Music Festival to resume - Trinidad News

Music Festival to resume - Trinidad News
Cub Sport: “There’s a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesn’t need to be there” - NME.com
E^ST interview: 'I spent a lot of time alone. Music was a way to express myself' - Evening Standard
Madonna keeps making controversial covid-19 claims, calling a misinformation-spreading doctor her ‘hero’ - The Washington Post

Posted: 30 Jul 2020 11:06 PM PDT

Features

Paula Lindo 10 Hrs Ago

Holistic X performs at the 2020 Music Festival in March. - Gary Cardinez

The TT Music Festival Association (TTMFA) will be resuming and concluding the 2020 Music Festival, which had to be postponed due to the covid19 pandemic.

In a release, association chairman Jessel Murray said the decision was made after considering responses from a recent stakeholder survey and continuing guidance from the government.

He said TTMFA will offer a live version of the 2020 festival beginning in August for open classes and virtual sessions in October for junior classes.

"The North open classes will conclude at Queen's Hall, St Ann's while the South open classes will be conducted at Naparima Bowl. The Tobago open classes had already been concluded. However, there will be no Championship round for any of the regions. Instead, the first-place winner of classes in the respective region will each receive commemorative plaques."

Murray said once the festival resumes there will be adjustments in keeping with national guidelines disseminated by the Ministry of Health. These include the following: only solo, duets and small ensembles can be accommodated; adjudication will be conducted in the traditional manner by Dr Richard Tang Yuk; and all competitors, as well as audience members, will be subject to the venue protocols developed by the Ministry of Community Development, Culture, and the Arts.

The open classes to be held in the north are ladies operatic aria, gents musical theatre solo, gents folk song solo, piano recital, acoustic guitar solo, steelpan solo, and mixed instrumental duet or trio. The following ensemble categories were originally for four to 16 players but will have to be reduced to no more than ten players per ensemble: steelpan ensemble, orchestral string ensemble, orchestral brass ensemble, and orchestral woodwind ensemble.

The South open classes include gents' vocal solo, ladies operatic aria, string solo for non-fretted instruments, gents operatic aria, gents spiritual solo, acoustic guitar solo, mixed vocal duet, ladies contemporary religious solo, gents contemporary religious solo, lieder/German art song, vocal recital, ladies musical theatre solo, gents musical theatre solo, world music instrumental ensemble for five to six players, ladies oratorio solo, gents oratorio solo, piano recital, ladies' vocal duet, steelpan solo for tenor or double seconds, ladies folk song solo, gents folk song solo, steelpan ensemble for pans only, no percussion, for four to ten players, 4–16 players, non-vocal mixed instrumental duet or trio, ladies' vocal solo, piano solo, vocal recital, improvisation on steelpan, gents' vocal duet, and ladies spiritual solo.

Murray said Tobago has not been included as finals competitions had been completed in that region prior to discontinuation of the festival on March 13.

Cub Sport: “There’s a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesn’t need to be there” - NME.com

Posted: 28 Jul 2020 07:21 PM PDT

Cub Sport lead singer and songwriter Tim Nelson vividly remembers the day he chose to be baptised. After walking through a small stage door at his church in north Brisbane, he approached a large pool with cameras trained on its surface. He was asked to accept Jesus into his heart before being dunked beneath the pool's waters.

"I think I just really wanted to get in that pool, to be honest," Nelson tells NME. "I made the decision to get baptised and be a born-again Christian when I was six."

Nelson's life in the church may have begun innocently, but as he grew older his experience with institutional religion and education at his church (and at the attached Christian school) would have profound implications on his life, from suppressing his queer identity to reinforcing stigma about his body and masculinity.

Years on, Nelson has found a balm in his band and their music. On Cub Sport's new album 'LIKE NIRVANA', he reconnects with spirituality on his own terms and unshackles himself from masculine, heteronormative power structures (Nelson identifies as 'free', saying his gender experience most likely falls under the term 'non-binary', though "using an ambiguous term feels more appropriate for me right now").

Cub Sport NME Australia Big Read, Tim Nelson — Tim Nelson. Credit: James Caswell for NME

'LIKE NIRVANA' was recorded quickly, with its first song coming to life around the release of the band's self-titled 2019 album. But its creation was also the product of what Nelson describes as a cocktail of tiredness, anxiety and joy. The band had been kicking goals: selling out more than 10,000 tickets on an Australian and New Zealand headline tour, completing headline tours of the UK and the US, and performing at major festivals including Life Is Beautiful in Las Vegas and Falls in Australia.

But returning to normality in Brisbane left time for self-reflection and introspection that led Nelson to face personal issues he'd buried for years.

"I feel like a pretty big theme that came through when I was writing [the album] were feelings of inadequacy around being a man," says Nelson. "I was going to this church seven days a week and everything about the culture and values there was conservative. The men that were popular and respected were always these very alpha male, masculine, physically fit and strong men. Anyone who had a higher voice or was more feminine – mainly queer guys who couldn't actually say that's who they were – just came off as weird or embarrassing."

"It was also tied into a religious world where it felt like being a good person was also tied to these other conservative views and ideas of how you're meant to be," says Nelson. "It's this weird struggle of feeling like I just wasn't good, as well as being embarrassed about how I would act and how I looked."

Cub Sport NME Australia Big Read — Cub Sport on the cover of NME Australia #08

Breaking bonds of shame and self-loathing is hard when it's all you've known. Nelson attended both the school and church for his entire pre-tertiary education and describes being bullied by his fellow students for his weight and mannerisms.

In one traumatic incident in Year 7, an older boy found Nelson trying on an extravagant hot-pink tulle dress in the school drama room. He dragged Nelson out the front of the school tuck shop to shame him in front of the other students.

"I remember that being a pretty hectic moment of feeling very embarrassed… but also still not looking at what [that person was] doing as being terrible but more like, I was doing something embarrassing," says Nelson. It's only in the last few years that Nelson has managed to break away from wanting to fit in with the kind of men that once ridiculed him, he says.

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"The truth is I don't wanna be one of the boys / The truth is living by a gender makes me feel annoyed / The truth is I still feel like I don't fit in anywhere," sings Nelson on the album's opening song 'Confessions'.

That tulle dress feels analogous to the sonic textures on 'LIKE NIRVANA', which play with opacity and its capacity to obscure or reveal. In harsher moments, like on 'Confessions' or 'Best Friend', the songs feel like they're reverberating through a chain link fence, a barrier that can alternately imprison or protect.

At their most delicate, like on the album's stunning seven-minute centrepiece 'Break Me Down' featuring Mallrat, the songs are filtered through a lace of Auto-Tune. Sometimes, like on the album highlight 'Be Your Man', the veil is lifted completely, allowing Nelson's voice to burst forth and refract through an emotional prism into multitudes of love.

Cub Sport NME Australia Big Read, Sam Netterfield — Sam Netterfield. Credit: James Caswell for NME

Nelson's husband and bandmate Sam Netterfield remembers recording 'Be Your Man' in an Los Angeles studio at the end of the band's 2019 US tour, which along with '18' were his first major writing credits on a Cub Sport album. Netterfield sat down at a Rhodes piano and began playing two simple chords. Nelson began improvising lyrics, resulting in a moment of blinding majesty that's the very same take you hear on the album:

"Baby I'm so tired / I know you feel it too / I've been feeling everything, the changes with the moon / But baby I'll hold onto you / No matter what, you know that I'll hold onto you."

"It never gets old, that feeling of knowing a song's about you. I love it, I love the fact that I have someone who writes such beautiful songs about me," says Netterfield. "I hold them very dear to my heart but I also try and keep them as their own separate part. I don't let them dictate how I feel about any moment in time, or our relationship, or either of our self-worth. I like to hold them as this separate entity that's a reflection of our love and not internalise it."

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Netterfield's other album credit, for '18', came from a writing session halfway through their last US tour while driving from Salt Lake City to Denver. It was the middle of summer, but suddenly a snowstorm engulfed their tour van. Netterfield quickly laid down chords and pitched 808 drums before passing the instrumental to Nelson.

"At that point of the tour, you're in a rhythm that's super exhausting of repeat and rinse, the same thing every day. I remember feeling the snowstorm was beautiful, peaceful and exciting, but also quite raw. It felt like a beautiful encapsulation of how I was feeling. I felt like I was writing that storm," says Nelson.

"It never gets old, that feeling of knowing a song's about you" – Sam Netterfield

Although the lyrics on 'LIKE NIRVANA' are specific to Nelson's personal experiences and emotions, they often resonate in the experiences of Netterfield and Cub Sport's multi-instrumentalist Zoe Davis. All three band members went to the same school, where they lived through a culture that suppressed their true identities. The bullying Cub Sport's members experienced can happen at any school, but when homophobia is reinforced at a curricular level, its effects can be even more damaging. The trio say they were taught that same-sex relationships are wrong, and Davis remembers a speaker once telling the congregation that they had "gay thoughts but just pushed them aside".

"There's a lot of stuff in the music from before we knew each other as well: formative years as children, but even in those I see so many parallels," says Netterfield. "We had the same upbringing in different homes, the same Pentecostal Christian environment and a lot of the same childhood experiences."

Nelson and Netterfield both came out after high school to the support of their parents. On the other hand, the derogatory way queer people were talked about by Davis' fellow students meant she didn't acknowledge her own sexuality until she was 18. Four years later, during which time she'd been in a same-sex relationship, she was still afraid to come out to her parents.

"I was a bit too scared to come out while I was living at home because I'd seen other kids who went to the school get kicked out of home when they came out. I was living in a bit of fear that would happen," says Davis, who was accidentally outed by another parishioner with a gay son. She found out her parents knew while waiting at Los Angeles airport to return home from Cub Sport's 2014 US tour, and spent the flight home crying in fear.

"It was a long journey from there dealing with it, and having my parents come to terms with it," says Davis, who's now engaged to her fiancé Bridie. "They're great now, they couldn't be prouder, which is nice but it was pretty hard for a while."

'LIKE NIRVANA', Davis says, is "a continuation of the journey of evolving and becoming more of who we really are… There are parts of the album that feel more vulnerable than the other albums, [parts about] learning to become at one with your feelings and accepting the highs and the lows of that."

Cub Sport NME Australia Big Read, Zoe Davis — Zoe Davis. Credit: James Caswell for NME

In embracing vulnerability, Cub Sport have flourished. "It's nice to see your friends just be themselves," says drummer Dan Puusaari, who is straight. "One thing I really like about Cub Sport is that there's an element that's a lot bigger than ourselves… it gives young queer kids something to look at and go, 'Oh wow, three-quarters of this band are queer and look what they're doing'.

After coming out, Nelson spent several years as an atheist before undergoing what he describes as a "religious reckoning" and conceptualising spirituality for himself.

"In the years that followed that hard swing to atheism, I started to feel much more connected to the universe… the idea that you keep being reborn into the world in these different combinations," says Nelson. "It just feels like a much bigger concept, I guess, than just being born into this body and then dying and you're done."

"Finally admitting to myself that I was queer and in love with Sam, when I was 25, that was definitely somewhat of a rebirth" – Tim Nelson

On 'Saint', Nelson sings about freeing himself from the constraints of institutional religion and – reconnecting with spiritual forces in the process:

"I'm done with that now / I'm done, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out / I'm never coming back / My mum seems kind of sad / Scared that I'll end up in hell / Don't you see that's where I've been? / Don't you see that's where we fell? / So I'm raising myself up now / I'm living in my own god power / I'm moving like a tidal wave / I am on a mission to save."

That song, Nelson says, "sums up my experience of throwing out the idea of God and spirituality that made me feel really shit about myself… where I'm at now with embracing that power within [to] empower and uplift myself. I feel like there's a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesn't need to be there with spirituality."

In Dharmic religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, achieving Nirvana – a potted definition: a state of blissful emptiness, perfect quietude and freedom – requires liberation from samsara, which refers to the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. Nelson and Netterfield, who insist they're still at the beginning of their spiritual journey, are quick to note they're not claiming the concept as their own.

"I don't feel like I can really speak to the experience of people in religions that are heavily based around achieving Nirvana. To me it's about transcending the heaviness of life and finding a more peaceful, content state," says Nelson.

Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha was an influential book for him, Nelson says. The novel tells the story of a young wanderer who decides against following the teachings of the Buddha, and chooses to seek out his own personal truth – which feels much like the journey Nelson set himself on since leaving institutional religion. Years after he was first reborn at six in a pool, Nelson has since found that rebirth can happen far, far beyond the walls of churches, temples and monasteries.

"'LIKE NIRVANA' is very much breaking any chains of expectation – of what is expected of me, or what is safe or sensible" – Tim Nelson

"I think finally admitting to myself that I was queer and in love with Sam, when I was 25, that was definitely somewhat of a rebirth," says Nelson. "I guess going from a place of feeling like I had to filter and hide basically everything about myself from everyone in my life – to then being like, 'This is actually who I am, I don't want to feel like I have to hide anymore'. That felt like the start of a new life."

And 'LIKE NIRVANA' is its own rebirth, Nelson says. "It's very much breaking any chains of expectation – of what is expected of me, or what is safe or sensible." That applies, too, in the sonic sense: The record marks a drastic shift away from the glossy pop of 'Cub Sport' to something more textural and impressionistic. A confident and daring expression of creativity, 'LIKE NIRVANA' feels unconcerned with accommodating the music industry's capitalist logics.

'LIKE NIRVANA' ends with the hymn-like 'Grand Canyon', which was actually the first song written for the record. Its synthesised church organ and layered, crystalline vocals shine down like light refracting through stained glass. Nelson says without realising it he'd written the song about a friend, another queer person from a religious upbringing, who'd recently gone through difficult personal circumstances.

"At the time, it was kind of just coming through me. I realised that I was writing it as an encouragement [of] the strength and power that I see when I look at her," says Nelson. "And it's also ended up serving as that same sort of boost for me as well: It can be a good reminder of the greatness and the power that every living being has inside of them."

Cub Sport's 'LIKE NIRVANA' is out now

CREDITS: Hair and make-up by Ginelle Dale
Clothes supplied by Contra

E^ST interview: 'I spent a lot of time alone. Music was a way to express myself' - Evening Standard

Posted: 31 Jul 2020 02:34 AM PDT

Here's a crumb of comfort for the millions of parents who have been struggling to educate their chldren at home the past few months: you might at least get a pop star out of it. Before Billie Eilish became one of the biggest singers in the world she was homeschooled by her mother in LA. Now there's Melisa Bester, who performs as E^ST ("East" with more Google-friendly typography) and never had any formal education before becoming the hottest new name in Australia's pop scene.

In 2014, she uploaded her first song to the Unearthed website of influential Aussie radio station Triple J (a bit like BBC Introducing), then a year later earned almost three million YouTube views for her clever mix of The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and Massive Attack's Teardrop on the station's Like a Version segment (similar to Radio 1's Live Lounge). It was the piano house of her song Life Goes On that really made her name over there in 2017 — a beautiful break-up tune, simultaneously sad and euphoric. Today she finally releases her debut album, and she's still only 22.

She dismisses my theory that doing maths with your mum at the kitchen table, isolated from chances to make real friends, is a surefire route to becoming kooky and creative enough for the music industry. "It depends. There's no one outcome for a home-schooler. It's not a very decisive thing in life," she says in a Zoom call from her flatshare in Sydney's Inner West district. Even so, hers sounds the kind of unorthodox upbringing that was never going to spawn an actuary. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, she moved to Melbourne aged four and with her siblings moved around New South Wales and Queensland. Her mum sounds unconventional. "She's a drama teacher, but would go from town to town finding odd jobs to raise money," says Bester. "She was in a puppet theatre for a while, she sold furniture at the side of the road, she was a babysitter in a casino."

Bester was also very religious, which had an impact on the schooling. "It was a Christian education, quite heavy on the religious side." She attended Hillsong, the evangelical megachurch that hosts services for up to 3,500 in Sydney and meets at the 2,000-capacity Dominion Theatre in central London. Hillsong has released dozens of albums of worship music similar in style to pop. Aged eight, she recorded a single called Love in a Box for a Christmas charity campaign. "Whenever they needed a kid to sing at Hillsong they would ask me to do it," she says. "They're fantastic songwriters, amazing at what they do. But I left the church at about 15. I just wasn't vibing it any more. That's when I started my secular career."

The best albums of 2020 so far

Releasing a single called Blowjob in 2018 was a considerable step away from her wholesome origins, though it's more sensitive than its title suggests, concerning a person who longs for an emotional connection with a boy who would prefer more immediate gratification. The album, I'm Doing It, is mainly about the ups and downs of relationships, and culminates with a trilogy of soothing songs and her arrival at a powerful feeling of self-worth. Elsewhere, on fantastic singles Flight Path and Talk Deep, she proves her talent for choruses that zoom upwards and outwards in thrilling ways.

"I tried to be really honest with myself on this album," she says. "I hope it can bring a level of comfort when you listen. It definitely goes on a journey, and ends on this note of quiet confidence where you can recognise you've been through a hard time and can be proud of yourself for rising to the occasion. That's probably the biggest message: you were able to cope and make it through."

Her own journey has been a long one. She signed a deal with a music publisher at just 13, but the next few years were spent on writing trips in Sweden and LA. She wrote some songs for other artists, including Good Cry for Noah Cyrus, but took a while to reach today's relaxed, warm, electronic pop sound. "I was writing folk songs at 13. I was a horrible guitarist, and can still only play in C major and G major. Gradually I ended up in synth pop world." So what did the record industry see in her at age 13? "I had a unique writing style. I was a pretty sheltered kid because I grew up homeschooled. Shy, reserved, serious. I didn't have a lot of influences on my writing. I look back very fondly at 13-year-old Mel's songwriting because it's so untouched and unusual. I think that's what made people believe in me so young."

I knew it — it was the homeschooling! "I definitely spent a lot of time alone. I think music was a way for me to be out there and express myself. What was driving me, what I wanted to accomplish, was just to feel seen." We can see her now all right. For one of the finest pop albums of the year, look E^ST.

I'm Doing It is released today on Warner Music Australia

Madonna keeps making controversial covid-19 claims, calling a misinformation-spreading doctor her ‘hero’ - The Washington Post

Posted: 29 Jul 2020 10:06 AM PDT

Madonna, 61, captioned the video with a note claiming, without evidence, that a vaccine for the disease has "been found and proven and has been available for months. They would rather let fear control the people and let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and sick get sicker." She also called Immanuel her "hero" and wrote that "some people don't want to hear the truth."

Instagram blurred the video and added a caption describing it as "false information," and Madonna later deleted the post.

After President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. both promoted the same video on Twitter the day prior, Immanuel's history of bizarre statements became public and began trending on social media. She has claimed that DNA from space aliens is used in modern medicine, that generational curses can be passed through placentae, and that many gynecological issues, such as endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages and sexually transmitted infections, are the result of having sex with witches and demons in dreams.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all removed the video of the Frontline Doctors, citing misinformation.

Singer Annie Lennox commented on Madonna's post, "This is utter madness!!! I can't believe that you are endorsing this dangerous quackery. Hopefully your site has been hacked and you're just about to explain it."

Madonna's brief history of controversial comments about the coronavirus suggests that she was not hacked, however. The singer did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

In March, Madonna began posting "quarantine diaries," a series of short videos in which she reflects on the pandemic and the resulting shutdown.

One video Madonna posted — and later deleted — to Instagram and Twitter showed her sitting naked, save for an ornate necklace and bracelet, in a bathtub filled with a cream-colored liquid. Floating on the surface were rose petals, and at least seven small candles burned on one lip of the tub. As she held onto the bathtub knobs, her eyes pointed down, she addressed the audience over soft piano music.

"That's the thing about Covid-19: It doesn't care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell," said Madonna, who is reportedly worth more than $550 million. "It's the great equalizer, and what's terrible about it is what's great about it. What's terrible about it is it's made us all equal in many ways."

"Like I used to say at the end of 'Human Nature' every night, we are all in the same boat," she added, referencing one of her songs from 1995. "And if the ship goes down, we're all going down together."

Many argue that the pandemic has laid bare inequities in the United States, as racial minorities are hospitalized and die of the virus at disproportionately high rates.

Her video did not go over well. On the now-deleted post, according to CNN, one user commented, "If the ship is going down, do you really think we're going down together while you're in your bathtub having people working for you to be there? I love you, my queen. But things outside your mansion are very different from what you think. Stay safe and a be a little more empathic to the less privileged ones."

In another video, Madonna said that she wants "so badly to be released from the bondage of giving a" hoot, though she used a more vulgar term. Which, she quickly added, might now be the case because she "took a test the other day" and "found out I have the antibodies, so tomorrow, I'm just going to go for a long drive in a car, and I'm gonna roll down the window, and I'm gonna breathe in, I'm gonna breathe in the covid-19 air."

"I hope the sun is shining," she added.

(Tests for covid-19 antibodies are still being studied. A Post story on July 19 quoted Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biology professor and infectious-disease expert, as saying, "Right now, we don't really know what a positive antibody test means in terms of the degree to which you're protected.")

Madonna began her music career as a provocateur who pushed sexual boundaries while dabbling in religious iconography, but more recently she has been focused on social justice — with decidedly uneven results. In June 2019, Madonna released, as this reporter described at the time, "an eight-minute-and-21-second video for her anti-gun anthem 'God Control' that, with slick production values and borderline-cartoonish aesthetics, depicts a shooting in a night club, clearly meant to evoke the June 2016 massacre of 49 people at Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub."

Patience Carter, a survivor of the Pulse shooting, called on Madonna to apologize for the "really insensitive" and "grossly inaccurate" video.

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