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Jimi Hendrix died on this day in 1970 from an accidental drug overdose. He was found unconscious in his London apartment and was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to the hospital.
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Who was Jimi Hendrix?
Jimi Hendrix was a renowned American musician, singer, and songwriter. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative guitarists in the history of rock music. He was known for his virtuosic playing style, innovative use of feedback and distortion, and his ability to blend various genres like rock, blues, and psychedelia.
What was the significance of Woodstock in Jimi Hendrix's career?
One of the most iconic moments in Jimi Hendrix's career was his performance at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in 1969. His rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" on his electric guitar became a symbol of the counterculture movement and a commentary on the social and political climate of the time.
What is the "27 Club" and why is Jimi Hendrix associated with it?
The "27 Club" refers to a group of musicians who all tragically died at the age of 27. Jimi Hendrix is a prominent member of this club, alongside other legendary artists like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain. The collective deaths of these musicians at the same age have led to speculation and intrigue over the years.
Depicted by some artists as a threat to creativity, algorithms are used by others as a powerful new instrument, able to stimulate their imagination, expand their creative capabilities and open doors to so-far unexplored worlds.
PARIS — In the music world, there are those who, as Australian singer Nick Cave confided in the New Yorker, consider that ChatGPT should “go to hell and leave songwriting alone," and those who want to give it a try.
French-born mega DJ David Guetta tried his hand at a concert in February, playing, to a stunned crowd, a track composed using only online artificial intelligence services and rapped by a synthesized voice borrowed from Eminem. Two months later, a masked Internet user, Ghostwriter977, posted a fake AI-generated duet by Drake and The Weeknd, “Heart on My Sleeve," on TikTok, without the authorization of either musician.
This did not stop the track from racking up millions of views and becoming a short-lived success on streaming platforms. After just a few days, Spotify, Youtube and Apple Music removed the track to avoid upsetting Universal Music Group, the artists’ rights holder.
Generating new sounds
In the music industry, generative AI is often depicted as a threat, both to the rights of songwriters and composers on whom the algorithms feed, and to human creation, at risk of competing with and being diluted by a tsunami of soulless, machine-generated tracks. But this technology also opens up new creative possibilities, which are already being seized upon by artists in all genres, from the most expert to the most popular, while respecting copyright.
Research institute Sony CSL learned this lesson: in 2016, they published a track composed by AI in the style of the Beatles, entitled “Daddy’s Car." But the initiative ended in “bad buzz," as not all the necessary authorization had been sought. Since then, “We’ve laid down the rules: we don’t do anything without the artists; only tools with and for them," says Michael Turbot, head of technology promotion at Sony CSL.
His laboratory offers three types of service, based on databases whose rights have been fully respected. First, synthesizers, which produce new sounds. “AI is able to generate an infinite number of sounds which didn’t exist — for example, any interpolation between a guitar sound and a saxophone sound,” he says.
The second kind of tools: creative assistants. “You’re in the studio, but are not very good with such-and-such instruments,” suggests Michael Turbot. “The algorithm will then react to your musical idea and suggest creative possibilities, such as a bass, piano or drum line.”
Bass lines
“This doesn’t mean we don’t need instrumentalists anymore,” he insists. “But today, rare are the musicians who have access to their own drummers, for example. Failing that, they buy ready-made drum lines on the Internet. We offer customized melody lines.” Finally, the algorithms of Sony CSL take care of mixing a track. In this complex process, “AI will do all the calculations for you, allowing you to scan the whole spectrum of possibilities,” he explains.
AI is like an invisible partner without an ego.
Some artists are already playing the game, like Whim Therapy (Jérémy Benichou’s stage name). “I started to try these tools to see if I should be afraid of them, but as I used them, I quickly realized that the big replacement wasn’t around the corner,” the pop composer says. That didn’t stop him from getting a taste for it and trying out CSL's melody generators — drums, bass, piano — and the lyrics assistant, to create his first song, “Let It Go," which won second prize from the audience at the AI Song Contest competition in 2021.
“Imagine a score with three sheets; we remove the one in the middle, and ask the AI what it suggests," he says, describing how the service works. Won over by this first try, the artist kept going and produced an EP with these same technologies. He doesn’t use them to generate an entire track, but rather as a back-up, like an assistant when he’s lacking an idea.
Invisible partner
“It avoids blockages and old habits,” he explains. Most of the time, he doesn’t use the algorithm’s suggestions as they are, but uses them as a jumping-off point for a personal approach. “Take the bass line generator: all I had to do was turn it an octave higher and send it to a guitar amp so that interesting things would happen in terms of sound,” he says.
For him, AI is like an “invisible partner without an ego, with whom I don’t need to argue for 15 minutes," which unblocks his work and leads him in unexpected directions. Other artists have experimented with Sony CSL tools, such as electronic music producer DeLaurentis, whose latest album revisits pieces from the classical repertoire (Debussy, Ravel, Satie), with the help of AI.
A formidable compositional tool, AI is also an improv partner. Double bass player Joëlle Léandre, one of France’s leading contemporary musician, has provided proof of this, as part of a program at the Institute of Research and Acoustic/Music Coordination (Ircam), named Reach (Raising Cooperative Creativity in Cyber-Human Musicianship), which creates generative AI models.
“Our AI-based systems are capable of listening to musicians live,” explains Gérard Assayag, head of the program at Ircam, “Breaking down the sound signal into meaningful units (note, rhythm, harmony), to analyze the logic of what is played, even if it’s improvised, by building a cartography giving the range of possibilities, and at the moment of playing, choosing a trajectory within that cartography.”
For some, the universe of possibilities is only just starting to open.
Joëlle Léandre was able to work with the algorithms during a concert at the Centre Pompidou in mid-June, inventing musical phrases as she went along, to which the researchers’ “machines” answered, as if in front of other musicians. “For me, there is absolutely no difference,” she says. "I’ve been playing double bass for years; it’s a tool. My friends from Ircam have a tool too. The only difference is that they can offer a proliferation of sounds,” she says — while she is limited to her double bass.
We’re at the dawn of a great revolution.
With these interactive algorithms, Ircam sets itself apart from existing music-generating AI services, like Aiva or Soundful, which produce ready-made pieces on command, with a few prior adjustments, or from Google’s experimental program MusicLM, which generates music based on a text command. “When I ask Google for 10 seconds in the style of Brahms, I know what to expect. This type of algorithm is not very creative and produces ‘more of the same,' as the English say,” comments Gérard Assayag.
“For us, the challenge is to surprise and push back the limits of creation,” he adds. Ircam has other projects in the pipeline, notably the installation of its algorithms within the HyVibe intelligent acoustic guitar, which would be capable of becoming autonomous and playing on its own, following the musician’s lead.
The need for transparency
The universe of possibilities is only just starting to open. “We’re at the dawn of a great revolution,” he predicts. There will be losers too. “I can understand that some are worried,” says Jérémy Benichou. “Things are moving very fast; soon, AI will be able to create summary pieces that can be used in musical libraries. But it will become an enormous asset for those who will try something more daring.”
The majors, for their part, take a dim view of the massive influx of standardized tracks flooding the streaming platforms, threatening to dilute the value attributed to genuine artists. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was alarmed by this in its latest report.
“We know that there are playlists lasting several hours where no human being has intervened to showcase their inventiveness, and which are capturing revenue,” warns the president of the National Music Center (CNM), Jean-Philippe Thiellay. He insists on the need for transparency, both in the use of AI in a track and in the way playlists are composed on streaming platforms.
As with the origin of a product in commerce, “We should display that a playlist is made up of so many percent of AI-created tracks,” he suggests, as these authorless tracks potentially guarantee platforms a higher margin. “We also need to make sure that not a single cent of public money is used to finance productions that would have done without human intervention,” insists the president of the CNM — to ensure that, in music and elsewhere, AI remains a tool in human hands, and not the other way around.
Death metal is considered the most soulless music of all. But the Taipei-based Buddhist death metal band Dharma is proving otherwise. Their music may also even be a secret weapon in the island's stand-off with China.
This article was update Sep. 1 at 10:40 a.m.
TAIPEI — Six robed figures follow the orange-robed nun onto the stage, gazing rigidly at the floor. A gently swinging sound bowl accompanies her steps. Incense sticks spread the smell of sandalwood. Then the procession stops in one fell swoop. A gong sounds, and all hell breaks loose. Guitar riffs tear through the solemn silence. From the booming basses, chants emerge that the Western listener would most likely associate with Gregorian chanting. It is a mantra written in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit — "Aryavalokiteshvara Bodhisattva Vikurvana Dharani" — which is supposed to grant the grace of Buddha's light to the one who sings it.
The Taiwanese band Dharma underpins traditional sutras with Death Metal, perhaps the heaviest form of rock music in which violence and death are the usual themes. At the background of the stage, which is now bathed in red light, a Buddhist wheel of life rotates, which draws more and more spectators into a maelstrom of bodies in front.
A spectator sitting in the lotus position above the crowd.This kind of meditative crowd surfing is already a tradition at Dharma gigs. Also, the fist is not raised in the air for the devil's greeting as is usually done at metal concerts. The fans fold their hands for the Anjali Mudra, a gesture of reverence and humility known in this country mainly from yoga classes. But the neck-breaking spectacle has little to do with silent mindfulness and Gong Bath relaxation.
A new way for Buddhism
On stage, the six band members present themselves with martial face paint. They are supposed to represent the "Dharmapalas," "wrathful guardian deities" who prevent the Buddhist disciple — represented here by the ordained nun Miao Ben — from straying from the path. It is a well-known theme in many Buddhist schools in Asia. "We don't do Buddhist theater," insists Jack Tung, the drummer and founder of Dharma, a long-haired giant who smiles with enlightenment as he speaks.
Everyone in the band is a practicing Buddhist. Before each concert, they meditate together and donate parts of their fee to charity. "There are many ways to find peace," says Tung, who runs a concert venue in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, besides his band. Miao Ben, 52, who belongs to the Buddhist "Fo Guang Shan Order" founded in Taiwan in 1967, agrees: "Extreme noise is just the flip side of silence."
Taiwan's Buddhist dignitaries might consider his Buddhist update as sacrilege.
Around 20% of Taiwan's 23.5 million inhabitants practice Buddhism, the island's most important popular religion alongside Daoism. "There are more temples in Taiwan than 7-Eleven supermarkets," Tung says, laughing. The two largest communities, "Fo Guang Shan" (Buddha's Mountain of Light) and "Tzu Chi" ("Merciful Help") value humanism and charity. The orders were also inspired by Christianity, whose missionaries built schools and hospitals here more than 100 years ago.
Young people in particular, though, feel that the Buddhists' community activities, from clothing collections to chanting circles, are dusty — especially since they are often firmly in the hands of the retired. "It's no different in other countries with religious traditions," Tung sums up. He therefore wants his bands' shows to be understood as living Buddhism. "Many young people today stick to their smartphones and don't know who they are. Buddhism can give them direction."
A spectator sitting in the lotus position above the crowd.
The idea to combine extreme heavy metal with Buddhist themes came to him 20 years ago. The monotonously recited, hypnotic sutras he knew from the temple perfectly complemented the down-tuned guitar riffs of his favorite bands. Tung, however, was afraid that his idea would be met with rejection from metal fans. And even more so, that Taiwan's Buddhist dignitaries might consider his Buddhist update of inherently blasphemous death metal music as sacrilege.
In 2019, he made a pilgrimage from temple to temple to perform the first demo recordings by Dharma to the masters, monks and nuns. "Even though they were over 80 and had never heard heavy metal before, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive," Tung recalls. Miao Ben, the nun who now quotes Dharma's Mantras, was also enthusiastic. "At first, I was shocked by this extreme music. But I also thought it was a brand-new way to teach Buddhism to younger people. I wanted to get involved right away."
Among the metal heads who were open-minded enough to go through with the project with Tung was Joe Henley, the band's only non-Taiwanese member. In 2005, the Canadian came to Taipei to work as a journalist and translator. He was quickly captivated by the small but sophisticated metal scene. He soon played in several bands and helped organize Taiwan tours for American genre greats such as Cannibal Corpse.
With Dharma, however, a completely new chapter began for him. To be able to intonate the sutras properly, he went to study with a Buddhist master at a temple in Taipei's Wanhua district for four months in 2019. "It was an interesting experience," he recalls. "The class consisted of just me, a tattooed-to-the-neck Canadian in his thirties, and a bunch of Taiwanese retirees who attended the class in their spare time."
To really understand what he was chanting, Henley dug deeper into the teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism, widespread in Southeast Asia. "One day the master spoke of how our thoughts are like mice. He said, 'when meditating, don't try to catch the mouse, just be aware of its presence.' That stuck in my mind." At the end of the course, the metal head, who grew up in a Christian household, not only converted to Buddhism but also stopped drinking. "Since then, the Buddha's teachings have been an integral part of my life outside the band as well."
Henley compares Dharma to the Polish band Batushka, which draws inspiration from the mystical side of the Orthodox Church and writes its lyrics in Old Slavic. "Metal, fortunately, is a genre that is constantly evolving," he says. "I'll still be listening to my favorite bands from the '90s when I'm sitting in my retirement home. But you can't just sing about Satan and violence forever."
Moral representation
In this context, the American sociologist of religion Richard Madsen speaks of the principle of "moral representation": diplomatically isolated and geopolitically largely powerless, Taiwan can carry a positive, committed image of itself into the world through organizations such as Tzu Chi or Fo Guang Shan. Even a Buddhist metal band somehow fits into this concept. The fact that a nun does not hesitate long to become part of an extreme metal band is probably only possible in Taiwan.
Freddy Lim, another heavy metal ambassador of the democratically-ruled island, also knows that those who cross borders are seen. His band Chtonic, which incorporates elements of Enka hits and Chinese opera, writes songs about heroes of Taiwanese history or the freedom struggle of the indigenous minority. As a politician, Lim has been a guiding force in the New Power Party, inspired by the Sunflower protests, which openly challenges Beijing by promoting Taiwanese independence.
In 2016, he entered parliament as a deputy and, initially with long hair, quickly became the poster boy for Taiwanese cosmopolitanism. He continued to tour with Chtonic on the side and also played three times in Wacken, the largest and most important metal festival near Hamburg. In the port city of Kaohsiung, Lim launched his own music festival called Megaport, which could also take place in front of 95,000 people in 2021 because of Taiwan's well-managed coronavirus policy.
This year, Lim also invited the Buddhist band Dharma to the Megaport, where they played in front of thousands of spectators. "I fell in love with their music right away," says the recently independent MP, who announced his retirement from day-to-day politics this year for family reasons. "I think the idea of pairing Buddhism with metal not only makes sense but Dharma execute it brilliantly." While he's not sure if it will get more people interested in Buddhism, he says, "But I think listening to their music carefully can calm the mind and even purify it."
In fact, more and more metal bands around the world are making spiritual traditions and mythologies the content of their music: in India, Vedic metal bands like Purvaja celebrate the goddess Kali, who in Hinduism embodies death, destruction, but also renewal. In Mexico, the band Cemican evokes prehispanic Aztec priests with the sound of flutes and feathers. And in 2022, the indigenous musician Sgah'gahsowáh caused a stir on the Bandcamp platform when he paired black metal with Native American legends in his solo project Blackbraid.
The idea of pairing Buddhism with metal not only makes sense but Dharma execute it brilliantly.
Dharma is also far from being the only metal band on earth to be inspired by Buddhism. But where groups like Gautam from Uttar Pradesh or Kanprai from Thailand sing about the Buddhist underworld Naraka or dissociate themselves from the world like misanthropic hermits, Dharma has the potential to reach the center of society. This has to do with the special role of Buddhism in Taiwan. It not only satisfies spiritual and social needs, it also fulfills geopolitical functions. Due to pressure from the People's Republic of China, most countries in the world community do not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state. So the country has to maintain diplomatic contacts in other ways. And this is where Buddhism steps in.
Tzu Chi and Fo Guang Shan are now multi-billion dollar, globally operating organizations that maintain temples, academies, publishing houses and charities on all five continents. Taiwanese Buddhists are also extremely active in international disaster relief. And this is even the case in mainland China, which is otherwise extremely suspicious of civilly organized religious communities. Just think of the Falun Gong movement, which has been banned and severely persecuted in China since 1999.
The German public prosecutor's office has dropped its sexual assault investigation against Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann. The singer could not be proven to have committed any criminal misconduct. You may be angry about that, but that's how the rule of law works.
-Analysis-
BERLIN — The hairs on your neck stand up when you read the news: The public prosecutor's office has dropped the investigation against Till Lindemann, lead singer in the popular German band Rammstein.
Several victims have reported to the media, including Die Welt, that they were deliberately brought to singer Lindemann at Rammstein concerts for sexual acts, often without knowing the real reason for these meetings. The band's drummer himself later said "things" happened "that I personally don't think are okay."
No evidence
As a parent of young girls, even all these weeks after the original wave of attention, one might still want to personally track down not only Lindemann, but also his "casting director" Aleena M., and threaten them with blows.
Fortunately, this is forbidden. And also fortunately, Germany, like most liberal democracies that operate under a Constitution, has a functioning judicial system to deal with such decisions, which may be painful on the personal moral level.
The evaluation of evidence, according to the argument of the Berlin public prosecutor's office conducting the investigation, did not provide any indications that Lindemann had committed sexual acts against women against their will.
Nor could it be proven that he had "administered substances that influence or disable the will of women or exploited a power imbalance with underage sexual partners" in order to have sex with them.
Mockery and gloating
Some find this unbearable, because they are convinced that something did happen, and also because they believe that, despite recent amendments, Germany's sexual offense law is unable to catch misconduct like what Lindemann is alleged to have done. They argue that there is a systematic disregard for female accusations against powerful men.
Others have droned on about defamation of character, and made mocking, gloating posts on social networks about the accusers and about feminists and activists, who they asked to "apologize."
But perhaps the Lindemann case can be seen as an opportunity for a reform process that goes in two seemingly opposite directions: strengthening trust in justice on the one hand, and sharpening society's view of what constitutes assault on the other.
Consumer habits have changed, and with it the music industry – gone are the days when one hit song would define the sound of an entire summer. But why have we abandoned this iconic practice, and what has the race turned into in our modern day?
-Analysis-
MADRID — More than 20 years have passed since Sonia and Selena released their hit song Yo Quiero Bailar, a tune that was destined to return in 2021 to top the Spanish charts once more. Despite its two decades of life, the hit came back to bars and clubs all over the country simply because the iconic "cuando llega el calor" (when the heat comes in) lyrics capture something in the season's spirit.
King África and "La Bomba" are also part of Spain's summery melodic history, just like other songs such as Las Ketchup's "Aserejé," Chayanne's "Torero," or Los del Río's "Macarena."
For decades, we have known exactly which song was the reigning chart-topper for the months of July and August, an unequivocal (and inescapable) cultural phenomenon. But this year, like the past couple of years, something has changed. Pedro del Corral, a music journalist, explains the phenomenon of the Song of the Summer, as we know it, is dead.
"It won't matter if it's the most popular singers contending," he said. "They still won't ever attain such a coveted title."
New sounds and moves
There are several reasons we can point to explain this decline. One of the main factors is that artists are seeking original-sounding production that allows them to stand out from the rest, distancing themselves from overly familiar formulas that often supply us with the big summer hit. "In other words, they no longer use catchy melodies and simplistic choruses."
Rather than being tailored for people to dance together, they're designed to go viral on TikTok.
Del Corral also explains that popular dances associated with songs have persisted, but evolved. Now, rather than being tailored for people to dance together, "they are designed to go viral on TikTok, instead of holding true to the charm they've been traditionally associated with."
The journalist emphasizes that it's also important to consider that the industry has changed, and until the emergence of Spotify, summer and Christmas were seen as big sales periods: "To boost the modest year-round sales, record labels would bet on a song to try and get a big hit that would get them featured in the Caribe Mix compilation and mentioned in Super Pop magazine.This was the quickest way to sell thousands of records and, of course, participate in events sponsored by local towns."
Alan Duffy performing live as King Africa in Puerto del Rosario
The critic also points out that television played a significant role in the success of past hits: appearing on shows like "Noche de Fiesta" (Party Night) guaranteed you a massive audience that is nearly impossible to find nowadays.
"It guaranteed an intergenerational impact that the more individualistic and fragmented internet of today will hardly achieve," he explains. "The new technologies have not only changed the way music is consumed but also how it's presented to the world. That's why now, artists take great care in the material they release: it's their strongest card to reach the widest audience possible."
The Song of the Summer is a phenomenon we leave behind as a consequence of the evolving times. Del Corral concludes: "In the past, popular culture primarily consumed what appeared on radio and television, so choice was limited. Now we have access to the entire spectrum provided by streaming platforms. So when choice is infinite, we no longer act as a heterogeneous mass that can exclusively identify one song."
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, mostly known as Woodstock, opened on this day in 1969. The famous music event took place on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, in the United States.
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How many people attended Woodstock?
Estimates vary, but it is believed that approximately 400,000 to 500,000 people attended Woodstock. The event far exceeded the organizers' expectations and led to overcrowding and logistical challenges.
Who were some of the notable performers at Woodstock?
Woodstock featured a diverse lineup of musicians, including iconic acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many others. The event showcased a wide range of genres, from rock and folk to blues and psychedelic music.
What was the significance of Woodstock?
Woodstock has become a cultural symbol of the 1960s counterculture and the peace and love movement. It represented a gathering of like-minded individuals seeking social change, peace, and an escape from societal norms. Woodstock also became synonymous with the music of the era and is considered one of the most iconic music festivals in history.
What were some of the challenges faced during Woodstock?
Woodstock faced numerous challenges, primarily due to the unexpectedly high number of attendees. The event experienced issues related to traffic congestion, lack of resources, and heavy rain, which caused muddy conditions. Despite these challenges, Woodstock became a symbol of unity and community as attendees came together to share a unique experience of music and countercultural values.
On this day in 2011, Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home in the Camden neighborhood of London. The cause of her death was determined to be accidental alcohol poisoning.
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How old was Amy Winehouse when she died?
Amy Winehouse was 27 years old at the time of her death, which led to her being included in the infamous "27 Club" of musicians who died at the age of 27.
What problems did Amy Winehouse deal with in her life?
Amy Winehouse struggled with substance abuse issues, particularly alcohol and drug addiction. Her struggles with addiction were widely publicized and impacted her health, relationships, and career. Winehouse had tumultuous relationships, including a highly publicized and volatile marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil.
How did Amy Winehouse's death impact the music industry?
Amy Winehouse's death was a major loss for the music industry. It sparked discussions about the pressures of fame, mental health struggles, and substance abuse issues within the industry.
Funk is a music genre that originated in Rio and is inspired by social consciousness. Women have been overlooked in the genre, but a new generation of women funk artists are changing that.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Women made and continue to make history in Brazilian funk, a hip hop-influenced music style from Rio de Janeiro that blends funk with Miami bass and rap.
A music and business graduate from PUC (Pontifical Catholic University) in Rio de Janeiro, Coutinho warns that, despite this growth, the situation is not an even playing field, saying, "Women don't get as many opportunities as men do."
Funk is culture, funk is art
Originating in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, funk began to explode in the city of São Paulo in the 2000s. The funk dancer and teacher Renata Prado, 32, is part of the first generation of funk women in the Brazilian capital. She says that she danced axé, a strong rhythm of peripheral culture, at the time. But around 2005, she got to know funk and changed dance genres.
Prado created the dance show “Dos Tambores ao Tamborzão”, which traces the history of funk through Afro culture. Her show was successful, and led to work on the scene permanently in 2015. As a professional dancer, choreographer and educator, she says that prejudice is still one of the main challenges for those who make a living with funk music.
“We need to convince people that funk is culture, it's art, it's an art from the periphery, which people tend to marginalize. [...] Black youth, who have historically been marginalized since the time of samba, since the time of hip-hop, live the consequences this time with funk.”
In order to create a positive view of the movement, Renata launched the project “Academy of Funk in 2019”, which brings history, language, dance, and also addresses social issues, public policies and feminist narratives that permeate this musical style.
A strong social message
With rhymes about everyday life, funk communicates the desires and dilemmas of those who live on the outskirts of big cities. The rebellious language, often improvised, brings up issues that society would like to keep under the rug, such as sex, violence, economics and politics.
Among the many funk subgenres, such as prohibition, brega funk, ostentatious funk and trap funk, Larissa Manoel (MC Lalao from TdS), 25, chose the conscious funk in order to express herself, Today, she doesn't make money with funk alone— she works as a salesperson, a judo and self-defense instructor, a security guard and a construction worker.
Between 2015 and 2016, Lalao experimented with rap. But funk is where she really found her voice. “Many people in the neighborhood have a natural talent for rhyming. But not everyone manages to earn money, make a career out of poetry and funk.”
On the other hand, MC Lalao says that having more women doing funk makes it possible for others to join. “It will generate opportunities for other mines to want to do the same thing,” she says. However, this openness still comes up against a series of prejudices.
Funk Carioca artist ''Don Blanquito,'' brings a message of struggle, love and revolution, March 4, 2012 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Willing to break barriers, the Irmãs de Pau — a trans duo comprised of Vita Pereira, 25, and Isma Almeida, 24 — sing about experiences within prohibited funk. “Scrappy and peripheral language has a huge pedagogical power of sincere dialogue in communities,” says Isma.
Vita considers that the genre still has a lot to evolve in terms of accepting different bodies and sexualities. “The oppressions in these spaces are more veiled — they materialize in jokes, points of view and postures,” but she notices more “dissident bodies” producing funk.
The trans presence and the desire of “travequeiros”, cisgender men who like to have a sexual relationship with trans women is something that brings less problems than before. “I see more and more trans women dating, having a family, a job, but affection… no,” says Isma.
In 2021, São Paulo was the Brazilian state that recorded the most deaths of transgender people, according to data from Antra (National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals). Despite this, the songs address less of this violence and many more trans experiences.
Are these the girls that boys like?
Tamiris Coutinho says that Funk’s main characters are men. “When you enter a funk playlist on Spotify, you will see that several songs that are there are produced and sung by men. There are few women within those playlists.”
Her perception is not wrong and is not restricted to funk. According to the study USC Annenberg on representation of women in the music industry, funded by Spotify itself in March 2021, only 1 in 5 artists in the charts are women.
Spotify said it is committed to creating and supporting a diverse audio industry.
On the other hand, in the main editorial funk playlist created by Spotify itself, Funk Hits, which has more than four million likes, only one of the 40+ songs is sung by female performers.
In contrast, here is a playlist we made for you to explore that has over 100 funk tracks made by women.
The Live Aid benefit concert was a dual-venue concert held on this day in 1985, in London, England, and Philadelphia, United States. It was organized by musician Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. The event aimed to bring together the world's top musicians and engage a global audience to contribute to the cause.
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Who performed at the Live Aid concert?
The Live Aid concert featured an impressive lineup of renowned musicians and bands from various genres. In London, artists such as Queen, U2, David Bowie, Elton John, The Who, and Paul McCartney took the stage. In Philadelphia, performers included Madonna, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, and many others. The event saw over 75 acts performing across the two venues.
How many people attended the Live Aid concert?
The attendance figures for the Live Aid concert vary between the London and Philadelphia venues. In London, the concert took place at Wembley Stadium, and it is estimated that approximately 72,000 people attended the event. In Philadelphia, the concert was held at John F. Kennedy Stadium, and the audience size was estimated to be around 99,000 people.
How much money was raised through Live Aid?
The total funds raised through the concert exceeded £150 million (around $280 million). The money was donated to various charitable organizations, including Band Aid Trust, which was established by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to administer the funds and ensure they reached those affected by the famine.
Bob Dylan was born on this day in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, USA.
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Who is Bob Dylan?
Bob Dylan is a renowned American singer-songwriter and musician who has been active in the music industry since the early 1960s. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important musicians of the 20th century.
What was Bob Dylan like as a child?
Most of Bob Dylan's childhood was spent in the iron-mining town of Hibbing. Dylan taught himself piano and guitar and played in several bands. He performed at his high school and at Jewish summer camp before attending the University of Minnesota for one year in 1959. He then left for New York at the age of 19.
Has Bob Dylan won any awards?
Bob Dylan has won numerous awards throughout his career, including multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, which he won "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
What is Bob Dylan doing now?
Bob Dylan is still active as a musician. He continues to tour and release new albums, with his most recent album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways," released in 2020. In addition to his musical work, Dylan is also a prolific painter, with his artwork exhibited in galleries around the world.
The Brazilian singer Nega Jaci has performed a new version of the well-known samba “Mulheres,” by Martinho da Vila, adapted by two Brazilian women to remove the sexist tone of the original lyrics.
LISBON — It's Saturday night in Lisbon, Portugal, and on stage at the bar Samambaia, in the Graça neighborhood, the beating of the tambourine and the strumming of the guitar signal the beginning of a hit by the carioca samba singer Martinho da Vila, which lists the various women who passed through the life of a man.
But this Saturday, the original version re-emerged as a new, liberating and empowered reinterpretatio, sung by Brazilian artist Nega Jaci.
Instead of "I've had women of all colors," Nega Jaci sings “We are women of all colors,” from an updated version created by Brazilian artists Doralyce and Silvia Duffrayer in 2018 – an adaptation that rewrites some stanzas of the original lyrics and which, since then, has become an anthem of female resistance in the “patriarchal” universe of samba.
The rewritten version by the Brazilian duo removes references to “unbalanced and confused” women in the lyrics, replacing them with feminist heroes in Brazil, including Chica da Silva and Elza Soares. Jaci also included a tribute to former Carioca councilwoman Marielle Franco, murdered in 2018.
The new lyrics reposition the woman's role, from being responsible for the man's happiness, finally concluding, in a liberated and independent tone, that the woman is everything that she one day dreamed to be.
“Samba lyrics tend to be super sexist and prejudiced, looking at women either as objects to serve men or as someone who needs to be taken care of, without giving due value to female power,” explains Jaci, who was born in Bahia, Brazil as Jacilene Santos Barbosa and has been living in Lisbon for eight years.
The feminist version of the well-known samba is unmissable in her set, and the moment when Jaci sings it in the presentation is preceded by a call to the women in the audience. It is for them that the performance is dedicated.
“I sing in honor of the women, but the men end up listening and reflecting on the theme in their own way,” she says.
This reflection has led other musicians to also look for a way to reposition themselves. Jaci recalls that not even Chico Buarque himself, universally loved among Brazilian musicians and apparently incontestable, is immune to the slippage of lyrics written in other times and contexts, but which now seem to no longer find space in a repertoire governed by political correctness.
“Chico is one of my favorite composers and singers, and being who he is, attentive and sensitive, he made a public mea culpa and said that there are songs from his repertoire that he would no longer sing. And he really does not sing them any more,” recalls Jaci.
Women (Mulheres) - Martinho da Vila
Women (Mulheres) - Doralyce and Silvia Duffrayer version
I've had women of all colors
Of different ages, of many loves
With some for a while, I stayed
With others, I gave myself just a little
I've had women of the sassy type
The shy type, the experienced type
Needy married, happy single
I've had a damsel and even a harlot
Centered and unbalanced women
Confused women, of war and peace
But none of them made me as happy
as you make me
I looked for happiness in all women
But I didn't find it and I kept missing it
It started off well, but it all had an ending.
You are the sun of my life, my will
You are not a lie, you are the truth
You are everything that one day I dreamed of for myself
We are women of all colors
Of different ages, of many loves
I remember Dandara, a cool woman I know
And Elza Soares, an outlaw woman
I remember Anastácia, Brave, warrior
And Chica da Silva, every Brazilian woman
Growing up oppressed by patriarchy
My body, my rules now, changed the frame
Centered and very balanced women
Nobody's confused, I didn't ask you anything
It's them, for them listen to this samba that I'm going to sing to you
I don't know why I have to be your happiness
You are enough
My dear, love like this, I want far from me
I'm a woman, I own my body and my will
I was the one who discovered pleasure and freedom
I am everything that one day I dreamed of for myself.
Suite dos Pescadores - Nega Canta a Bahia - Rtp africa
A voice that has gone around the world
A well-known voice in the increasingly popular samba circles of Lisbon, Jaci travelled the world singing Brazilian rhythms before landing in the Portuguese capital. A former backing vocalist with singer and current Minister of Culture of Brazil, Margareth Menezes, Jaci's solo career has taken her to Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and English stages.
It was in London that she met her husband, Portuguese photographer Francisco Rivotti. The union motivated her move to Lisbon.
“I used to spend my holidays in Lisbon, and I always thought the city was beautiful; the vibe was great. Moving turned out to be a natural path,” explains Jaci.
She's also a mother and, like many professionals, sometimes has to take her children to work. Salvador and Matheus, aged 6 and 3, are often seen on stage during performances. The eldest, Salvador, already sings a few choruses and has been trying to convince his mother to let him join the band D’Ori. “He's learning the cello and has been asking to play with the other musicians,” she laughs.
Authors of the new version of the old da Vila hit, Pernambucan Doralyce and Carioca Silvia Duffrayer, say that the idea of adapting the samba came about after being criticized during a performance in Rio de Janeiro, when a woman from the audience protested the sexist lyrics.
That was what led São Paulo musician Manoel Vitorino Júnior, Mannu Jr., to write a new version of one of the great successes of Chico Buarque, Complete Feijoada (Feijoada Completa).
The original lyrics written by Chico Buarque relegate to the kitchen a woman who hears her partner say that he is going to bring some friends to talk. Among other duties, she is left in charge of serving “stupidly cold beer for a battalion” and “frying a lot of pork rinds to go with it."
“I used to play in a group called Samba na Cozinha and the day we were finalizing the repertoire, someone suggested Chico's music,” recalls Mannu Jr. “Then, one of the women in the band immediately vetoed the song, finding it too sexist.”
I thought maybe there was a less radical way to resolve the issue than cancelling it.
Manu Jr says that what happened led him to reflect on a solution. “Since I like the song so much, I thought maybe there was a less radical way to resolve the issue than cancelling it. I sat down and came up with Correct feijoada," he says.
Correct feijoada (Feijoada Correta) - Mannu Jr version
Woman, you will like it
I'm bringing some friends to talk
They go with a hunger
that they can't even tell
They go with a thirst from the day before yesterday
Bring stupidly cold beer for a battalion
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, don't get flustered
You don't have to set the table, there’s no need
Put the dishes on the floor, and the floor is made
And prepare the sausages for the appetizer
Alcohol, sugar, bowl of ice, lemon
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, you will fry
A lot of pork rinds to go with it
White rice, farofa and chilli
The Bahia orange or the select
Throw the paio, dried meat, bacon in the cauldron
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, after salting
Make a good stew, to get fat
Use the fat on the pan
To season better the cabbage from Minas Gerais
Say it's hard, hang the invoice on our brother
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, you will like it
I'm bringing some friends to talk
They go with a hunger
that they can't even tell
They go with a thirst from the day before yesterday
Bring stupidly cold beer for a battalion
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, don't get flustered
You don't have to set the table, there’s no need
I put the dishes on the floor, and the floor is made
And I prepare the sausages for the appetizer
Alcohol, sugar, bowl of ice, lemon
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, I'm going to fry
A lot of pork rinds to go with it
White rice, farofa and chilli
The Bahia orange or the select
I throw the paio, dried meat, bacon in the cauldron
And let's put water on the beans
Woman, after salting
I make a good stew, to get fat
I use the fat on the pan
To season better the cabbage from Minas Gerais
Say it's hard, hang the invoice on our brother
And let's put water on the beans
In the new lyric, which is usually heard in Manu Jr.'s presentations on Lisbon nights, the man asks the woman not to rush and then says: “I put the dishes on the floor, and the floor is made, and I prepare the sausages for the appetizer,” also announcing that it will be up to him to throw the paio, the dried meat and the bacon in the cauldron, in addition to making the stew, taking advantage of the fat from the frying pan to season the cabbage from Minas Gerais.
It seems like a detail, but it makes a difference.
“It seems like a detail, but it makes a difference to call the actions in the first person. It is better to continue singing with the changes than to remove it from the repertoire completely. Those adjustments are part of a transition provoked by a very serious matter, and it must be done,” says Mannu Jr.
The Marchas Populares, Lisbon's summertime carnival parades, are a spectacle of dancing and music — but a shortage of money, free time and men who want to dance are endangering this midsummer tradition.
LISBON — With evictions in the city's “soul” neighborhoods and the aging of residents who have carried on traditions, it sometimes seems that a basic sense of community in Lisbon is fading away.
Nine years shy of their 100th year, Lisbon's traditional Popular Marches — nighttime carnival parades through the city's neighborhoods — are having a hard time finding participants to join the march, especially men.
Meanwhile, just across the river from Lisbon, in nearby municipalities Setúbal and Charneca da Caparica, the solution is to take marchers from one bank to the other.
For many of the participants in this traditional choreography, it no longer matters whether they dance for the neighborhood São Domingos de Benfica, Bica or Campo de Ourique. What they want is to keep going every year, and to save the future of this tradition, which for years has been struggling with a lack of men.
The tradition started in 1932, sparked by journalist José Leitão Barros, who launched it in Notícias Ilustrado, in partnership with Diário de Lisboa. Luís Pastor de Macedo, a councilor responsible for culture, sponsored the first march and included it in the program of festivities in the city of Lisbon.
Some feel dancing is "not very masculine"
This year, Frazão is the marshal of the marches in the São Domingos de Benfica district. Everything from the costumes to the marches and lyrics will be created by him.
Many think that this is a woman's thing.
Frazão explains that it is not difficult to find women to participate. In São Domingos de Benfica, 38 showed up, but they could only take 25 – each march is limited to 25 men and 25 women. In Setúbal, they don't even open registration any more, he says: "They have been marchers for many years, and when there has to be a replacement, the daughter or a cousin usually comes to take the woman's place.”
With men, there is always a greater concern, both in Lisbon and in Setúbal.
“Many think that this is a woman's thing, and others that dancing is not very masculine. There are collectives that already choose to have only 10 men. The rest are women," he says.
Love at the marches
So why has the shortage of men only become a problem recently? In the past, marches were seen as a place to find a partner. This is less common today — although there are still some, like Carmen and Nuno Jones, who find love at the marches.
“They were born from the march and have it in their blood,” says Carmen Jones, pointing to three children walking a little further ahead, towards the rehearsal field. When she was about 14, she started going to the March of the Cosmos, an extinct collective in Setúbal. Then, in 1997, she joined the Independente march, where she met Nuno. She was 19 and he was 17. “He's the one who messed with me! He stole my first kiss before the presentation in the bullring. He told me it was for good luck,” she says, smiling. They met on the march, fell in love, got married and had three children. Carmen didn't stop marching even while pregnant.
“Joana, my eldest, was born in April. I didn't miss a rehearsal. One day I was rehearsing; the next day she was born and the next rehearsal I was here again. I left her with my sister and spent the rehearsal calling home to ask if everything was okay. For Alexandre, the middle one, I also marched while pregnant. On the day of the presentation, I had to fix the skirt with rubber bands because my stomach was so big that I couldn’t put the buttons together any more.”
Busy lives get in the way
This is the first year for Inês, the youngest, as a marcher. The 12-year-old has been part of the march since she was four, first as a mascot – the child who accompanies godparents in the parade. Too old to be a mascot and too young to be a street vendor, Inês stopped last year, but still went with family to rehearsals.
The busy day-to-day lives of families are making it difficult to maintain tradition.
Last year, the whole family except Inês joined people from Setúbal who decided to march through a Lisbon parish, in the name of a tradition that knows no borders. They marched through Baixa, at the invitation of Bruno Frazão, who knew it was difficult to find dancing feet in the area.
The event was too tiring to repeat this year, particularly for working parents and children with school and homework. The increasingly busy day-to-day lives of families are making it difficult to maintain tradition.
People dancing during a "Marcha populares" in Portugal.
About the future, Frazão is not fatalistic. He doesn't believe the marches will end in the near future. Instead, he thinks they will change: marches with more women than men, or only women.
In São Domingos de Benfica, the march is joyful and lively, but also demanding. Frazão keeps the marchers on the marking lines lit by weak lamps on an outdoor soccer field in the parish. Any mistake takes them back to the beginning of the game. In one of the rehearsals, the men made a mistake five times, and five times they all returned to the starting line-up. There were scolds and calls for attention. That day, on the field, the referee, who is also a coach, handed a red card to one of the marchers, who was not taking the rehearsal seriously.
While the marchers rehearsed, Carolina and Afonso, aged nine and seven, sat on the stone bench of the soccer field. They were waiting for their parents, both marchers. Afonso was entertained playing on his cell phone while Carolina imitated the steps of the grown-ups on the pitch. Carolina wants to be a marcher when she grows up. “I already know a dance by heart! There's a new one that I still haven't managed to learn, but I'm about to!” says Carolina, who is never bored in a rehearsal.
Shrinking budgets
Isabel Mendes is president of the residents' committee of São Domingos de Benfica. Since February, she has had her troops march twice a week. It is her second year organizing the parish march, and she does not let anything escape her, because keeping the tradition alive is a great responsibility.
What matters to us is that the community works well.
Men are lacking here too. Every rehearsal, nine men cross the bridge to reinforce the march. They tried to call up residents in the neighborhood, without success. Still, the rehearsals have to move forward, Frazão says, even if the shortage of people makes the work more difficult.
Mendes says that the only solution is to reduce the number of pairs of marchers. In addition to helping with recruitment, it also reduces the general costs of the march – expected to reach €40,000 this year.
In Lisbon, a city council committee provides €30,000 to each march. In Setúbal, the budget is half that. To make up for the difference, Mendes says the marchers are preparing lunches, raffles, sweaters and fairs to raise money.
In Setúbal, the march should not be far from €23,000. But there, the community itself provides the money, Mendes says: “Of course it makes a dent here in the accounts. What matters to us is that the community works well."
