ARTS
BEYOND BORDERS Singer Angélique Kidjo defies classification E7
SECTION E
LO LI T K
T R AV E L
EXPERT’S VIEW OF CUBA Exploring Havana with dual citizen Manny Ramos reveals history, Hemingway and culinary delights E10
BOOKS
ON A MISSION In her fight against cancer, Edie Littlefield Sundby hasn’t stopped moving E9
SUNDAY • AUGUST 6, 2017
Elvis Presley, 40 years after his death, remains an icon and a cautionary tale BY GEORGE VARGA
I
con? Thief? Sex symbol? Menace to society? Hero? Drug addict? The King? There is only one Elvis Presley, but there are also many Elvis Presleys. No, that’s not an existential riddle about the hip-swiveling, lip-curling singer who irrevocably changed the sound and look of contemporary music, and — with it — popular culture in the 1950s and beyond. Nor is it a reference to the estimated 35,000 Elvis impersonators still active around the world today, 40 years after the intensely charismatic singer hailed as “The King” permanently left the building on Aug. 16, 1977. He died from a drug-fueled heart attack in Memphis, Tenn., in his famed Graceland mansion, which still draws 600,000 visitors a year (second in the U.S. to the White House). Only 42, Elvis weighed nearly 350 pounds at the time of his death — 187 pounds more than when he SEE ELVIS • E6 Elvis in 1978. AP
ALL SHOOK UP? Send us your Elvis impersonation videos, and we’ll pick the best ones and share them with the world. Go to sandiegouniontribune.com/elvis and upload your video.
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
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SUNDAY • AUGUST 6, 2017
FOR KIDJO, MUSIC IS A UNIFYING LANGUAGE Angélique Kidjo, with guitarist Dominic James and the San Diego Symphony, conducted by Gast Waltzing
Beninese singer is a worldly musician, but don’t call what she does ‘World Music’ BY GEORGE VARGA
instrumental parts with my voice. For me, it’s always about inspiration.” Kidjo recorded her voicedriven version, “Lonlon (Ravel’s Bolero),” for her Grammy-winning 2007 album “Djin Djin.” For her subsequent PBS TV special, “Spirit Rising,” she performed “Lonlon” with a chamber orchestra, a choir and jazz sax great Branford Marsalis. “Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music,” Kidjo’s memoir, was published in 2014 by Harper Design. Her 2015 U.S. orchestral debut teamed her with the San Francisco Symphony. The most ambitious piece they did was “Ifé, Three Yorùbá Songs for Orchestra,” a new composition written for her by Philip Glass. “Philip asked me to write a series of poems for the piece, and I chose the myKYLE MOONEY GREG KINNEAR
CLAIRE DANES MATT WALSH
george.varga@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @georgevarga
MARK HAMILL MICHAELA WATKINS
“ABSURD AND ABSURDLY CHARMING.”
‘Bolero’ breakthrough “One day, the teacher played Ravel’s ‘Bolero,’ ” said Kidjo, who began performing at the age of 6 in her mother’s theater troupe in Benin. “And I said, ‘This music is written in an African mode.’ The other students said, ‘Shut up. Nothing comes from Africa.’ “And I was like, ‘Whoa!’ But that was the truth to them — they thought nothing sophisticated came from Africa. I said, ‘I’ll prove you wrong one day.’ And I did, with ‘Bolero.’ I did all the
thology of the creation of the world,” said Kidjo, who lives in New York with her husband and their daughter, Naima. Her San Diego Symphony concert next Sunday will feature guitarist Dominic James and the orchestra, which will be conducted by Gast Waltzing. Kidjo and Waltzing shared a 2016 Grammy Award win for her album “Sings.” Their San Diego reper-
–Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES
im
“Since moving to America, I have realized the impact of the music of Africa,” Kidjo said. “The drums were taken away from the slaves. But we had the voice. “Here in America, we had the blues and then jazz. We are all Africans.” Kidjo was at the San Diego Hilton Bayfront in late April to give the keynote address at the YWCA of San
One of her upcoming projects will honor three iconic singers — Cruz, Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone. She credits Makeba, whom she befriended in Paris in 1989, for helping her realize World Music was not an innocent marketing tool. “One day we met in Basel, Switzerland, and started talking,” Kidjo recalled. “And Miriam said, ‘Why the hell do they have to call our music World Music?’ She was so mad at this colonial mindset. “She opened my mind up that this World Music label is another ghetto club to marginalize music not sung in English or Spanish.” Kidjo encountered Simone once after moving to Paris in 1983. She struck a closer bond with the Cubanborn singing legend Cruz, whom she first met when Kidjo was 13 and Cruz was in Benin to perform with the famed Fania All Stars. “Celia was so flamboyant with her singing and dancing,” Kidjo recalled, smiling broadly. “Salsa music is huge in West Africa.” They grew closer when a French journalist brought
RICHARD PIERCE
the two singers together in Paris. “We laughed and laughed. Then we started talking about Yoruba culture,” Kidjo recalled. “I started singing in her dressing room, and Celia said, ‘I’m singing tonight — why don’t you jump onstage and sing with me?’ “But she didn’t tell her husband, Pedro Caraballo, who was her musical director. And when I came onstage, he was like ...” Kidjo playfully widened her eyes to demonstrate Caraballo’s surprise at her sudden appearance next to Cruz. “But that didn’t stop me from singing!” she said, beaming at the memory. After moving to Paris when she was in her early 20s, Kidjo sang in a band led by top Dutch jazz keyboardist Jasper van’t Hof at night. By day, she studied at a classical music conservatory, where she especially enjoyed singing Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
toire will mix classics by such disparate artists as George Gershwin, Carlos Santana and Sidney Bechet, along with such Kidjo favorites as “Afrika” and “Mama Golo Papa.” Clearly, music — like life — has no limits for her. “I don’t believe the skin color of somebody defines a person,” Kidjo stressed. “That’s why, at the Grammys, I said stupidity is universal. You can be any color and be stupid. “Your brain has no color, your soul has no color. When you cut yourself, your blood is red. You can be any color and it doesn’t make any difference. If someone has a problem with my skin color, that’s their problem, not mine.” She smiled. “For me,” Kidjo said, “being onstage is like being in paradise. And I want to be in paradise every day!”
/ M ax
Proudly singing out
Rejecting ‘colonial mindset’
Presented by Bayside Summer Nights When: 7:30 p.m. next Sunday Where: Embarcadero Marina Park South, 200 Marina Park Way, downtown Tickets: $23-$88 Phone: (619) 235-0804 Online: sandiegosymphony.org
G r a p e s b y A k zh a n a
Grammy Award-winning vocal dynamo Angélique Kidjo speaks 10 languages, including four from her West African homeland of Benin. That’s just one reason her electrifying singing transcends musical and geographical borders alike. “When I was 7, I told my mother I wanted to be James Brown!” said Kidjo. “When I was 8, I decided I was going to pay tribute to Jimi Hendrix.” Now 57, Kidjo still salutes Hendrix with her stunning, a cappella renditions of his classics “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and “Machine Gun.” But trying to pin her down stylistically is impossible, as befits a woman whose collaborators have ranged from Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel and U2’s Bono to Herbie Hancock, Brazil’s Gilberto Gil, Cuba’s Omara Portuondo and Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour. Kidjo performs here next Sunday with the San Diego Symphony as part of its Bayside Summer Nights series at Embarcadero Marina Park South. On Wednesday, she’ll be at the 18,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl for “Angélique Kidjo’s Tribute to Salsa,” an homage to the late vocal legend Celia Cruz. She’ll repeat her heartfelt Cruz tribute Sept. 6 in Paris and Sept. 17 at the Monterey Jazz Festival. In between her orchestral concerts and salsa homages this summer, Kidjo has been doing live preview performances of her upcoming new album, which finds her reinventing Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light.” That landmark 1980 art-rock album drew much of its polyrhythmic inspiration from African music. Kidjo is inverting that equation by adding new African melodies and words, a Senegalese drum quartet, the brass section from the acclaimed Brooklyn Afrobeat band Antibalas, and — at her May 5 Carnegie Hall concert — a vocal cameo by former Talking Heads leader David Byrne.
Diego County’s annual “In the Company of Women” benefit luncheon. A longtime UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and co-founder of the nonprofit Batonga Foundation for Girls Education, she punctuated her speech here with unaccompanied songs in at least three languages. Kidjo also led the hundreds of attendees in spirited vocal call-and-response exchanges that underscored the universality of music. “For me, it’s always the same thing, just a different setting and a different audience. And, sometimes, the audience overlaps,” she said during a subsequent interview in an airy alcove at the Hilton. Nearby, her French musician husband, Jean Hébrail, was on his cellphone, finalizing their travel arrangements. A short, petite woman, Kidjo has a big, richly expressive voice that soars in almost any setting. Yet, while her music draws from a panoply of styles from around the globe, she bristles at the oft-used term World Music. Or, as Kidjo put it after winning Best Contemporary World Music Album honors at the 2008 Grammy Awards: “One thing that always disturbs me is categorizing everything. For me, a human being is not a matter of color. But stupidity is universal, whatever direction you go.”
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UC SAN DIEGO ENROLLMENT TO HIT RECORD School estimates it will have 36,400 students this fall, with plans for 40K by 2020; new residence halls opening BY GARY ROBBINS UC San Diego estimates that enrollment will hit 36,400 this fall, the highest level in school history and a reflection of the rapid growth that’s been occurring in much of the University of California system. The San Diego campus will add roughly 600 students in September as part of a plan to increase enrollment to 40,000 by 2020. The school’s enrollment has increased by more than 6,700 since 2012, a surge that has made the campus more than twice the size of Stanford
University. The boom also has created growing pains that will be alleviated a bit this fall when UC San Diego opens new residence halls that can accommodate 1,350 students. The halls are part of a new $1.6 billion construction program that will add housing, classrooms and laboratories at a school that has long ranked among the 10 largest research schools in the U.S. The program is largely a response to rapid population growth in California. The growth led the University of SEE UCSD • B6
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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
THURSDAY • AUGUST 17, 2017
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POP MUSIC REVIEW
AGELESS TONY BENNETT DELIGHTS SAN DIEGO AUDIENCE BY GEORGE VARGA
As I approach the prime of my life ... I will stay younger than spring. The man born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on Aug. 3, 1926, reiterated his primetime point during his final selection of the evening, the Bart Howard-penned “Fly Me to the Moon.” With a soft-shoe bounce in his step, even after standing throughout the previous 73 minutes of his performance, Bennett sang: Let me play among the stars / Let me
Had Tony Bennett performed his Bayside Summer Nights concert at Embarcadero Marina Park South on July 12, as originally scheduled, he would have done so as an improbably spry 90year-old. By postponing that date until Tuesday, he instead performed here as an improbably spry 91-year old. Or, as he sang with a knowing wink during “This is All I Ask,” his third selection:
see what spring is like / On Jupiter and Mars. Accordingly, for the entire time this vital, oh-so-debonair American music legend was on stage, he exuded the timeless joy of someone who clearly revels in his work. Leading a talent-rich quartet, he performed with such vocal vim and vigor that he left no doubt about who’s the boss. Yet, while Bruce Springsteen was all of 33 when he wrote “Glory Days” — his wry
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1980s hit about people reflecting on the real and imagined triumphs of their lives — Bennett is still living his own glory days. In November, his memoir, “Just Getting Started,” was published. It came 20 years after the first of his five books, 1996’s “What My Heart Has Seen.” In December, he starred in a two-hour 90th birthday concert TV special that featured such high-profile fans as Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall and Elton John. It also featured Lady Gaga, with whom he won a 2015 Grammy Award for their hit duets album, “Cheek to Cheek.” He won another last year — his 18th Grammy thus far — for “The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern,” a duo outing with jazz piano great Bill Charlap. In June, the Library of Congress announced Bennett will receive this year’s prestigious Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, an honor previously bestowed upon Wonder, Carole King, Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson and the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. In July, Bennett concluded his latest tour of Europe and did two shows at the nearly 18,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl. His performance here Tuesday was the second in a series of concert dates that continue into early December. A less seasoned, less assured artist would have boasted of these accomplishments from the stage. Bennett didn’t mention any of them, although he had plenty of reasons to beam Tuesday. And beam he did as he led the sold-out audience of 4,000 in clapping along in time while he sang a lively “Smile,” shortly before the conclusion of his triumphant concert. The lyrics to this 1936 gem by Charlie Chaplin are a bittersweet ode to resiliency in the face of adversity, but Bennett focused on the song’s sweetness and optimism as he delivered the lyrics with transcendent
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Tony Bennett performs Tuesday at Bayside Summer Nights at Embarcadero Marina Park South. grace. He did the same on “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” which he recorded 60 years ago as a bright-eyed youngster of 31. His 1957 version followed Frank Sinatra’s original 1943 rendition in the film “The Sky’s the Limit,” but the two renditions couldn’t be more different. Sinatra’s “One for My Baby” is a torch ballad filled with the resignation and hard-won wisdom of a man who has lived, loved and lost. The song’s protagonist is seated in a bar, very late at night, drowning in his sorrows after yet another failed love affair. But not the ebullient Bennett, who breathed new life into the song on record and again at his Tuesday concert. Singing — and swinging — on top of a snappy shuffle beat, he transformed “One for My Baby” into a jubilant romp that celebrates a life very well lived and looks forward to a rosy future. He also took obvious delight after singing the jukeboxinspired couplet: So drop another nickel in the machine. “A nickel!” Bennett chortled, just before Tom Ranier launched into a sparkling piano solo. Had the next song been “Keep on the Sunny Side,” it would have made perfect thematic sense. Instead, Bennett did the equally upbeat “For Once in My Life,” which earned him one
of several standing ovations and — like many of the selections before it — concluded with a booming vocal flourish that would leave many singers half his age or younger feeling winded. True, there was a periodic cragginess to Bennett’s singing Tuesday, but he has always favored emotional depth over note-perfect technique. And that craggy, lived-in quality is precisely what gives his vocal performances so much character. Whether belting out “I Got Rhythm,” caressing “It Amazes Me” and “But Beautiful,” or soaring through “Steppin’ Out with My Baby,” Bennett exulted in the joy of making music in front of his adoring, multigenerational audience here. His version of “The Way You Look Tonight” was wonderfully understated, while the stunning “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — which marked the start of his recording career in 1950 — was suffused with bluesy elan. He received first-rate support throughout from pianist Ranier, guitar ace Gray Sargent, rock-solid bassist Marshall Wood and former Count Basie drummer Harold Jones, who played with equal elegance at brisk and whisper-soft tempos alike. “This is my symphony orchestra!” said Bennett, who clearly savored every nimble note by his band mates. george.varga@sduniontribune.com
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NIGHT: MONK’ESTRA ON THE BAY 13 DAY: ORANGE CRATE DERBY IN CHULA VISTA 21
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PAGE 19
15-PART TRIBUTE “American Idol” vet John Beasley salutes Thelonious Monk with MONK’estra. PAGE 13
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BY GEORGE VARGA
o jazz fans have “American Idol” to thank for one of the most acclaimed big bands currently perform-
ing? Unlikely as it may seem, John Beasley’s tenure as the associate music director and lead musical arranger on “Idol” led to his discovery of the music notation software Sibelius, which in turn led him to form his multiGrammy-nominated Thelonious Monk tribute band. The 15-piece MONK’estra will perform a San Diego Symphony Bayside Summer Nights concert here next Thursday at Embarcadero Marina Park South. “After the first season of ‘Idol,’ I was still writing arrangements by hand and the volume of work was ridiculous,” recalled Beasley, whose recording credits range from Miles Davis and Steely Dan’s Water Becker to Carly Simon and Indian violin virtuoso L. Subramaniam. “I asked the (music) copyist on ‘Idol’ what software I should use, and she recommended Sibelius. A couple of years later, on a break, I had some time and wanted to experiment with learning the program better and doing 20th-century harmony with a big band.” But Beasley didn’t have enough free time to compose new pieces of music. So he decided to use Sibelius to reorchestrate “Epistrophy,” a 1941 Monk song that sounds just as fresh and vital now. Almost instantly, Beasley said, a light bulb went off and the door to a brave new musical journey opened. “At first, I thought I’d whip something together and just learn to program,” he recalled. “But it became a really deep experience, discovering how pliable Monk’s music is and how it could stretch. It became something personal and a creative rabbit hole to go down.” Monk was a singular pianist, composer and band leader. He is perhaps second only to Miles Davis — whose 1959 album “Miles Davis and the Giants of Jazz” features Monk — as an American music icon whose work transcends jazz. Together with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and an elite group of other innovators, he helped create bebop, the deviously intricate style that revolutionized jazz in the 1940s. Monk’s music is by turns playful, quirky, graceful and profoundly moving. His compositions are marked by playful melodies,
THURSDAY • AUGUST 17, 2017 | THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE | Night + Day
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ERIC WOLFINGER
The 15-piece MONK’estra, directed by John Beasley (center), will perform at San Diego Symphony’s Bayside Summer Nights.
‘IDOL’ VET JOHN BEASLEY SALUTES THELONIOUS MONK ARRANGER’S DISCOVERY OF MUSIC NOTATION SOFTWARE LED TO 15-PIECE TRIBUTE BAND MONK’ESTRA SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY BAYSIDE SUMMER NIGHTS PRESENTS: JOHN BEASLEY PRESENTS MONK’ESTRA, WITH THE JOSHUA WHITE TRIO When: 7:30 p.m. next Thursday Where: Embarcadero Marina Park South, 200 Marina Park Way, downtown Tickets: $18-$71
Phone: (619) 235-0804 Online: sandiegosymphony.org
unusual rhythmic twists, intricate harmonies and a constant state of animation. Today, 35 years after his death, Monk’s many classic songs — which include “ ’Round Midnight,” “Blue Monk,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Ruby, My Dear” and
“Bemsha Swing” — remain some of the most played and beloved in (and out of) jazz. In addition to countless jazz artists, Monk’s songs have been covered by such varied admirers as Phish, Chaka Khan, Peter Frampton, Dr. John and former
San Diegan Frank Zappa. His records have been sampled by Wu-Tang Clan, Gang Starr and other savvy hip-hop acts. “Monk’s music is funky and soulful, swinging and audacious,” said Beasley, who was 11 when he first heard Monk’s song “Nutty.” The captivating album “John Beasley Presents MONK’estra Vol. 1” was released in 2017 by Mack Avenue Records. It earned two Grammy nominations. The upcoming “Vol. 2” features Beasley’s all-star big band, along with such guest artists as violinist Regina Carter, singer Dianne Reeves, percussionist Pedrito
Martinez and saxophonist Kamasi Washington. MONK’estra’s San Diego performance will feature selections from both albums. Beasley hopes it will be an elevating experience. “You go to a concert to be moved,” he said. “Our music is all-inclusive, at least in my head. We have all kinds of options for all kinds of people.”
For more of our John Beasley interview, go to sandiegouniontribune. com/entertainment/music. george.varga@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @georgevarga
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