The Sublime Somi Bridges African and Western Jazz
In the past two decades, the singer Laura Kabasomi Kakoma, who performs music mononymously as Somi, has become a bridge between Western jazz and the jazz of Africa. An Illinois-born New Yorker of Rwandan and Ugandan descent who grew up in Zambia, she channels her diasporic upbringing into a synergized and singular sound—one anchored by a lovely, fluid voice that is paradoxically both calm and emphatic. She collaborated with the distinguished South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, helped relaunch Sony’s Okeh Records as a jazz label, and released a tribute album for the singer-songwriter and activist Miriam Makeba. In 2021, Somi became the first African woman nominated in a jazz category at the Grammys.
Somi’s work is possessed by its duty to multiple traditions, something the singer has referred to as trying to “tell the truth” of her “dual inheritance.” Her songs have a stateliness to them, and yet they are unrestricted in their pursuit of a nuanced pan-African modality, the stories and rhythms at play therein. The 2014 album “The Lagos Music Salon” sought to embody the magic of the titular city, the result of an intracontinental cultural migration. Its 2017 follow-up, “Petite Afrique,” was even more ambitious: the song cycle deployed her sublime voice in search of answers for the African immigrants of Harlem as gentrification threatened the community they had built. Somi is also a playwright and actress; she wrote and starred in the Off Broadway musical “Dreaming Zenzile,” about Makeba, and starred, on Broadway, in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Her new album, “What Does It Take to Bloom?,” is a journey inward. Produced with Benjamin James, of the Nigerian highlife band the Cavemen, it is the most poised record of her career, and she brings its songs, and those of her many musical expeditions, to Sony Hall, on Oct. 1.—Sheldon Pearce
About Town
Marin Ireland’s semi-autobiographical play “Pre-Existing Condition” stars a vivid Lupita Nyong’o as A (the casting will rotate), whose world is reeling with confusion and shame following an incident in which her former boyfriend hit her so hard that she ended up on the floor. (She had tried to slap him a few days before, she offers wanly.) In impressionistic sketches, directed by Maria Dizzia, A struggles through sessions with a therapist (the appealingly forthright Dael Orlandersmith), group counselling (facilitated by the cheeky Sarah Steele and Orlandersmith), a date (Greg Keller, a nuanced charmer), her clueless mother (also Keller). She connects with a guy friend who respects her boundaries—after which, in a fraught meeting with her absentee father, A takes a step in a suddenly clear, positive direction.—Shauna Lyon (Greenwich House Theatre; through Jan. 8.)
Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” opens with the freshly dead classicist and poet A. E. Housman (a singsongy David Greenspan) reminiscing about his days at Oxford, astir with fin-de-siècle aestheticism and the titillations of his fellow-undergraduate Oscar Wilde (Sam Bolen, transfixing in this role and two others). But the young Housman (Yaron Lotan) took more interest in another student, the strapping Moses Jackson (José Espinosa), for whom his feelings were epitomized by the bond between Achilles and Patroclus, and between other close-knit comrades of antiquity, the field to which he devoted himself. Stoppard’s allusiveness is daunting but rewarding—something recognized by the director, Zachary Elkind, whose low-tech but resourceful staging refuses to pander.—Dan Stahl (Theaterlab; through Oct. 3.)
The Gulf of Mexico may not be the first place one thinks of in relation to the ballet choreographers Frederick Ashton and Antony Tudor, and yet the excellent Sarasota Ballet has made itself a bastion of the twentieth-century British ballet repertoire. The troupe has also recently taken on several new dancers, including the princely Andrii Ishchuk, lately of American Ballet Theatre. On the program is Tudor’s moving portrait of repressed love and grim marital convention, “Lilac Garden”; the devilishly difficult balcony scene from Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet,” with lots of tricky hopping on pointe; and the bucolic Peter Wright quartet “Summertide,” set to the shimmering second movement of Mendelssohn’s Second Piano Concerto.—Marina Harss (Joyce Theatre; Sept. 29-Oct. 4.)
The chronically online pop-music fan is obsessive about positioning relative to the market—terms such as “flop era” and “Khia asylum” dominating their conversations about recognition and artistry—and few musicians have been more subject to this discourse than Slayyyter. A viral sensation in the halcyon days of Twitter, the singer was on the forefront of a sleaze-pop revival, and her self-titled 2019 mixtape, which found her at the intersection of the dance pop of the mid-two-thousands and the hyperpop still to come, put her on the shortlist of stars-to-be. When that call didn’t arrive, even Slayyyter questioned her career path, and she planned her March album, “Wor$t Girl in America,” as if it were her last, writing an ode to her iPod. Ironically, in doubling down on herself, she has never been more popular.—Sheldon Pearce (Terminal 5; Oct. 3. Brooklyn Paramount; Oct. 4.)
For nearly two decades, the artist Narcissister has developed a body of work marked by evocative visual motifs: an idealized feminine face mask, maneuvers involving contortion or sleight of hand, and nudity (her merkin is as common a sight as her mask). Her performances, which mischievously shred expectations of gender and race, have taken place in night clubs and at art museums—and on the TV show “America’s Got Talent.” For this exhibition, she constructed an installation out of found objects which doubles as a Rube Goldberg machine. Amid ropes, barrels, and exercise balls lies the show’s emotional core: seascapes painted by her uncle. She honors them, and a complex family legacy, in her indelibly risqué way, in a handful of performances, during which she wears her aunt’s dresses.—Jillian Steinhauer (Margot Samel; through Oct. 10.)
In “Palimpsest: The Story of a Name,” the filmmaker Mary Stephen, a Hong Kong-born, ethnic-Chinese filmmaker, indeed explores the mystery of her own name. Her fascinating, playful quest involves the tangled background of her father, Henry Stephen. After his death, in 1986, she discovered a trove of his diaristic writings and home movies; with these archives she reconstructs his life and her childhood. The film unfolds his rough-and-tumble youth in Hong Kong; the turmoil of the Second World War; her father’s successful career in business; his encounter with the filmmaker’s mother, who called herself Hilda; and widespread divisions of class and race. The resulting stories involve surprising intersections of family and politics, of identity and imagination.—Richard Brody (Streaming on OVID.tv.)
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Bar Tab
Ryan Gellis discovers a beer counter in South Slope.
In sleepy South Slope, a local son in search of a beer bar walked past a familiar, long-shuttered laundromat. He did a double take—the rusting metal window grates were gone, the hulking coin-operated machines nowhere in sight, but an enticing sign had appeared on the awning: “BEER COUNTER.” Inside, people were still dealing in suds, albeit of a different kind. Mash Inn had transformed into an airy space, with a blond-wood bar and a forest of potted plants. Sixteen bronze taps stood ready to dispense craft ales, lagers, and a single cider. The patron chose a Cultivar: Cascade, from Wayward Lane Brewing, a hazy pale ale whose tiny bubbles effervesced so vigorously as to mist the upper lip. Two other townies were spotted, and their table was joined. These malt maestros, noting the surrounding mature crowd, wondered about the purported demise of drinking culture while they crunched through a bowl of puffed-rice snacks. The Mash Inn is a relative of the established brewski mecca Gold Star Beer Counter, in Prospect Heights, and has a similarly minimalist menu. In place of a liquor shelf (the establishment sells only beer and cider), there’s a turntable and a library of vinyl—this evening’s up-tempo jazz struggled to compete with the din of a full house. The next round was on the latecomer; a wild ale by the name of Arietta, from Fox Farm Brewery, floral and largely flat, had a pleasing barnyard funk. A Subglitch sour was rechristened “Jolly Rancher light.” It was conceded that the catalogue of brews outmatched the finite power of the liver. Upon decampment, the drowsy drinker is met with one final chance to imbibe, at the outside window, its sliding partition reminiscent of a Mister Softee’s. A growler of stout makes for pleasant company on the walk home.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet: