Rebecca Bodenheimer

The culture wars have been heating up in recent years, along with deep political polarization in the United States, and language has been one of the primary arenas of battle. The increased visibility and demands for equity and inclusion by marginalized groups—including BIPOC and the LGBTQIA+ community—have been met with a backlash that often centers on the terms these groups use to identify themselves.

On her first three albums, most recently 2019’s Sonocardiogram, Cuban-born singer Daymé Arocena displayed a mastery of global fusion, drawing connections between Afro-Cuban folkloric music and progressive jazz. Appropriately for an album named after the Yoruba word for alchemy, Alkemi heralds another creative transformation in the form of a pivot to pop that, as she told the New York Times, was over a decade in the making, a delay owed not to creative hang-ups, but...

2023 has seen countless tributes to hip-hop, celebrating both its golden anniversary and the staying power of a genre that was vilified, underestimated, and branded a passing fad for decades. Nonetheless, while 50 is a major milestone, many believe hip-hop reached its peak decades ago.
At the tail end of the golden age of ...

Once a marginalized genre associated with lewdness and criminality — much like the genres from which it draws so much influence, dancehall and hip-hop — reggaeton is now firmly in the mainstream. While dominant across Latin America in the new millennium, reggaeton has made huge inroads with English-speaking audiences in the past decade, particularly with crossover hits like "Bailando," "Despacito," and numerous Bad Bunny songs from the past three years.

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson, co-author of the Declaration of Independence, expressed a desire to make the island of Cuba part of the territory of the United States. Albert J. Beveridge, a senator from Indiana, reproduced Jefferson’s words in a 1901 article: “Her [Cuba’s] addition to our confederacy is exactly what is wanting to advance our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest.’” However, it was John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state to President James Monroe, ...

Released 25 years ago on June 16, Ozomatli updated Latin fusion for the 1990s. Their distinctly Angeleno blend of Latin genres with hip-hop, funk and reggaeset the pace for a lengthy career with a devoted following.
The opening track from Ozomatli’s 1998 self-titled debut album immediately sets the tone for the group’s musical voraciousness. "Como Ves" is awash with the sounds of urban Los Angeles — car traffic, a radio playing, a dog barking — and Brazilian ba...

Critics have long debated whether the HBO show “Succession,” created by Jesse Armstrong and concluding its run on Sunday, is fundamentally a drama or a comedy. In its earlier episodes, the comedic and satirical elements were what...

Going into this year’s Oscars, I had a bad feeling that the Academy voters would give Best Actor to Brendan Fraser. Fraser was nominated for The Whale, a movie that many critics have characterized as a deeply harmful portrayal of a fat person. When he did end up winning the award, the whole room stood up to congratulate him. As I watched at home, I looked around at the audience on-screen and saw a sea of thin people—who likely have no idea what it’s like to be fat—vigorously applauding a non-...

Forty years after its release, Culture Club's 'Kissing To Be Clever' is a study in optimism, Caribbean influence in pop and the power of image on MTV.
The "second British invasion" was well underway in the U.S. when Culture Club’s debut album, Kissing To Be Clever, was released in late 1982. In Britain, punk had given way to new wave, synth pop, and the androgynous-leaning New Romantic fashion movement, pioneered by David Bowie and Roxy Music. Musically, groups like the Police and the Clash w...

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By Kaitlin Fontana
One of the abiding strengths of HBO's Barry—a dark comedy series about a hitman who, after tracking a mark to an acting class, decides he wants to be an actor himself—is that it has never taken policing all that seriously. From the jump, its cop characters have fallen somewhere on a spectrum of goofy dummies to hapl...

On April 18, one of Cuba’s most prominent musicians, José Luis Cortés, died suddenly at the age of 70 after suffering a stroke. Known by his nickname, “El Tosco” (“the rough guy”), Cortés founded the dance band NG La Banda, one of the pioneers of the Cuban salsa style called timba, the most popular genre on the island from the late 1980s to the mid-aughts.
But Cortés was also known for his machismo, both in his music and life. In 2019, Dianelys Alfonso, known as “La Diosa” (“the goddess”)—a s...

Many misleading tropes about bisexual women, such as that they’re confused, deceptive or sexually voracious, were on full display.
When psychologist Dawn Hughes took the stand during the defamation trial initiated by Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard, she testified to the court that Heard’s bisexuality was a point of contention during the actors’ tumultuous marriage. Hughes gave examples: Heard had “faced scrutiny” in her interactions with women and, on one occasion, Depp allegedly ...

Released in June 1997, 'Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival' was both distinctly of its time and revolutionary in the way it employed Caribbean musical influences. GRAMMY.com revisits Jean's solo debut in For The Record.
Twenty-five years ago, on the heels of one of the most successful, critically beloved hip-hop albums of all time, the Fugees shocked the world by breaking up. The fallout from the romantic relationship between Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean was too much to bear, so the trio went t...

The Haitian Creole term potomitan has many meanings for the Martinique-born bassist, singer, and composer Sélène Saint-Aimé. In Haiti, it refers to the central pillar in a vodou temple, around which ceremonies are performed; but it’s also a metaphor for women’s roles: “the mother, who holds together the family and society,” says Saint-Aimé, “but who’s not respected as she should be.” For her, the term also applies to the core group of musicians with whom she collaborated on her second album o...

The early weeks of the pandemic marked a low point for my relationship with my son, who was almost 8 years old then. His school was abruptly closed, first for three weeks, then for the rest of the year. I worked from home and my husband was an essential worker who had to continue going to his workplace, so the burden of continuing some semblance of education for my son fell entirely on me. My son’s teacher offered no remote instruction — only packets of busy work. Many days, my son refused to...