlanta crunk of Pastor Troy, and even a moment for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the early 1900s hymn long called the black national anthem.

“Homecoming” includes brief vignettes exploring the monthslong run-up to the most celebrated concert of the internet age. Here’s what we learned.

— The show’s theme of homecoming at historically black colleges and universities (known as HBCUs) was inspired by personal experience.

Though Beyoncé did not attend college, the Houston native explained that she would visit Prairie View A&amp;M; University, rehearse at Texas Southern University and “always dreamed of going to an HBCU.” Her father, Mathew Knowles, went to Fisk University in Nashville. “I wanted it to feel the way I felt when I went to (the HBCU marching band showcase) Battle of the Bands,” Beyoncé explains of the Coachella set, “because I grew up seeing those shows and that being the highlight of my year.”

— Her difficult 2017 pregnancy was more harrowing than we knew.

Though Beyoncé has talked about battling pre-eclampsia while pregnant with twins Rumi and Sir Carter, she reveals that one of the babies’ heartbeats “paused a few times,” necessitating an emergency C-section.

— Balancing being a mother and a superstar was not easy.

Beyoncé has said she was 218 pounds the day she gave birth to her twins in the summer of 2017. In the documentary, she details a pre-Coachella diet that cut out bread, carbs, sugar, dairy, meat and alcohol — she lets out an exhausted sigh and adds that she’s hungry.

“There were days that I thought, you know, I’d never be the same. I’d never be the same physically, my strength and endurance would never be the same,” she says. “In the beginning it was so many muscle spasms. Just, internally, my body was not connected. My mind was not there. My mind wanted to be with my children. What people don’t see is the sacrifice. I would dance, and go off to the trailer, and breast-feed the babies, and the days I could, I would bring the children.”

— If you couldn’t have guessed, this is Beyoncé’s show.

“I personally selected each dancer, every light, the material on the steps, the height of the pyramid, the shape of the pyramid,” she says in the film. “Every tiny detail had an intention.” (This is also what her Coachella choreographers told us.)

— There’s more music beyond the massive performance.

Inside the doc, Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter, 5 or 6 at the time, provides an a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Also, in one more nod to the rich musical history explored in “Homecoming,” the end credits feature a new Beyoncé cover of “Before I Let Go,” the 1981 R&amp;B; hit by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. And when the film was released early Wednesday morning, it came with a surprise: a live album capturing the festival set.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/arts/music/beyonce-homecoming-coachella.html" id="8bb895c1-ffe8-3883-a652-d9851343f2b6">The New York Times</a>.

Early Wednesday morning, Netflix began streaming “Homecoming,” a 137-minute documentary and concert film detailing Beyoncé’s headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2018. Her elaborate performance — complete with 64 credited musicians, a phalanx of dancers and pyrotechnics both real and figurative — was an instant sensation when she unveiled it in the desert, and it streamed live online, last April.

Beyoncé and Some Bonuses: 5 Things We Learned About Her Coachella Triumph

But Jan. 25, the Sundance Film Festival debuted the four-hour documentary “Leaving Neverland,” which details accusations of abuse, almost instantly reopening the discussion on one of the most notorious scandals in music history. If you didn’t know why Jackson is leading the news cycle nearly 10 years after his death, here’s a brief explainer.

What is ‘Leaving Neverland’?

“Leaving Neverland” is a two-part miniseries focusing on the allegations of two men who say that Jackson abused them as children. It screened at Sundance in Park City, Utah, and will air on HBO in March (an official date has not been announced). It’s directed by British documentarian Dan Reed, who directed the 2016 HBO doc “Three Days of Terror: the Charlie Hebdo Attacks.”

What are the accusations in the documentary?

Wade Robson, a choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears, and James Safechuck, a computer programmer who appeared in commercials as a child actor, said they met Jackson when they were 7 and 10, and assert that he molested them for years. Robson and Safechuck (who appeared alongside Jackson in a memorable 1987 Pepsi commercial) detail allegations like mutual masturbation, oral and anal sexual acts, alcohol, lavish gifts and pornography. Robson, who says Jackson nicknamed him “Little One,” describes what he says was the singer’s methods to keep him from speaking out. Safechuck talks about a secret “wedding” he had with Jackson, and the ring he still has in his possession, saying Jackson gave him jewelry in exchange for sexual favors. Both men supported Jackson during a 2005 trial for molestation and denied he had abused them. However, Robson and Safechuck both sued Jackson’s estate after the star’s death. Robson said Jackson molested him for seven years, and Safechuck said he and Jackson engaged in sexual acts “hundreds” of times. Both cases were dismissed.

What has reaction been to the film?

Rolling Stone reported, “By the end of the screening, the crowd looked completely shellshocked,” adding, “It was hard not to feel like a bombshell had been dropped.”

The Guardian reported that, “After the film ended, an ashen-faced crowd rose to their feet to applaud Wade and James, who arrived on stage, both visibly moved by the response.”

What is the Jackson family and estate saying in response?

The family released a statement that called the documentary a “public lynching.” “We are furious that the media, who without a shred of proof or single piece of physical evidence, chose to believe the word of two admitted liars over the word of hundreds of families and friends around the world who spent time with Michael, many at Neverland, and experienced his legendary kindness and global generosity,” the statement reads. “The creators of this film were not interested in the truth. They never interviewed a single solitary soul who knew Michael except the two perjurers and their families.”

Jermaine Jackson, Michael’s older brother and former bandmate in the Jackson 5, appeared on “Good Morning Britain” on Wednesday and called the allegations “nonsense” while defending Michael Jackson’s practice of sleeping in bed with children. “Those were slumber parties. And what they didn’t tell you was there were little girls there, even with their parents, their uncles. And they were sitting down, watching movies,” Jermaine Jackson said.

Hasn’t Michael Jackson faced accusations like these before?

Yes. In 1993, the family of a 13-year-old boy filed a $30 million lawsuit saying Jackson sexually abused their son, including allegations of kissing, fondling and oral sex. The suit was settled out of court in 1994 for around $23 million. A cancer survivor who appeared by Jackson’s side in the Martin Bashir television documentary “Living With Michael Jackson” was 14 when authorities formally charged Jackson with molesting him. During the 14-week criminal trial in 2005, the boy’s younger brother said that Jackson showed them pornography, masturbated in front of them, served them alcohol and molested his brother on two occasions. Jackson was found not guilty.

What’s next for the Jackson estate?

“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” a musical based on the years leading up to Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous tour, is expected to start in late October in Chicago with an aim to hit Broadway in 2020. The show is produced by the Michael Jackson Estate and Columbia Live Stage, and features a book written by two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-accusations.html" id="9cdacd6f-5702-3a08-a2a4-41a500f5e3a6">The New York Times</a>.

Michael Jackson was quite possibly the most famous entertainer of the 20th century. When he died in June 2009, it seemed like the long-boiling national conversation around the multiple allegations of child molestation against him died, too; the focus instead shifted to his planned This Is It comeback concerts, his unreleased songs and a musical legacy that includes hundred of millions of albums sold.

Why Is Everyone Suddenly Talking About Michael Jackson?

English’s longtime manager, Vickie Markusic, confirmed the death. The specific cause was unknown, she said, but English had kidney failure and had been on dialysis for years.

Dance music’s euphoria and church music’s rapture have been conceptual relatives for years, but English’s joyful 12-inch singles often made the connection explicit, speaking plainly about her Christianity and soaring with the fervor of gospel music.

Like house music itself — a form of electronic dance music that emerged in the early 1980s — English was born in Chicago. But she became best known through her relationship with New York garage, a strain of dance music that embraced lush production and melodies more amenable to gospel and soul.

Her breakthrough was “Nite Life,” a 1994 12-inch disc given a luxurious mix by the New York garage producers Masters at Work and a harder-edged remix by Armand Van Helden. It became an enduring club staple, with English singing like Dorothy Gale back in Kansas but still dreaming of Oz: “I’m trying hard to find this place again/Lord knows, I’m glad at least I’ve been.”

From 1999 to 2007, with singles like “Unspeakable Joy” and “Everyday,” English scored eight No.1 hits on Billboard’s club/dance chart, more than chart-topping dance notables like Daft Punk, Calvin Harris and New Order.

English was born Sept. 6, 1970, to Annie (Herron) English, a schoolteacher, and Ronald English, a corrections officer. She went to high school at Kenwood Academy in Chicago, studying under famed vocal teacher Lena McLin, whose students have also included opera baritone Mark Rucker and R. Kelly. On the list of more than 20 influences on English’s Facebook page, McLin appears first.

In the early 1990s, the Chicago house DJ Gershon Jackson brought English to the attention of the vocalist Byron Stingily of Ten City, a Chicago trio of vocalists, songwriters and producers that combined house and R&amp;B.

“Her voice actually reminded me, very much so, of Anita Baker’s voice,” Stingily said. “And to hear that smoky alto voice on a dance song, it was just so unique and so different at the time.”

Her career as a dance diva took off when Stingily gave a copy of the Ten City/English collaboration “Nite Life” to Little Louie Vega of Masters at Work, who passed it along to the New York club label Nervous Records.

“I did know right away the song had something special,” Mike Weiss, a founder of the label, said. “And once I knew that Masters at Work were going to be doing the remix, then it really was an automatic for me.”

Masters at Work (Vega and Kenny Gonzalez, known as Kenny Dope) were in-demand remixers, and “Nite Life” was licensed to Polydor in Britain, where it hit the Top 40. In America, where house music was still an underground phenomenon, it was played at Vega’s small but influential Underground Network party at the Sound Factory Bar in Manhattan. Weiss said English’s first live performance was there, in 1994.

“And she did it in front of the key individuals and all the key tastemakers in the house music community,” he added. “She really wasn’t so comfortable onstage, and it was really putting someone in the spotlight without having had any experience in the New York community — but she did great. The song was so strong that as soon as she sang the chorus, everyone started singing along.”

The Armand Van Helden remix took “Nite Life” to another level in Europe, according to Weiss. Soon, thanks to mixes and remixes, English’s voice was being matched with house heavyweights like David Morales, Mood II Swing, François K and Todd Edwards.

Markusic said that once English’s production deal with Ten City was over, she wrote more of her own songs. Her first No.1 club hit, in 1999, was a song she co-wrote, “Unspeakable Joy,” a Maurice Johnson production full of church organs and gospel-choir harmonies. In it, English testified, “When I wake up, in the morning, gets me out of bed/Keeps me running, skipping, jumping like a little kid.”

“As her career and her writing got more developed, she did push more and more toward the religious base,” Weiss said. “She also wanted to have the word ‘God’ in the songs. I’m very open-minded when it comes to religion, but I did feel like having ‘God’ in a song all of a sudden, you might limit the audience a little bit.”

Markusic said that for English, religion had been inseparable from music: “Every single one of the songs that she’s ever put out, whether people know it or not, they’re all related to God.”

English is survived by her parents; her son, Christopher Raymond; and her brothers, Eric, Richard and Ronald. Her marriage to Kevin Raymond ended in divorce.

After her last No.1 single, “My Destiny,” in 2007, English became a full-time student at Purdue University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in child and family services and joined the historically black sorority Zeta Phi Beta. She remained active in both music and church, singing in the choir of the Family Christian Center megachurch in Munster, Indiana.

“Kim’s mission has always been to minister to people through music,” Markusic said. “I’ve seen some amazing stories. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been in a club and had one of the club kids come up crying to Kim about how she saved her life from suicide.”

Stingily put it this way: “She didn’t want to do any music that was not uplifting.”

Kim english, who blended gospel with dance music, dies at 48

Kim English, whose melismatic vocals and spiritual perspective anchored more than a dozen house-music hits that reverberated in dance clubs beginning in the 1990s, died Tuesday in Chicago. She was 48.

<h1>His resume included ambitious art-rock totems, easy listening schmaltz, TV theme songs, incendiary folk-rock, Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” and Steely Dan’s smooth softscapes. His beats backed a hall of fame of mid-20th century icons, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Supremes, Simon and Garfunkel, Sam Cooke, Barbra Streisand, Herb Alpert, John Denver and Leonard Cohen.</h1>

But his most legendary beat is the primordial thump-thump-thump-crack heartbeat in the first four seconds of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” Here’s just a fraction of what Blaine tapped into musical history.

The Crystals, ‘He’s a Rebel’ (1962): The first Phil Spector production that Blaine — the drummer for the producer’s Wrecking Crew session band — drove to No. 1. In the final 30 seconds, you can hear Blaine exploding outward from his steady pulse into a frenzy. “Phil Spector, God bless him, used to let me just go nuts on records,” Blaine told Modern Drummer. “I would go totally bananas on the endings of those songs. Phil has always said that he was going to take all the fades and put them together and put out some records of that.”

The Ronettes, ‘Be My Baby’ (1963): Blaine wagered the creation of one of the most iconic opening drum beats of all time was “unintentional.” “Be My Baby” was possibly intended to have snare beats breaking up the pulse on 2 and 4 instead of just the big wallop at the end. In any event, its influence can be felt in the many songs that used similar beats in its wake: Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” the Boys’ “Brickfield Nights,” the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey,” Poison’s “Cry Tough” and Bat for Lashes’ “What’s a Girl to Do” among them.

Sam Cooke, ‘Another Saturday Night’ (1963): Blaine would eventually be known for his steady backbeats, but he can be heard playing wild fills all over this soul classic. “That was another one with that same drum lick every eight or 16 bars, whatever it was,” Blaine told NPR. “And all these drum licks kind of became the standard for rock ‘n’ roll. You know, all the drummers that I’ve spoken with through the years have told me that they grew up listening to the records that I played on, and that’s how they learned.” Naturally, the Who’s Keith Moon was a fan, as was Rush drummer Neil Peart. “When I was growing up, I played along to the radio,” Peart said in 2011, “so I played along to Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, the Association and the Byrds, and I was really playing along to Hal Blaine.”

The Byrds, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ (1965): Producer Terry Melcher wasn’t sold on the instrumental prowess of the Byrds so it was the Wrecking Crew session team that anchored the song most responsible for the advent of folk rock.

Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, ‘A Taste of Honey’ (1965): Blaine’s brushes on the snare are nuanced and dynamic, but the real iconic element of “A Taste of Honey” is his four-on-the-floor bass drum. This was another happy accident. Blaine said the band was coming in “like a train wreck,” so he provided a pulse. It became the most memorable part of the song.

The Beach Boys, ‘Good Vibrations’ (1966): The Beach Boys’ Mike Love wrote of his bandmate Brian Wilson: “When we’d go to Brian’s house, he would play ["Be My Baby"] over and over again, comparing it to Einstein’s theory of relativity.” Inspired by Spector’s wall of sound techniques, Wilson created “Good Vibrations,” a single that was epochal for its orchestral ambitions, studio-as-instrument techniques and early embrace of electronic music via the whining Electro-Theremin. Who better to anchor it to pop than one of Spector’s drummers of choice? “My particular sound for Brian,” Blaine wrote in his autobiography, “was basically the Phil Spector sound with a few minor changes. ... Afterwards, I would overdub percussion effects. I was invited to experiment, and I don’t ever remember Brian telling me not to play anything.”

Johnny Rivers, ‘The Poor Side of Town’ (1966): Though this chamber-pop song is mostly forgotten, it still knocked the Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville” out of the No. 1 spot in late 1966. Blaine’s high-hat work here — opening, striking, then closing for a pssssshp — has been credited by Drum magazine as integral for moving the sizzling sound from jazz to rock. It has since became a bedrock element of dance music.

Simon and Garfunkel, ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ (1966): Blaine plays drums on four of Simon and Garfunkel’s five studio albums, providing the tasteful accompaniment on No. 1 singles “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” But check out the apocalyptic Top 20 hit “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” first released in 1966 before appearing on the 1968 album “Bookends,” for a missing link between Motown and punk rock.

Nancy Sinatra, ‘Drummer Man’ (1969): Blaine’s work with Nancy Sinatra would yield bigger hits — most notably “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” and the duet with her father “Somethin’ Stupid,” both No. 1 hits. But this papa-was-a-rolling-stone single allowed the consummate sideman to stretch his legs (and arms) with monstrous tom-tom fills. Blaine brought a massive drum kit to accompany Sinatra for her performance on 1971 TV special “Movin’ With Nancy on Stage.” “I did a solo on the show, which was the first time anyone ever saw that set, so everybody just went crazy,” Blaine toldModern Drummer. “I gave it all to Ludwig. I expected them to call it the Hal Blaine super set or something. But they called it the Octoplus, and it was one of their biggest sellers.”

The Monkees, ‘Mary, Mary’ (1967): Looped to play three times, Blaine’s funky opening beat (and Jim Gordon’s percussion) on this Monkees classic was the first thing you heard on the first volume of Ultimate Breaks and Beats, the record series that served as an essential DJ and producer tool in the 1980s. Twenty years after it was recorded, Blaine would end up the unwitting participant in hip-hop records like Run-D.M.C.'s “Mary Mary” (1988), De La Soul’s “Change in Speak” (1989) and Big Daddy Kane’s “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy.”

The 5th Dimension, ‘Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)’ (1969): A song at the crossroads of psychedelia, soul, pop and Broadway, Blaine moves from a deconstructed “Be My Baby” to locomotive rock to groovy funk.

Tanya Tucker, ‘Lizzie and the Rainman’ (1975): Proving himself ever versatile, Blaine’s last era of chart success and prolific session work was during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s explosion of pop-country artists like Shelly West (“Jose Cuervo”), John Denver (“I’m Sorry,” “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”) and era-appropriate works by Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash. On Tanya Tucker’s “Lizzie and the Rainman” — a No. 1 country hit and a Top 40 pop crossover — Tucker says “beat the drum” in the middle of each chorus and Blaine plays a bonkers descending drum fill that pans across the speakers. It sounds like it was pulled from a Rush record instead of something that broke the Adult Contemporary chart.

This article originally appeared in <a id="cab88ebd-4304-463f-b9f0-508f57bbee8c" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/music/hal-blaine-drummer-songs.html">The New York Times</a>.

Hal Blaine, who died Monday at 90, was the greatest and most prolific session drummer during the turbulent Sixties crescendo from pop to psychedelia, keeping the nation’s heartbeat through dozens of No. 1 hits during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Hal Blaine: 12 essential songs

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Christopher R. Weingarten

Articles written by the author

Beyoncé and Some Bonuses: 5 Things We Learned About Her Coachella Triumph

Why Is Everyone Suddenly Talking About Michael Jackson?

Kim english, who blended gospel with dance music, dies at 48

Hal Blaine: 12 essential songs