“Aperture” shines through a glass brightly Matt Gervais and Charity Rose Thielen of The Head and the Heart - by Dane Thibeault for Cannopy. INTERVIEW ─ On their sixth studio album, The Head and the Heart looks back in order to move forward Words and Interview by Michael Zarathus-Cook | Illustration by Dane Thibeault | Photography by Jasper Graham ISSUE 15 | SEATTLE | ALT.ITUDE Latest Release The Head and The Heart. Photo by Shervin Lainez. If I had to summarize Aperture , the latest album by The Head and the Heart, in exactly 52 words, then I would look no further than lyrics from “Little Room” by The White Stripes: Well, you’re in your little room And you're working on something good But if it’s really good You're gonna need a bigger room And when you're in the bigger room You might not know what to do You might have to think of how you got started Sitting in your little room These 52 words spell out an unspoken law of creativity, especially the sort of creativity that emerged from the DIY ethos of late-2000s Indie folk outlets. This law is really a call-and-response pattern between nascent independent projects that inexplicably strike a resonant chord in the hearts and minds of a devoted audience. This resonance spreads mostly through word-of-mouth, then through social media, then through radio waves and music charts and, before you know it, bands like The Head and the Heart (THATH) have gone from the pay-what-you-can backrooms of Seattle’s folk scene to signing with some of the biggest labels in the world. But this increase in reach comes at a price: producers. The Head and The Heart. Photo by Jasper Graham. Generally speaking, producers are well-meaning people. They hear a sound that is unique and, like any decent person would, are inspired to share this sound with the world. Because they work in an industry that marches to the beat of algorithmically-derived trends, they know they will have to augment that raw and untethered sound that they were inspired by in order for it to travel further and find new audiences. It’s the seemingly ineluctable outcome that these augmentations eventually stray too far from what made it unique in the first place, and some sort of intervention is needed to rekindle that sense of originality. I think this explains why THATH decided to take back the reins of their own sound by self-producing Aperture . The band has come a long way since their “little room” release of their self-titled album, which they self-produced and self-released in June 2010. Through word of mouth alone, and before big business got involved, they were able to sell over 10,000 copies of this album via concerts and local record stores around the neighbourhood of Ballard, Seattle. Soon enough, they needed a bigger room, quite literally, as the song “Rivers and Roads” quickly made appearances in the soundtracks of shows on networks like CBS, NBC, Netflix, and Fox. That’s as close to becoming a household name as a folk band could get. The Head and The Heart. Photo by Jasper Graham. Larger concert venues also mean larger recording booths that, nevertheless, become more crowded as record labels and their producers chime in on exactly how it is that THATH should sound. For his part, Matt Gervais (guitar, vocals) is quite fond of the external perspective that producers bring; yet Aperture presented a fresh sense of freedom, an opportunity to bring that “little room” ethos into the big studio sound that’s been cultivated by their last five albums. Creatively speaking, is it possible to enjoy the sense of freedom that produced your latest album without looking down at your previous output as works released under the captivity of studio contracts and their “obligations”? And is believing in this possibility equivalent to eating your freedom cake, and having it too? Gervais and Charity Rose Thielen (violin, guitar, vocals) would likely say yes to the former, and no to the latter. Aperture is also their first release under their own label, Every Shade of Music, with exclusive licensing to Verve Forecast. The near identical nomenclature between their record label and the title of their previous album Every Shade of Blue (released by Warner Records) is perhaps a clue that the band’s newfound creative energy is in fact a long simmering one that has been expressed in previous projects and only now finding full vindication in Aperture . Whatever the precipitating factors might have engendered a certain restlessness in the band, enough for them to want to go back to how they started, the most interesting feature of Aperture is the audacity to manufacture their own sense of necessity. The audacious willingness to get uncomfortable again, to return back to the rag and bone shop of (the head and) the heart. The Head and The Heart. Photos by Jasper Graham. While necessity is the mother of all invention, reinvention is, in that sense, often an orphan. As Gervais points out in conversation with Cannopy : birthing something is painful, but rebirth is more painful. For a band with an established sound and listenership, sticking to what works is the expedient thing to do. Despite the mixed reviews that met Every Shade of Blue , that album swam in the same waters as its successful predecessors (2016’s Signs of Light debuted No.1 on the Top Rock Albums charts) and suffered more from its excesses (16 songs) than from any waning of the bands creative reserve. In other words, reinventing THATH was not a necessary project from the perspective of the industry, yet Thielen saw this retooling as the only artistic way forward for the band. From self-producing to taking their democratic approach to the next level — with different band members singing for the first time on Aperture — they chose not to rest on the laurels of their fabled Seattle come-up days, and rediscover their sounds under a new sense of necessity: what does the world need now and what do we want to give it? Across its 12 sub-5-minute songs, Aperture indeed spreads out as a meeting place between what our current collective moment needs the most, and what music of this sort can provide in earnest. Right from the opening “After The Setting Sun” THATH leans heavily into the stomp-and-holler anthemic sound that drove the folk revival of the early Mumford & Sons, Avett Brothers, Fleet Foxes zeitgeist. The rest of the album alternates between full-synth rallying calls and intimate acoustic sketches next to introspective word-painting. The comparisons to their breakout self-titled album are obvious and inescapable, and the fans that gathered around that first inning would feel rewarded by this return to homebase. The Head and The Heart, Blue Embers. As a pseudo-throwback album, Aperture treads a tightrope, as nostalgic revisitations in music are rarely a worthwhile endeavour for a band that’s far from hanging up their instruments and coasting off their glory days. What saves this album from the pitfalls of sounding too much like the year 2010 is its utter unselfconscious sincerity. Even when they sample the gospel-lullaby “This Little Light of Mine” in “Cop Car”, it sounds more like an earnest call to optimism rather than a half-assed attempt at a summer anthem that everyone can sing along to. That is the underlying throughline across Aperture , an optimism that isn’t trying to avoid the dire straits of our present moment but looking through its dark lens in order to find bright spots. It’s also the sort of optimism that parenthood trains you to adopt — Gervais and Thielen welcomed their second child in spring of 2023 as the band was gathering in Richmond, Virginia to record Aperture . This sense of responsibility of bringing a life into a world full of bright possibilities must have carried over into an album that likewise keeps on the sunny side. The Head and The Heart. Photos by Jasper Graham. It’s not all sunshine and lollipops for Aperture, there are strains throughout: painful memories of childhood in “Pool Break”, sober realizations in “Time With my Sins”, cool falsetto yearnings on “Beg, Steal, Borrow”, and a protracted exhalation on “Finally Free”. The album closes out with its title song, a percussive slow procession that lends a voice to the impulse to bring this album back to first principles: And I can tell your heart’s not in it What will it take to realize There is no end and no beginning There’s only now, open your eyes Someday you’ll find all you’ve left behind And wonder why your heart’s not in it It's not too late for you and I. Aperture is an interesting word, one that we encounter mostly in conversations about photography and camera lenses. Yet it’s a word that simply describes a doorway between the past and the future, between what our eyes can see and what is yet to be seen. With Aperture , it seems THATH has decided the brightest is yet to come, the darkness be damned.

The Society of Illustrators vs. Artificial Intelligence Illustration By Brandon Hicks When AI creates art, who should get the credit? WORDS BY BRANDON HICKS | ARTS & LETTERS FEB 28, 2023 | ISSUE 11 For decades, the concept of artwork created by a computer has been little more than sci-fi speculation. Now, a simple online image search could yield millions of images entirely generated by artificial learning. So, what happened? Artificial intelligence has been able to identify objects and create text descriptions for images for some time now, but recently developed programs have been taking this concept to a whole new level by reversing this process to create original images from a text description. It does this by scouring the Internet for images that fit a written prompt, then recontextualizes their properties into a new image that the human eye can comprehend. The current trend of AI image generation began in early 2021, when OpenAI launched its deep-learning model DALL-E. Its name being a portmanteau of surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and the Pixar character WALL-E, the DALL-E image generation software provided striking results. It wasn’t perfect, with most images producing an uncanny...

"Le nozze di Figaro" at the COC A dose of good humour to rescue this "folle journée" of lust and jealousy WORDS BY DR. JANE ISABELLE FORNER | Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts JAN 27, 2023 | COMMUNITY I have always thought of Claus Guth’s Figaro as a shadow performance, as what would result if Mozart’s wicked doppelgänger had written an opera. It’s not just the gloomy colour palette or the looming, faded walls, but a pervasive aura: dark, brooding, sexually charged, and occasionally actually threatening, it gives us an aristocratic household in decay, gripped by conflict and emotional turmoil. The COC’s take on the production, opening the winter season on Friday, succeeded in infusing what I have always found to be a very clever, but simply far too dreary and angst-filled Figaro with a welcome dose of merriment and self-conscious parody. Perhaps a celebratory atmosphere was in the air for the occasion of Mozart’s 267th birthday – fitting indeed, for Guth’s production was originally created for the Salzburg Festspiele in honour of the composer’s 250th year in 2006. To this revival – under the direction of Marcelo Buscaino – the opening night audience responded in kind (indeed some in my row were worryingly hysterical at times), appreciative of the quality acting and genuine comedy to which the ensemble had evidently dedicated much attention. The quality of the performances was noticeably high in unfailing attention to comedic timing, blending with carefully handled moments of stillness and pathos alongside scenes of deeper conflict. Luca Pisaroni was a delightfully witty Figaro, offering a strong, rich vocal performance throughout, and charming in his portrayal as affable and slightly haphazard, and contributed many moments of comic relief. Memorable especially was his bemused wander across the stage holding a dead raven (perhaps a crow?) at arm’s length while continuing the ongoing dialogue. Gordon Bintner’s Count Almaviva brought enough of the requisite authoritarian bully persona to dominate the stage when necessary, but also leaned well into the signature desperate histrionics of this production. We saw a man out of control, acting blindly, irrationally, and often pathetically, but he avoided – mercifully, in my opinion – overexaggerated theatrics. I could perhaps have done without the axe to the Countess’s throat, but fault there hardly lies with the singer. If a slightly bigger sound would have been welcomed, Bintner overall offered a commanding performance. Lauren Fagan impressed as the suffering Countess, always projecting a firm control of line and a warm, lush tone. I did think that perhaps she might have had one less thing to worry about – on top of the philandering husband, a house in disarray, and the feverish amorous attentions of a page-boy – if she put her arms inside the enormous fur coat she sported during (the beautifully sung) “Porgi, amor.” It did, however, furnish multiple opportunities to make a great deal of very dramatic, sudden gestures (and for Susanna, played adroitly by Andrea Carroll, to get good practice in scarpering across the stage to readjust the coat on her ladyship’s shoulders).

Immersive Dance Experiments Blink Dance Theatre: Heart of Glass - Photo by Jane Acopian Meet Three Companies Leading the Immersive Dance Revolution WORDS BY NICOLE DECSEY | DANCE NOV 14, 2022 | ISSUE 9 Imagine a night out to the theatre where you don’t sit on cushioned chairs, separated from the performers by a framework stage. Rather, you are completely immersed in the action, a movie happening all around you, where everything hinges on your reactions. This is the reality that immersive dance has created for audiences around the world. From outdoor site-specific pieces in every place imaginable, to virtual reality performances delivered digitally so everyone can enjoy them. Immersive art has found its footing in the dance scene. As this type of work becomes more mainstream, there are many companies dabbling in its inner workings. smART Magazine welcomes three companies tinkering in this dynamic space: Hit & Run Dance Productions, based in Toronto, who started their immersive creations in 2004; Blink Dance Theatre, based in Geelong, Australia, creating immersive pieces since 2013; and Cie Gilles Jobin, a Swiss company that began experimenting with virtual reality work in 2017. Hit & Run Dance Productions Anisa Tejpar and Jennifer Nichols have been creating immersive work for almost 20 years via Hit & Run Dance Productions, a company whose mission is to bring dance right to your doorstep. Hit & Run’s most recent and largest production, Haunted Cinema , was a live immersive drive-in experience combining theatrical and cinematic elements. Anisa and Jennifer share how they bring consistency to innovation and create opportunities for performers and audiences alike.

Welcome to the Museum of Bad Art "George and Jackie" Getting rejected by this gallery just might be a good thing WORDS BY LAUREN VELVICK | BOSTON | VISUAL ARTS FEB 26, 2023 | ISSUE 11 The Museum of Bad Art, as stated, celebrates the labour of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum. This is undoubtedly true in terms of collections and acquisitions, but also brings to mind the myriad environments in which we might encounter or make art outside of recognized art-world structures and institutions. As Director Louise Reilly Sacco makes clear, in this context, “bad art” is not meant as a pejorative, but rather acts as an invitation to explore what the label can mean, and the critical value in a failure of intention or execution. From local open-call exhibitions to recognized avant-garde innovations like Schwitters' Merz and an evolving definition of “Outsider Art,” the boundaries of what is or isn’t considered to be art, or what is “good” or “bad” within that frame, have always been porous and open to challenge. The Museum of Bad Art operates within this ongoing discourse simply by virtue of collecting, preserving, and displaying artwork that would not otherwise be valued in this way. It also serves a straightforward and sincere function in elevating and enabling the public to encounter work with the “look at that!” factor, enthusiastically unsanctioned by the establishment.

Lan Florence Yee A Legacy of Ethnography by Lan Florence Yee Destabilising Chinatown Narratives with Text and Embroidery WORDS BY GEORGIA GARDNER | TORONTO | LIGHTHOUSE IMMERSIVE NOV 18, 2022 | ISSUE 7 Toronto-based artist Lan Florence Yee’s work centres on the fusion between text and labour-intensive creation. Yee’s art presents a stumbling block to linear narratives of intergenerational knowledge. Through the intensive process of embroidering text onto fabric, Yee showcases experiences of dead ends, futility, failure and repetition. It seeks to deromanticize queer and racialized experiences. As both a visual artist and curator of Chinatown Biennial , a digital exhibit, Yee explores the purpose of taking a closer examination into what we think we know.

Maja Lena Maja Lena by Martha Webb A bold new voice in the U.K.’s folk scene embarks on a celestial journey WORDS BY REBECCA LASHMAR | CUMBRIA | PERFORMING ARTS FEB 27, 2023 | ISSUE 11 Delving into the rich and endlessly inspiring world of flora and fauna, the alt-folk albums of Marianne Parrish (AKA Maja Lena) are rooted in the rustic soil of her biophilic hobbies. Blossoming out of the band Low Chimes, Maja Lena is the latest phase of Parrish’s creative evolution, experimenting with melodies that trace a path from the terrestrial to the celestial, and everything in between. Maja Lena’s previous (and first solo) album, The Keeper, was heavily influenced by the U.K.’s lakes and landscapes, the Swiss Alps, and her time working in rhubarb gardens or on horseback. Her latest album, PLUTO, orbits vast spaces within, powered by heavy influences from sci-fi epics and new-age jams, textured throughout with intricate guitar-picking and gorgeously layered melodies. With soundscapes inspired by the fantastical worlds of Studio Ghibli, Star Trek , and Battlestar Galactica , Maja Lena explores transformation, destruction, rebirth, and the relationship between real and the imaginatively realized. With a core foundation in agriculture, ecosystems, and nature’s profound interconnectedness, Maja Lena discusses her...

Julian Montague’s Top 10 Books on Design Julian Montague Welcome to our inter-issue series inviting artists to curate top-ten lists WORDS BY BRONTE CRONSBERRY | BUFFALO | VISUAL ARTS FEB 23, 2023 | ISSUE 11 With a strong conceptual basis, the work of graphic designer and artist Julian Montague draws heavily on the history of late 20th century design, offering a dialogue between the past and present of graphic design work. Based in Buffalo, New York, Montague has exhibited in galleries including Art in General, Black and White Gallery, and Anna Kaplan Contemporary in addition to working on book and album covers. Montague’s ability to engage with the sometimes forgotten history of design while speaking to the contemporary moment earned his Instagram account high praise from The New York Times in 2020. His conceptual and photographic book, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America , which offers a taxonomy of abandoned carts, will be released in a revised edition this fall. Introduced to the history of art and design through his father, Montague pursued continual self-study of the arts rather than through academia. He joins smART Magazine ’s inaugural installation of DECA to discuss the design books that have inspired him the most. His insight into the ways that current design is shaped by the past makes his book recommendations of interest to both the seasoned connoisseur and those just beginning to explore.

Monetta White and the MoAD Monetta White by Kalya Ramu Our artists and institutions are expected to stand up and speak out towards injustice." WORDS BY MILES FORRESTER | TORONTO | VISUAL ARTS NOV 11, 2022 | ISSUE 8 Since the pandemic began, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) has stacked its online programming calendar with film clubs, book clubs, workshops, forums, an open mic night, family art events, and discussions with authors. In a variety of ways, Executive Director Monetta White has been growing the reach of MoAD in the Bay Area’s arts and culture landscape since 2019. Including establishing a new studio residency program in partnership with San Francisco Art Institute, expanding the Emerging Artist Program, and forging a new partnership with the African American Arts and Cultural Complex (AAACC). She’s also served as Vice President for the City of San Francisco’s Small Business Commission and continues to sit on multiple non-profit boards and advisory boards. With $200 million reallocated from law enforcement set to be reinvested in historically underrepresented communities and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art selling off a Rothko for $50 million in order to acquire more works by female artists, artists of colour and LGBTQ+ artists, there’s something of a sea change occurring at the intersection of civic policy and culture in San Francisco. This is epitomized by MoAD, which White describes as a hub of thought, art, and dialogues that offers an inherently politicized art viewing experience.

David Korins David Korins by Kalya Ramu IVG Creative Director WORDS BY AMELIA JOHANNSEN | BARCELONA | VISUAL ARTS MAR 02, 2023 | ISSUE 10 Even over a Zoom call, our interview with Hamilton Set Designer and Immersive Van Gogh New York Creative Director David Korins oozed with the energy and tempo of NYC. Joining us from the back seat of an Uber, David spoke with passion and panache about the New York art scene, working with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the secret subconscious powers of design, and his city’s notorious beef with LA. Serendipitously, his shameless praise of making art for the common denominator was even punctuated by an errant car horn. Nonetheless, David’s razor-sharp wit and astounding breadth of insight are more than matched by the inspiring generosity behind his work as an artist and designer. On the one hand, his approach is steeped in humility toward the work of his collaborators—including Immersive Van Gogh Creator Massimiliano Siccardi and, in a sense, Van Gogh himself—along with a profound desire to carry that work to its greatest heights of innovation and exposure. On the other, he is also keenly attentive to the hopes and fears of New Yorkers as they pursue a slow exit from the devastation of COVID-19. Taken together, David’s words offer a simultaneously practical and idealistic approach to defining post-pandemic artistic experience—an offering all the more valuable in that it comes from a global epicentre of both the tragedies of this past year and the profound creativity through which we will survive it.

That Girl: Performing an Aesthetic Illustration By Alicia Jungwirth How TikTok commodifies girlhood and renders selfhood as consumerism WORDS BY RACHEL WINDSOR | ARTS & LETTERS FEB 28, 2023 | ISSUE 11 To be a girl on TikTok is to align oneself with a recognizable aesthetic: are you “dark academia,” a “coquette,” or a “downtown girl”? Or perhaps you’re “That Girl,” capitalization and all: she’s easily recognizable by her 5am alarm clock, morning green juice, 12-step skincare routine, and faithful five-minute journal practice. We know this about That Girl because she shows us, capturing and uploading the most aesthetically pleasing moments of her ultra-productive routine. It’s no wonder that the associated hashtag has over 7.7 billion views at the time of writing─her performance of selfhood is compelling, but perhaps it’s troubling too. Any video uploaded to TikTok is, to some extent, a performance, as social media relies upon representation rather than “real” (i.e. tangible) presence. The concept isn’t restricted to online interactions either: as far back as 1956, Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman suggested that any social interaction “marked by [an individual’s] continuous presence before a particular set of...

Jon Batiste: Big Money Jon Batiste INTERVIEW — Birth of a New Americana signals the death of the genre machine Words by Caleb Freeman | Illustration by Dane Thibeault ISSUE 16 | NEW YORK | ALT.ITUDE As a category, Americana is tricky. For starters, it isn’t even really a single genre but an amalgam of country, folk, blues, soul, bluegrass, gospel, and rock. The term itself didn’t enter the music lexicon until the 1990s, in response to the increasing commercialization of country music. As country musicians like Garth Brooks and Faith Hill became pop stars, Americana was meant to carve out space for rootsier, more authentic sounds that didn’t fit the new radio‑friendly version of country. But the main difficulty with Americana is that, more than perhaps any other category, it is tied up with national identity. Americana is a sound, but also a mythology. It draws from a community’s cultural history—think bluegrass in Appalachia, or the different flavours of blues that developed across the American South—and pays homage to those sounds and conventions while also pushing boundaries to create something fresh, timely, and uniquely American. It is tradition and evolution, canonization on a national scale. But which traditions—and whose sounds—get to be included in that canon? BIG MONEY , the ninth studio album by the singer, multi-instrumentalist, and Juilliard-educated composer Jon Batiste, is a response to this question. Throughout his career, Batiste has skirted easy categorization, blurring genres and styles. His GRAMMY ® Award–winning album We Are (2021) fused R&B, jazz, hip-hop, soul, blues and classical music, drawing from influences ranging from Little Richard and James Brown to the Jackson 5 and Kendrick Lamar. Last year’s Beethoven Blues was a blues-infected reimagining of Beethoven compositions. Meanwhile, 2023’s World Music Radio , an ambitious concept album featuring an intergalactic disc jockey named Billy Bob Bo Bob (Batiste), drew from Afrobeat, reggae, K-pop, trap, and more to create a melting-pot vision of what global music could sound like, still rooted in Batiste’s musical foundations of jazz, R&B, and soul. BIG MONEY continues Batiste’s genre-fluid approach. But where World Music Radio envisioned a global sound, BIG MONEY is rooted in American soil. Gone are the Auto‑Tune, synthesizers, and soaring pop melodies, replaced instead by mandolins, harmonicas, tambourines, organs, and gospel choruses. Across nine songs, the album incorporates elements of blues, gospel, R&B, folk, rock and roll, and jazz. From the rootsy fusion of rockabilly and blues-rock on “Pinnacle,” to the brooding, funk-forward “At All,” to the fuzzy, atmospheric reggae of the closing track “Angels,” Batiste opts for a more organic sound. The album was recorded live off the floor to “maximize connectivity and expression.” In the press release for the album, Batiste defines the album’s sound as “New Americana.” BIG MONEY is the latest example of a growing movement by artists challenging the gatekeeping and whitewashing of American music institutions. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter (2024), which Batiste worked on alongside his co-producer Dion “No I.D.” Wilson, is probably the most prominent case in point. Cowboy Carter spotlighted overlooked Black country pioneers and lifted up a new generation of artists, challenging not only what country music sounds like, but who it belongs to. “This is the moment, y’all, where we dismantle the genre machine,” Batiste said in response to the album. Americana may not be as explicitly exclusionary as country music. In its 100-year history, the Grand Ole Opry— the most hallowed institution in country music—has inducted only three Black members, and the first Black person to win Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards was Tracy Chapman in 2023, only after her 1988 song “Fast Car” was covered by the white country singer Luke Combs. The Americana Music Association at the very least acknowledges the artistic contributions of non-white musicians, but this is setting the bar quite low. The reality is that gatekeeping does exist when it comes to who is seen as an Americana musician and who gets included in the great American songbook. I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of Cain’s Ballroom, where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys developed western swing. It was also home to the “Tulsa Sound,” a particular mix of blues and rock and roll with a distinctive shuffle groove, credited to musicians like J.J. Cale and Leon Russell. And, of course, Woody Guthrie, patron saint of American folk music, was born in nearby Okemah. This is the musical mythology that I grew up with, one missing key context. Guthrie was influenced by Lead Belly, Wills by Bessie Smith, and the “Tulsa Sound” by the Black progenitors of blues and R&B. Tulsa’s musical history—and by extension, my musical background—does not exist without these influences. My experience is not unique. Artists like Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash, and Gillian Welch are rightly celebrated as Americana icons, but the Black architects of rock, soul, and folk who laid the foundation are often sidelined. Regarding the whitewashing of Americana, the Canadian musician Allison Russell told Rolling Stone in 2023, “It is the constant and continual devaluing of all artistic, financial, creative, intellectual, academic contributions of the Black diaspora. Americana … reflects the American—and again, I mean, Caribbean to Canada—experience, and all of those roots and influences can be heard. To me, hip-hop is as much Americana as folk music.” On BIG MONEY , Batiste aims to expand what we think about when we consider Americana and pays tribute to some of the iconic and overlooked Black voices that shaped him and his community growing up near New Orleans. The track “Lean on My Love,” featuring Andra Day, merges gospel, R&B, funk, and soul, evoking Bill Withers, the Staple Singers, and Sly and the Family Stone. “Lonely Avenue” (featuring Randy Newman) is a soul-soaked cover of Ray Charles. “Do It All Again” channels the emotional resonance of Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, while “Maybe” “Maybe”nods to the Chantels’ 1958 song of the same name. Batiste threads through elements of Zydeco, Fats Domino’s rock‑and‑roll swing, and Mahalia Jackson’s gospel stylings. BIG MONEY rightfully offers these influences as vital parts of the canon of American roots music. BIG MONEY is at its most compelling when it offers social commentary. The title track is a rollicking, gospel‑inflected fusion of blues‑rock and southern folk with a boot‑stomping groove that comments on the thirst for money and power. “Petrichor” is one of the best songs Batiste has released: a climate‑conscious track with stark, minimalist imagery—“swim in the ocean / what’s left of it,” and “wonderful petrichor / no more.” The song draws on spirituals, interpolates Thurston Harris’s “Little Bitty Pretty One,” and uses hambone—body‑slapping—percussion. It’s a thrilling, fresh, and timely synthesis of sounds and influences that serves as a call to action without giving in to existential dread. The album isn’t just commentary, but also a call for connection—a meta‑commentary on a growing sense of isolation and division. BIG MONEY was inspired by Batiste’s 2024 cross‑country tour and his sense of America’s deepening political and cultural divides. Batiste has always emphasized music’s ability to connect people—after all, this is the musician who, with his band Stay Human, staged guerrilla street performances called “love riots” on the streets of major U.S. cities. In the press release for BIG MONEY, Batiste writes, “This is the circus of love. Under our tent there is revival and joy.” The goal is to create a more inclusive Americana—a big tent that welcomes a broad range of sounds, peoples, and cultures. But where BIG MONEY succeeds in honouring the Black roots of Americana, it misses an opportunity to engage with contemporary artists of colour who have been pushing the boundaries of American roots music for years. To return to Cowboy Carter , part of what made the album so powerful was that Beyoncé was not only asserting her own right to country music as a child of Texas, but also using her platform to feature up‑and‑coming country artists like Shaboozey and Brittney Spencer. Aside from featuring Randy Newman, Andra Day, and, perhaps most notably, the Womack Sisters—who happen to be Sam Cooke’s granddaughters—the album largely feels like a small, tight‑knit project shared between Batiste, No I.D., and a few others. Meanwhile, artists like Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June, and Allison Russell have been trailblazers for Black Americana for years. Just this year, Keb’ Mo’ and Taj Mahal released a noteworthy collaborative album called Room on the Porch that mixes country, folk, R&B, and blues—its title track announces that “there is room on the porch for everyone.” Batiste’s framing of “New Americana” is compelling, but it risks overshadowing the contributions of musicians who have been pushing Americana forward and who do not have Batiste’s cultural cachet. Ultimately, it would have been powerful to see Batiste give some of these contemporaries a platform on BIG MONEY . That said, BIG MONEY is an accomplishment and a welcome addition to the discourse surrounding inclusion in American roots music. Despite being a relatively short record, there are more influences and ideas than there is space to unpack here. Even if the album doesn’t fully realize the communal promise of its mission, BIG MONEY is an important step in the evolution of Americana. It reminds us that the roots of American music are deeper and more diverse than many of us have been taught to believe.

Magical Bones Magical Bones by Ella Mazur Celebrating Black Magic WORDS BY CAMILLA MIKOLAJEWKA | PEFORMANCE APR 03, 2023 | ISSUE 5 Richard Essien—who goes by Magical Bones on stage—is considered to be one of the most exciting talents to emerge from the UK magic scene and has been entertaining audiences globally for over a decade. He was a finalist on Britain's Got Talent , with his audition tape alone gaining over 10 million views online. With the creation of his show Black Magic , Essien goes into the history of magic within the Black community and sheds light on the magicians whose stories have been neglected. On stage, Magical Bones breaks down the barriers of what it means to be a Black magician, sharing other peoples stories while creating his own. Essien joins smART Magazine to discuss his background and the reality of being a Black magician.

SOMArts: Maria Jenson Photo by Jeremy Fokkens Meet the Creative and Executive Director of San Francisco's SOMArts WORDS BY CAMILLA MIKOLAJEWSKA | SAN FRANCISCO | VISUAL ARTS JUN 13, 2023 | ISSUE 4 SOMArts has a true community-first approach, making them a spectacular place to enhance both your artistic and cultural knowledge. Maria Jenson, Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, shares some insight into the creative process behind her organization’s emotionally provoking exhibits, support for emerging artists, and dedication to the Bay Area community.