Your iconic summer

TRIBE CALLED QUEST | JOÃO GILBERTO | BUTTHOLE SURFERS | B-52’S
STEELY DAN | ALAN AND RICHARD BISHOP | GEORGE MICHAEL | “KIDD” JORDAN
WIRE | TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS | THE FEELIES | CHARLIE HADEN | YAZ
THE EX WITH GÉTATCHÈW MÈKURYA | RHYS CHATHAM | JUDAS PRIEST

Photograph: Emma Fischer

The Ex with Gétatchèw Mèkurya

Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Damrosch Park; August 20 FREE

Landmark achievement: All the highest standards of the punk movement can be found in the Ex, a furiously powerful group based in Amsterdam. Moving ever forward since the late ’70s, the Ex’s members have used the band as a platform to speak to artistic, social and political concerns from Eastern Europe to East Africa, spreading information, dissent and gloriously rousing music.

Why see them now: The merging of the Ex’s fiery rhythms and Ethiopian sax titan Gétatchèw Mèkurya’s seductive swing—which came about after the band toured Ethiopia earlier this decade—is one of today’s most brilliant and unlikely musical partnerships. “The great thing is this project was initiated by Gétatchèw, not us,” says guitarist Andy Moor. “He had never heard of punk or most rock music; he didn’t speak English and we don’t speak Amharic. We communicated with some other kind of musical language—lots of gesturing and laughing—and somehow it came together.”