As there's something of a forest theme this weekend on theartsdesk, with the Royal Opera House's If-A-Tree festival curated by Joanna McGregor with Scanner, and a report from this year's Borneo Rainforest World Music Festival, and here, a diary of an extraordinary trip I took in 2003 to sample the culture and music of the Pygmies deep in the heart of the Central African Republic.
new music features
mark.kidel
The world music scene is hungry for new sensations - and Omar Souleyman, about to hit London and the Shambhala Festival, well deserves to be one of them. In the early 1980s the hunger for the exotic focused on anything that came from the parallel universes untouched by the pressures of commercialisation: polyphonic pygmy singing from Central Africa, ecstatic Sufi soul doctors from Pakistan, drone-drenched bagpipe players from Bulgaria or heart-invading praise singers from Mali. Souleyman is the singer in a small band that plays dabke music at weddings in Syria.
edward.seckerson
Kerry Ellis amassed a legion of adoring fans when she went "green" playing Elphaba in Stephen Schwartz's smash-hit musical both in London and on Broadway. But her pre-eminence as a musical-theatre-diva-cum-rock-chick was secured earlier still when Brian May, the celebrated lead guitarist of Queen, asked her to play Meat in the Queen/ Ben Elton show We Will Rock You. May quickly recognised a symbiosis between them and their CD single Wicked in Rock sprung a rip-roaring reimagining of "Defying Gravity" with Brian May's amazing guitar riffs a key feature.
Kieron Tyler
The arrival of Gainsbourg: Vie Héroique in British cinemas this week – under its Anglo-Saxon title Gainsbourg – assumes that distributors think there’s an audience. Even so, Gainsbourg hardly has the appeal of a Johnny Cash biopic. Or even an Ike Turner biopic. The release continues a process that began in the early 1990s, when a slow, posthumous rise to recognition of Serge Gainsbourg began outside the Francophone world, au delà de l’Hexagon.
peter.quinn
“A E Housman said he could recognise poetry because it made his throat tighten and his eyes water. I can recognise jazz because it makes me tap my foot, grunt affirmative exhortations, or even get up and caper round the room.” For those curious to discover the kind of music that made poet Philip Larkin leap around shouting “Yeah, man”, help is at hand.
Peter Culshaw
Arnaldo Baptista of Os Mutantes is telling me why South American music can be so compelling: "It's the historical mix, Incas, black Africans, Europeans, beings from Outer Space." I beg his pardon. "Oh, yes, I have seen many flying saucers". Arnaldo is being perfectly serious and launches into his theory of Time (he has formulas and diagrams) which state that once humans go faster than the speed of light, we will be able to travel back to the past. He thinks will freeze himself cryogenically and be unfrozen when this is possible, travelling in the future to go to the past. He has theories about the Age of Fire (we are, he says, about to leave it). Then he goes into a rambling but detailed and convincing comparison of the psychic effects of Gibson and Fender guitar sounds.
edward.seckerson
The location is Sting's beachside house in Malibu the morning after the night before: another night, another venue - the Hollywood Bowl - another three-hour Concert of his songs. That's concert with a capital "C" because this time Sting has brought along more than just a few of his favourite musicians to join him, he's brought along the 50-strong Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, "the biggest band I've ever worked with".
peter.quinn
It's Friday afternoon, the sun's beating down, and I'm kicking back with a cold one in Kongens Have, Copenhagen's oldest and most idyllic park. From the bandstand, the music of Duke Ellington falls mellifluously on my ears, the languorously swinging, behind-the-beat groove of the specially assembled Band Leader Session perfectly suiting the sultry atmosphere. We can't know for sure what heaven will be like, but I'm hoping it'll be something like this.
Tim Cumming
Come the end of June in Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, up to half a million festival-goers team the narrow, traffic-free streets of the medina, its two huge open squares, and numerous courtyards and riyads around town, for what must be the world’s biggest free festival. It is dedicated to Gnawa, the trance and healing music of African Moroccans who had been inveigled into slavery in centuries past – there was a slave market in Essaouria until the early part of the 20th century – and whose music, until the festival kicked off in 1998, was regarded with suspicion and disdain by contemporary Morocco.
Ismene Brown
Get your tent and ice-box and plan your summer's entertainment with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from heavy rock by Scottish lochs to Morris-dancing in the south west, and taking on opera, classical and major international arts festivals for good measure. If you know of a festival we've missed, please email info@theartsdesk.com with brief details of venue, booked artists and the website and we'll put it in for the world to see.