Africa
Life Story, BBC OneThursday, 06 November 2014
David Attenborough’s characteristically soothing narration again described the unceasing struggle for survival in the animal world. In astonishing films from all over the world, we witnessed an enormous variety of tactics for finding homes that... Read more... |
CD: Kassé Mady Diabaté - KirikéMonday, 03 November 2014
In reaching out to audiences beyond the African context, Malian musicians and singers have adopted performance styles that don’t always reflect the intimacy and personal communication so fundamental to the praise-singing at the heart of the region’s... Read more... |
Fuse ODG, Under the BridgeSunday, 26 October 2014
The Afrobeats scene is coming to a venue near you. Anglo-Ghanaian artist Fuse ODG, who won the best African Act MOBO last week for the second year running, launched his first album T.I.N.A. last night with a relentless, exuberant performance that... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Fuse ODGThursday, 23 October 2014
Anglo-Ghanaian musician Fuse ODG – born Nana Richard Abiona – is a leading exponent of the new Afrobeats movement, which combines Western pop and rap with Nigerian and Ghanaian pop, and some stylistic elements from the Fela Kuti-inspired Afrobeat... Read more... |
Human Universe, BBC TwoTuesday, 07 October 2014
Brian Cox has a very beguiling way of expressing quiet wonder. He’s taken on the very largest of subjects in Human Universe, extending traditions of science and natural history broadcasting towards a wider study of how the human race has come to be... Read more... |
Mulatu Astatke, Royal Festival HallSunday, 14 September 2014
It was Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers that first really got Mulatu Astatke major Western attention – in same way that Angelo Badalementi’s music for Twin Peaks gave a rich and strange dimension to David Lynch’s TV epic, there was an even greater... Read more... |
The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, BBC TwoThursday, 07 August 2014
We call it the First World War, but in Western Europe at least, most of the scrutiny is confined to what happened to Britain, France and Germany (with a side order of Russia) from 1914-18. The writer and presenter of this two-part series, David... Read more... |
CD: Sia Tolno - African WomanSunday, 06 July 2014
Sia Tolno was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, had a violent father, was forced to leave the country due to the civil war and ended up in the harsh world of Conakry nightclubs. Life was no bed of roses, in other words. The inspiring thing about this... Read more... |
Sniper Elite IIIFriday, 27 June 2014
Sometimes virtual violence can simply be fun, even morally dubious violence. Sniper Elite III is pretty reprehensible and fairly morally indefensible. It gleefully glamorises violence. Yet throughout, it's fun. Really good fun.Sniper Elite's key... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cabo Verde: Sodade, Slaves and SyncopationSunday, 27 April 2014
My preconceived and somewhat misguided idea of the Cabo Verde islands (the official name for Cape Verde these days) was that they were basically a hotter version of the Canaries, with a spare and volcanic landscape that, being a Creole culture in... Read more... |
Storyville: Which Way Is the Frontline From Here?, BBC FourTuesday, 01 April 2014
The title of Sebastian Junger’s documentary comes from a casual remark made as a group of journalists set off towards conflict in the outskirts of the Libyan town of Misrata: it may sound like a standard question from a battle-hardened war... Read more... |
10 Questions for musician Burnt Friedman - with video exclusiveMonday, 17 March 2014
Bernd “Burnt” Friedman is one of the most relentlessly questing of experimental musicians. In over 30 years of making music and 25 years of releasing it, he has specialised in researching ancient, hypermodern and as-yet-undiscovered methods of... Read more... |
