Features
theartsdesk
The death of country star Dolly Parton has been a shock that reverberated worldwide. Not the fact that it happened: she was 80 and in ill health and passed after a life well lived. Rather it's been the aftermath – and specifically the outpouring of love – that has been unprecedented. From the moment the news broke you only had to glance at any social media to see everything dominated not by sadness but by that love, and from across multiple generations too. It felt, strangely, more celebratory than elegiac.And that's just kept coming. More and more personal stories of what her music and vivid Read more ...
Nick Manasseh
So the tune we'll discuss today in the imaginary seminar that occupies a certain part of my brain is…."When Jah Come" by Devon Irons (pictured below © Carl Finlay by kind permission of Reggaeville) - look it up everybody - a 7 inch on Lee Perry's Upsetter label. Recorded, I would think, around 1976 and released in '77. Why? Because a little dive into some of the aspects of this tune illustrates nicely so much of the vital and enduring appeal of, as Bob Marley said it, Roots Rock Reggae.
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Firstly, the object itself, a "dinked" seven-inch Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Squint and you could be in 1968 - although this lot are rather better dressed and healthier than most hippies. I did see a bumper sticker “The Hippies Were Right”. But though it seems retro, actually many here see this festival as a catalyst of an idealistic loved up eco friendly future.As an old arty punk, I am naturally sceptical of anything that could be called New Age - the new religions with dodgy gurus, the bad music that only works in expensive spas, the over-priced somatic cacao weekends and the like.But I keep being drawn back. Sure, there is some New Age nonsense but last time Read more ...
Steve Burns
Hi. I’m Steve, creator of the solo show bearing my name on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and I’d like to make something perfectly clear: I’m alive. I’m not dead.I’m nearly certain of that now, though there was a stretch when it became something of an open question. It was confusing. In some ways, it still is.Which is partly why I’m here in Edinburgh performing a one man show with the not especially subtle title Steve Burns: Alive. Over the years I’ve become considerably more confident about the nature of my continued existence. I eat. I sleep. I pay taxes. My knees hurt now for reasons I don Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
What does a spectacular backdrop give to – or maybe take from? – a music festival? Exit the Wigmore Hall and, however transcendent the performance, you find yourself gazing on a posh kitchen showroom. Nothing in the vicinity can compete with the music. Leave the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix and the Mont Blanc range soars upwards with improbable drama, the perpetual snows of its summit girded by a squad of jagged, saw-toothed peaks.
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This (pictured above from outside the church) was the iconic vista that fired the awe of Read more ...
Justine Elias.
The first word of The Iliad is “war”; the first word of The Odyssey is “man”. After that, the twists and turns of Homer’s epic poems veer in wildly different directions. It’s fitting, then, that cinematic adaptations are multi-faceted, too. From the dawn of the medium, Homer’s works have proved to be irresistible to adapters, who have given us everything from a four-minute silent fever dream of sex and horror to a seven-hour Italian miniseries that leaves nothing out, except the Greek language. Here are some of the notable efforts:
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L’ Read more ...
Ibrahim Maalouf
There is a story hidden inside my trumpet.Not the kind of story people usually associate with innovation today. No laboratory. No startup. No investors. No software. No algorithm.Just a poor Lebanese peasant’s son, born in 1941 in the mountains above Beirut, listening to village brass bands trying – and failing – to play Arabic music.My father, Nassim Maalouf, grew up surrounded by European-style fanfares that had settled permanently across Lebanon during the colonial partition of the Middle East. Brass instruments arrived with soldiers, ceremonies, churches, and military traditions, before Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music has been peerless over the years in presenting world/global music acts in one magical place. Only WOMAD is a serious rival as a long-established global music fest.Fez is also special in another way, the city has miles of car-free winding alleys in the medina that make you feel like you are in a time machine spun back several centuries. It’s slightly easier not to get totally lost since GPS arrived but I still managed it several times.It has a reputation as one of the Islamic world’s great spiritual cities, you feel the energy of the Sufi saints in the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
A recent OFCOM study found that over 90% of young people tune into video-sharing platform and streamers and only spend a quarter of their viewing time on broadcast TV. It’s a fair guess then that the majority of the content they are watching has been generated on smartphones, which makes the SMart festival particularly timely. A one-day celebration that ranges from no-budget DIY shorts to acclaimed features like Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Shin-Ching Tsou’s A Left-Handed Girl, it’s a clear demonstration that filmmakers are embracing bargain technology to create a new generation of Read more ...
Helen Charlston
“I’m a German Romantic at heart – there’s no better music.” I found myself saying this recently after performing Robert Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe. It was in response to a deceptively simple question from an audience member: why Schumann? Other composers are, of course, available (oh Schubert, where would we be without you…), but for the moment, at least. I am Schumann-obsessed.Written in his annus mirabilis of song, Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love) comes from a sudden flurry of creativity in 1840. 16 poems by Heinrich Heine chart a cycle of obsession: elation tipping into despair, Read more ...
Tim Cumming
“Guys, don’t grow old gracefully… it wouldn’t suit you,” The Who’s Pete Townshend told the Rolling Stones at their induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. They listened. Fast-forward some four decades to 2026, and the surviving Stones have eschewed any state of grace for a raucous, almost confrontational new album in Foreign Tongues that bubbles over with energy and purpose. It picks up where their studio comeback Hackney Diamonds left off and turns it all up a few notches.However, a word of warning: if the “loudness wars” of modern-day production get you down, you’ll need to Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Sweating in my lair, there’s no trip to the mecca this year. If the festival was on, I'd be there right now, but it’s a fallow year and Glastonbury Festival is keeping its head down. The Glastophilic chat rooms bubble with antsy longing. My house is prowled by ghosts of yesteryear. Finetime’s camera is dormant. The cows on the farm chew their cud in peace.Instead of taking it to the wire in the fields of dreams, scribbled later with the urgency of one possessed, sleepless and obsessed, I can only offer ruminations. Snapshots and snippets. Aided by a large box of mementos from the attic, I Read more ...