Tag: 250918

Flags from many countries

Multicultural Festival returns to Concord

There’s something for everyone at the 18th annual Concord Multicultural Festival happening on Sunday, Sept. 21, in Keach Park. That’s the core philosophy of the constantly evolving event. It was introduced as the Refugee Resettlement Program was altering the capital city’s demographics, according to the festival’s director.

“It was a way to introduce new cultures and our new neighbors to the community, and the best way to do that is through food, music and art — and Concord loves its festivals,” Jessica Livingston said by phone recently. “Now it’s about just celebrating the people who are here, whether you came recently or your family immigrated here many years ago.”

A high point of the celebration is a flag parade.

“Every year, we add on a couple more flags based on what’s requested, so we know what the diversity is,” Livingston continued. “We have flags from almost 80 different countries for this year, which means that we are extremely diverse here.”

It’s apparent in the entertainment. Percussive guitarist Senie Hunt came to Concord when he and his sister were adopted from war-torn Sierra Leone. He’s now in Nashville, but was so impressed by his first festival a few years ago that he’s returned since. Last year, he urged people to “come up and really see for themselves how vibrant the community can be.”

The wide and varied lineup continues with Anya Vaidya performing an ethnic Nepali dance, Afrobeats and hip-hop from Martin Toe, the soulful Nashua singer Ruby Shabazz, Roy Caceres doing Argentinian tango songs, a French-language set from the Linda Pouliot Quartet, Nusantara Kreasindo doing traditional Indonesian dance, among many others.

Barranquilla Flavor, a local group of dancers both young and adult, will perform several different styles of dance during the day, including traditional African, Afghan, Cumbia and hip-hop. The troupe is led by Sindy Chown, who is both co-chair and performance director for the festival. Chown will also do a salsa dance with her daughter, Soraya.

Chown and her daughter teach in Concord.

“She’s from Colombia, and her dance group is a diverse group of children, but anybody is welcome,” Livingston said. “They learn all kinds of different cultural dances, and they travel to other festivals in the region to perform, and it’s free for kids to participate, which is awesome.”

For many years the festival was held in front of the Statehouse. It moved to Keach Park after taking a year off due to the pandemic. Factoring into the decision was the challenge of downtown parking, and an awareness that “most of the new Americans live up on the Heights,” Livingston said, “That’s actually the most diverse neighborhood in the entire state.”

Getting people downtown from there was always difficult, she continued. “So we’re like, wait a minute, why are we down here? So we thought we should be at Keach Park, in the community, that is the most diverse. And a park is just a much better location to do a festival of this size and scope.”

Livingston has worked with the festival since 2013, something she said happened by accident. The previous organizers were organizing it one year, and she was working on a different event. “We were going to partner and host both of our events at the same time, to kind of bring in more people,” she said.

The following year, Livingston reached out to the festival’s team only to find out that they were bowing out.

“They were like, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to do it again, you can do it,’” she said. She tried availing other groups in the city, but soon learned that everyone wanted it to happen, “but nobody wanted to take the lead.”

Many were willing to help, and together they made it happen. Oddly, it was Livingston’s first Multicultural Festival, but she was hooked.

“I grew up here in Concord and was never really exposed to any other cultures,” she said. “I was a very sheltered New England girl.”

Seeing the festival come together flipped a switch, she continued.

“I just remember that day,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Is everything in place, is the DJ here, is the table set up?’ Then I stopped for a minute. There were hundreds of people there, and the vibe was just so beautiful. I just continued doing it … it kind of changed my career path.”

Concord Multicultural Festival
When: Sunday, Sept. 21, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Where: Keach Park, 20 Canterbury Road, Concord
More: concordnhmulticulturalfestival.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (PG)

The saga of the Crawley family comes to an end (probably, maybe) with this 1930-set story of generational baton passes among both upstairs and downstairs characters.

Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) scandalizes the country and is shunned by fancy people after her divorce from Henry “Matthew Goode is not in this” Talbot. Their divorce is front page of the evening news and she even has to be hustled out of a party before some lesser royals arrive, which is pretty funny and also, like, get ready for 1936, the U.K. This state of things adds to the difficulties between Mary and her father, Robert (Hugh Bonneville), who is still not totally cool with giving her control of Downton Abbey and all the estate management. They’re both pretty anxious about the inheritance hopefully coming to Robert’s wife/Mary’s mother, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), from her recently deceased American mother since Mary’s various improvements have already spent about half of what they think they’re getting. But since the inheritance was being settled by Cora’s “Teapot Dome Scandal” brother Harold (Paul Giamatti), hopefully they’ve kept the receipts. Harold comes to England with his buddy Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), who he presents as sort of a financial adviser and who happens to be hanging around when the recently divorced Mary decides to let her hair down a little.

Meanwhile, among the downstairs crowd, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), now happily married to the farmer Mason, is about to retire and hand the kitchen over to Daisy (Sophie McShera). Daisy’s husband Andy (Michael Fox) is on the verge of taking over the butler position from Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), who is still/once again retiring. Carson’s wife Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) is still working as the Downton housekeeper and Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) is still serving as Cora’s lady’s maid while married to Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle), former footman and teacher, current screenwriter and forever staff goofball. Mr. (Brendan Coyle) and Mrs. Bates (Joanne Froggatt) are still on staff and are expecting their second child.

Also present are Edith (Laura Carmichael), who is absolutely killing it as the wife of big-time noble person Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton), and Tom (Allen Leech), the closest thing the Crawleys have to a “regular guy” relative and father of Crawley granddaughter Sybbie (Fifi Hart). They all wind up back at the Abbey to pitch in with finding solutions to Mary’s social shunning and the family’s general financial woes with some help from Cousin Isobel (Penelope Wilton), famous actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West), former footman and Guy’s partner Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) and Noël Coward (Arty Foushan).

The movie kind of ends up in a riff on Gosford Park, which like Downton was written by Julian Fellowes and like this movie takes place in the early ’30s while the great house ecosystem still exists but is clearly fading fast. We get the big party, with fancy people gathering around a piano and staff and kids listening from the hallway — very sweet, very nostalgia-while-it’s-happening. And that sort of characterizes the movie overall. We get all of our still living characters back as well as shout-outs to some of the non-living ones and enough tributes to the late Dame Maggie Smith as Dowager Countess Grantham that she still feels like part of the movie. While the TV show had more tartness — Mary’s Mr. Pamuk, Edith’s child out of wedlock — the movies have felt a little softer, with edges sanded down, and more repetitive (it feels like Carson has been retiring for a decade). But these are still the same Crawleys and it’s enjoyable to spend time with them. B+ In theaters.

Highest 2 Lowest (R)

Denzel Washington is the head of a record label at a crossroads in this Spike Lee-directed riff on an Akira Kurosawa movie (that I haven’t seen — 1963’s High and Low, which is streaming now on HBO Max). David King (Washington) is contemplating a profitable buyout of his company and/or not selling and buying back the controlling interest that he sold years ago. One option gives him a mountain of cash; the other gives him the ability to get back to the art of finding and developing new musicians (but requires a mountain of cash from him). Then he gets a call that his teenage son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) has been kidnapped. David and his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) are willing to give up any amount of money to get him back. Twists in the plot, however, muddy David’s willingness to give his actual money to the kidnappers — with police not offering great hope that they will be able to solve the crime.

Jeffrey Wright plays Paul, David’s longtime friend and driver, and Wright and Washington are terrific in their scenes together. Washington is, of course, magnetic in all of his scenes making the sometimes stagey dialogue feel natural to the ego-filled but conflicted David. The movie is highly watchable — even if Spike Lee maybe could have edited away some of the ideas that he stuffs in around the central action to keep up the movie’s pace. But I think an occasional slowdown of the forward momentum of the movie is worth those extra Spike Lee touches. There is a standout action sequence in the middle of the movie that hits that exact right Spike Lee-style “this is a New York City story” beat. That sequence — and the opening credits of the sun rising on the city — also makes the movie a nice addition to a triple feature about NYC characters in high tension situations with the elegiac 25th Hour (streaming on Amazon Prime Video) and the tight-as-a-drum heist story Inside Man (on Netflix). B+ Streaming on Apple TV+.

The Music Roundup 25/09/18

Local music news & events

• Natural man: If he weren’t singing and playing guitar, fishing enthusiast Zak Trojano would “be out there cleaning a river,” he said a few years back. Instead, he’s making records like 2018’s acclaimed song cycle Wolf Trees while touring with Chris Smither, Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey. He’ll perform an early evening set at a restaurant/pub near his parents’ home in Contoocook. Thursday, Sept. 18, 5 p.m., The Local, 15 E. Main St., Warner, facebook.com/zaktrojano.

• Monster bash: An evening of guitar-driven rock and blues benefits Rockin’ 4 Vets, with Johnny A., Jon Butcher, Chris Anderson supplying the fretwork with high-kicking singer and harmonica player James Montgomery, who helped form the charity in 2015, leading the band. The raucous setlist will include songs from the Yardbirds, Johnny Winter, the Outlaws, Jimi Hendrix and others. Friday, Sept. 19, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $30 and up at tupelohall.com.

• Acoustic aces: Few bands have elevated the genre of bluegrass music like Alison Krauss & Union Station, still going strong more than 40 years after teenager Krauss and her fiddle began wowing audiences. Friday, Sept. 19, 7:30 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 72 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $50+, livenation.com.

• Lyrical lady: Along with writing country music hits, Lori McKenna has released several albums; her latest is 2023’s 1988. She earned a Grammy nomination for 2016’s The Bird and the Rifle, and a Songwriter of the Year prize from the Academy of Country Music in 2017. Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Tim McGraw and Little Big Town have all performed McKenna’s songs. Saturday, Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $54 and up at etix.com.

• Emerald shine: With the release of their 2024 album Odyssey, Celtic Thunder made a return to its roots, offering a slate of patriotic songs telling the story of the Irish state’s foundation in the early 20th century. “People are very passionate about that historical side to Ireland … it’s given us so much of our identity,” the group’s singer Emmet Cahill told the Hippo at the time. Sunday, Sept. 21, 7 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $64 and up at nashuacenterforthearts.

Gwyneth, by Amy Odell

(Gallery, 364 pages)

The origin story of Gwyneth Paltrow is well known: The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner, she had a gilded, bicoastal upbringing, and she was kissed by the gods who run the Department of Looks. When your godfather is Stephen Spielberg and you look like Patrow, you don’t seek fame and fortune so much as you tolerate it. And Paltrow has tolerated it exceptionally well.

Just 26 years old when she won the Academy Award for best actress for Shakespeare in Love, Paltrow has now been in more than 40 films, but fame stalks her in unexpected ways: witness her controversial wellness company, Goop, and the skiing collision turned courtroom drama turned musical. Most recently, she turned up in a commercial for the company at the center of the Coldplay kiss cam controversy. There’s an awful lot of Gwyneth Paltrow in the public domain.

But we don’t know as much about Paltrow as we might think, the author of the biography Gwyneth writes. According to Amy Odell, “As the main narrator of her own public story, Gwyneth has masterfully shaped our perception of her,” and like any experienced actor, “She knows all her best angles.”

Odell says she wanted to show Paltrow “from all angles, not just her best ones.” To do so, she interviewed more than 200 people, though not Paltrow herself. Not only did Paltrow turn down an interview, but she reportedly discouraged others from speaking to Odell, who also wrote a 2022 biography of Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

With Wintour, Odell had two additional decades of material to work with; Paltrow, for all her accomplishments, is just 52. Presumably there’s plenty more of her story to come, whether we want it or not. As such, Gwyneth is an opportunistic book, rather than a serious attempt to catalog a life for posterity, like, say, Walter Isaacson does. Did we need a Gwyneth Paltrow biography? Certainly not. Will it sell and make headlines? Of course. It is well researched and appropriately saucy, with just enough spicy detail and quotes to wag the dog that is Hollywood.

Odell spends a good bit of time talking about Paltrow’s famous parents, both of whom had at least a vague New England connection. Bruce Paltrow’s “biggest hit” was St. Elsewhere, the TV series “about doctors teaching interns at a run-down Boston hospital.” And Danner was a perennial darling of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the highbrow summer stock in the Massachusetts Berkshires, which Gwyneth grew up attending with her mother.

“Starting at toddlerhood, Williamstown exposed Gwyneth to some of the best plays ever written, while acclimating her to the realm of Hollywood and celebrity,” Odell writes. The child also was a “sponge,” absorbing her mother’s lines while watching her perform. Once, the stage crew put little Gwyneth up on the stage to watch as she recited lines from the Anton Chekhov play “The Sea-Gull.”

It’s a long way from Williamstown to Gwyneth Goes Skiing, and there are a lot of details on the way that seem, well, overkill. For instance, she wore “penny loafers, a blue-and-white striped Breton shirt, and a white skirt” on her first day of school in seventh grade — that is information taking up space in my brain that could be better used. Then again, some of the detail explains a lot: You can draw a straight line from Bruce Paltrow’s cashmere socks and his insistence on always flying first class with his children to a grown-up Gwyneth hawking $165 T-shirts on Goop.com and saying, “I am who I am. I can’t pretend to be someone who makes $25,000 a year.” She may be royalty, but the people’s princess she is not.

In fact, Paltrow had flown so high above the average American for so long that her friend Robert Downey Jr. had to talk her into Iron Man by saying, “Don’t you want to be in a movie that people see?” She had to take less than her usual rates to do it, but it turned out to be her most financially rewarding film and it lifted her to be among the highest-paid actresses in the world — the dream of so many women in Hollywood.

But Paltrow had bigger plans — writing cookbooks and building an empire called Goop (G and P being her initials, and the two Os born of advice that successful internet companies had two Os in their names (most famously Google and Yahoo, which seems coincidence, but OK). Interrupting the Goop saga is a series of color photos of Paltrow with her various boyfriends and other famous people who circle her life like moons, assorted magazine covers and photos of Paltrow in very short skirts. She is very thin in every stage of her life, not surprising, since one high school yearbook put her biggest fear as obesity. She is also very healthy-looking, all the better to sell the various products that Goop offers, including the infamous jade egg, meant to improve a woman’s sex life.

When she first encountered the eggs, said to be a practice of women in ancient China, Paltrow laughed, Odell wrote. But she later went on to sell them on Goop for more than $50 each, attracting the ire of a San Francisco gynecologist, Dr. Jen Gunter, who began calling Goop out for promoting what she said was a potentially dangerous product. It was not Goop’s only controversy — Paltrow’s prescriptions have at times included an eight-day goat-milk cleanse. But Goop marches on as a leader in “Big Wellness,” although Odell questions its profitability and sustainability, especially if Paltrow ever withdraws.

From her upbringing to her education to her romantic partners (Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck were among them before she married — and consciously uncoupled from — Coldplay’s Chris Martin, with whom she has two children), everything that Paltrow has undertaken seems sun-kissed, so it’s hard to see anything ending for her in ignominy, even though she is constantly and mercilessly mocked. And Odell, in the end, doesn’t seem like she’s much of a fan.

But maybe Paltrow’s gift isn’t so much genetics or the ability to act or withstand strange health protocols; maybe it’s her ability to sniff out a potential bomb.

One of the gems that Odell offers her readers is that Paltrow considered for a while cutting an album, before losing interest and moving on to other things. Yes, we came that close to seeing Paltrow not only constantly in the news and on our social media feeds, but also on Spotify. B

Featured Photo: Gwyneth, by Amy Odell

Album Reviews 25/09/18

Beat, Beat Live (Inside Out Records)

In my never-ending quest to be a people-pleaser, I cover basically every genre on Earth in this space, and yes, I know how obvious it is. I’ll pick a random record, start listening, and the words start zapping out of my fingers automatically. I really only have a tough time with newest-hottest indie bands, because they’re almost always ridiculously overrated, but another genre that’s out of my wheelhouse is “wildly creative” prog-rock a la Zappa, because I don’t ever get the point. In that vein, King Crimson is another band I’ve never liked at all, but this isn’t all that bad, even though it’s rendered by a supergroup consisting of two Crimson members (Adrian Belew and Tony Levin) along with the guitar wonk’s guitar wonk, Steve Vai, and Tool drummer Danny Carey. Their mission: “re-imagine” three Crimson albums, namely Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair, thus it’s obviously for Crimson fanatics. The results are all very tech-prog-sounding, like a wacky Spotify mix comprising random entries from Disco Biscuits, Styx, Talking Heads and Return To Forever, with occasional departures into Captain Beefheart nonsense. What can I diplomatically say other than come and get it, King Crimson completists, yee-hah. A

Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill, Dreaming In Gamelan (self-released)

Wonderfully peaceful “fourth world music”-based collaboration between two Canadian multi-instrumentalists/composers. They deal in “Sundanese Gamelan,” a sound created with gongs and chimes and associated elements, instruments that are manufactured under local conditions in towns in the Indonesian province of West Java, such as Bogor and Bandung. At its core, the music is an Indonesian tradition practiced by the West Javanese ethnic group known as the Sundanese, but here, as you’d naturally expect, the melodic patterns are geared more toward Western tastes. Electric violinist Hugh Marsh (on leave from Loreena McKennitt) adds a layer to the sonic depth, but whether or not that’s really needed is probably a matter of taste; the violin is more an undergirding than anything that ever gets busily melodic. The chimes and gongs have a “singing bowls” effect that sounds simultaneously planned and completely spurious, that is when it isn’t exhaling exquisite ambiance. The tldr: It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to hear at a wildly pricey spa or advanced yoga center, etc. A+

PLAYLIST

• Like almost every Friday since the fall of Rome or whatever, Sept. 19 will find us covered in new albums, clawing our way to safety, away from all the albums that want us to buy them! Since Christmas is a mere 98 days away, I have a Mount Vesuvius-load of albums to deal with this week, so instead of going into anything obscure right off the bat I’m going to talk about the new one from Sarah McLachlan, Better Broken! She’s my all-time favorite Lilith Fair fixture, but you may better know her as the lady who interrupts your TV show to ask you to donate to abandoned pets, which of course you definitely should do, don’t be a cheapskate (I can’t watch those commercials, like, the minute one shows up on the teevee when I’m watching my shows I change the channel at top speed, which I deserve to do because I’ve rescued enough cats in my lifetime. In fact, it’d be really nice if the Humane Society would give me some sort of special Xfinity code that would block commercials starring starving cats and dogs automatically, you know, maybe show me a nice happy video of skunks and raccoons frolicking in the forest instead, but then again, I’d end up being all like “You know, I should start rescuing abandoned skunks and raccoons,” even though every wildlife expert advises people not to, so don’t do it). Where were we, oh yes, Sarah McLachlan, she’s the best, let’s go lend an ear to the album’s title track, the first single from this new album! It is a deep, mellow tune, starting out with a trip-hop drumbeat reminiscent of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop,” which means she hasn’t changed much; the verse is mature and awesome, then it moves into an addictive little hook that flirts with brazen catchiness before folding into a yodel-filled chill-art piece that’s as good as anything else I’ve heard from her before. Some things never change, and in this case that’s actually a good thing!

• Hark, it’s the sound of rapidly twerking butts, who else could it be but New York rapper Cardi B, twerking away like a demented terrier! Cardi’s new album, Am I the Drama, is out this week; mayhaps you’ve heard the title track if you have small twerking children (I was going to say that you may have heard it at a local Manchvegas club, but now that the local club scene is changing and there’s basically no local place to twerk as far as I know — someone message me on one of my “socials” if I’m wrong of course, that’d be great — you’re better off just having kids if you want to stay hip to twerking and Humpty Dancing or whatnot) (yes, I’m being serious, send me your local club spam. At present I assume the Manchester dance club scene is nowadays the same as Portsmouth’s, just dudes in fedoras doing Bob Dylan covers). OK, this Cardi tune is, of course, a glossy yacht-rap song with lots of swearing, for your kids, who secretly just want you to give them guidance, love, discipline and money for tattoos.

• Yikes, I thought I was going to have to slog through another new Black Keys record, but thankfully it’s just everyone’s favorite demented stoner-indie band Black Lips, with their new LP, Season Of The Peach! “Tippy Tongue” is of course awesome, like early Rolling Stones but 100 times more interesting, meaning it’s nothing like Black Keys.

• And finally it’s nerdy chillwave artist Toro y Moi, with Unerthed: Hole Erth Unplugged, his new album! I hate to name-check José Gonzalez two weeks in a row, but “CD-R” is like his stuff with Zero 7, lazy and techie, but with a dobro in there, which makes it Americana-ish. It’s very nice and yadda yadda.

Featured Photo: Parcels, Loved (ANTI- Records) & Chameleons, Arctic Moon (Metropolis Records)

Cherry-Sesame Crisp

  • 2-pound bag frozen cherries
  • Zest and juice of one large lemon
  • 1½ Tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon rosewater — if you decide you want more next time, go ahead, but proceed with caution
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 Tablespoon water
  • 1 cup (120 g) flour
  • 1 cup (99 g) sugar
  • ½ cup (68 g) coarsely chopped pistachios
  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter
  • 1/3 cup (44 g) sesame seeds
  • 1¼ teaspoons kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 1/3 cup (80 g.) tahini (sesame paste)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, combine the cherries, lemon juice and zest, brown sugar, and rose water. Set aside.

Speaking of “aside,” an aside on rosewater: It would be a jaded and heartless person who didn’t like the smell of roses, which makes it a really good background flavor in Indian and Middle Eastern dishes. Rosewater goes well with stone fruit like plums or peaches, and with Middle Eastern ingredients like sesame or pistachios. Here, we’ve paired it with cherries. Be careful though — if you don’t put enough of it in a recipe, you won’t be able to taste it. Add one drop too many, and you’ll be hit with the essence of grandmother soap. Thread the needle,

Back to business: in another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pistachios, sesame seeds, salt, and butter. Work the mixture with your fingers or a pastry cutter until it breaks up into something that looks like granola. Add the tahini, and stir everything to combine until it looks like extra-clumpy granola.

In a small bowl or ramekin, mix the cornstarch and water into a smooth slurry. This is like a paste, but runnier. Add it to the cherry mixture, and stir everything to combine. As the cherries bake, the cornstarch will help thicken the juice, so that everything will pull together when the crumble is finished.

Pour the cherry mixture into an 8”x8” baking pan, then cover the surface with the sesame crumble topping. Lumps are not only OK but encouraged.

Put the pan on a baking sheet for when (not if) some of the cherry filling flings itself out of the pan to an uncaring world during the baking process. Bake on the center rack of your oven for about an hour, until the topping looks golden brown.

Let the crumble cool, then eat with ice cream.

This is one of those desserts with a different combination of flavors and textures in each bite. The jammy cherries are tart and sweet, with a hint of roses. The crumble topping is rich with butter and sesame, with a whisper of bitterness that off-sets the sweetness. Each bite has a different fruit-to-crumble ratio.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

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