Africa
Kieron Tyler
Until now, hearing the extraordinary “Ratidzo” was all-but impossible. The original single is rare and has not been reissued before. It begins with a plaintive whistle which sets the scene for a hypnotic and beautiful rotating pattern of single notes possibly played on a gamelan-style instrument. Rhythmic accompaniment comes from a form of shaker. It is not instantly possible to place where this music is from. Eastern Asia? Hawaii? The next track is similarly mysterious, but the addition of a vocal suggests Africa. The singular talent responsible for these outstanding performances is Zimbabwe Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
In the days around WOMAD there have been plenty of media about how the “hostile environment” towards migrants has created all sorts of problems for artists attempting to get here from around the world. Certainly, we are being denied some of the hottest new acts - like the wild blue-haired Moonchild Sanelly from South Africa or the hottest new act from Nigeria, Chicoco Sounds. WOMAD have just signed a new 12-year deal at Charlton Park, however - and if you wanted to find the spiritual centre for the liberal, tolerant, positive globalism currently under threat, WOMAD would be a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Music from Sudan is overshadowed by the country’s recent history. At the end of June 1989, Colonel Omar al-Bashir assumed control and it became a one-party state. Shariah law was introduced. Osama Bin Laden was resident in capital city Khartoum from 1991 to 1996. Tension between the mostly Muslim north and mostly Christian south undermined any facade of stability al-Bashir sought to impose. The south was declared independent in 2011. Conflict in Darfur, in the west of the country, left 300,000 people dead and led to just over 3 million displaced people.These are, of course, headlines. True Read more ...
mark.kidel
Hot in the burning footsteps of Bargou 08, last year’s subtle but daring mix of traditional Tunisian sounds and electronic beats and textures, Sofyann Ben Youssef launches a new project under the name of AMMAR 808, Maghreb United. There is a great deal more fire and confidence in this new album, which plunges deeper into the rich sonic universe of the Maghreb while taking a few more risks with the contemporary electronic and rock elements that are deftly combined to create a beguiling whole.Traditional popular music from the Maghreb works with distortion – the snare on the bendir frame drum, Read more ...
Katherine Waters
One space, one person, one story, one voice – the monologue is theatre distilled, the purest form of entertainment. On a stage of packing boxes and boards, over the course of just over an hour, Paterson Joseph relays and plays the life of Charles Ignatius Sancho, the first British man of African origin to vote.As befits any good piece of bombast set in the 18th century, The Author opens Act One. In actual fact, the author is Paterson Joseph himself, who, having written himself, performs himself – a fictionalised, larger-than-life, theatrical simulacrum. He explains, “Politics wasn’t Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
BBC Four is the TV music equivalent of those oldsters music mags like Q and Mojo. Have there been five, or is it six, documentaries about Queen on the channel? You can sense the commissioners feeling with this new series they have now done their bit for African music for the next few years. In general, the BBC, unlike counterparts in places like France, have been ridiculously Anglocentric in their music coverage – like having a cooking channel that leaves out Indian, Chinese and Japanese food.The main difficulty, in the first episode, is that the idea of “doing” Nigerian music in an hour Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
African Scream Contest 2 opens with a burst of distorted guitar suggesting a parallel-world response to The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today”. Then, the song beds in and a James Brown groove plays off against spindly lead-guitar lines also evoking California in the psychedelic era: the extemporisation of Jefferson Airplane. At 3.06, the vocalist and percussionist are left to get on with it for 30 seconds. Next, a wheezy organ comes to the fore and injects some “Light my Fire” vamps.The track is “A Min We Vo Nou” by Les Sympathics de Porto-Novo. Recorded in 1973 or 1974 in Lagos, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
What a superb location for a performance! The flats on the north-east corner of Islington Green back onto a crummy atrium from which a staircase leads down to a vaulted, concrete pit (pictured below). A cross between a car park and a bull ring, or a subterranean version of a de Chirico painting, this huge chamber reminded me of the stark designs of the Italian modernist, Aldo Rossi.Peering over the topmost balustrade, one sees silent figures entering the subterranean space through portals created with slender rods of light. Most are dressed in black; they are professional mourners flown in Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
QCC isn’t the name of a new football club, nor some higher qualification for those toiling at the Bar, but stands for "Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy". Had you heard of it? On the eve of the Commonwealth conference, along came Jane Treays's gently hilarious, and finally rather tender film to fill in the gaps. Its central focus was on the nation’s favourite nonagenarians, the Queen herself and Sir David Attenborough, pottering about and chatting in a garden – that quintessential English idyll – and not just any old garden, but that of Buckingham Palace. Quietly, they talk about saving the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You may have seen Daliso Chaponda on Britain's Got Talent last year. He came third but, as he says, he was delighted as it brought him to a wider audience after working in comedy for 15 years – and made possible his first UK tour What the African Said. It draws on his peripatetic background (his father was a diplomat); he was born in Zambia, is Malawian by upbringing, spent some of his childhood in Zambia, Kenya and Somalia, and has been resident in the UK for 12 years after studying in Canada.Chaponda has great stage presence and some fine jokesHe's an instantly likeable performer, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
After the suave theatrical persuasions of Simon Schama and the earnest professorial shtick of Mary Beard, in episode six of Civilisations (BBC Two) it was the turn of David Olusoga, the third of the documentary's triumvirate of presenters. He began, naturally, with Africa, from which he derives the Nigerian part of his identity, but a bit of Africa transplanted to the British Museum which he was taken to see as a child making contact with his heritage.The Benin Bronzes, violently filched and sold off in the late 19th century, are exhibited far from their original home. This is of course true Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Shakespeare's death-laden play is alive and well and breathing with renewed force in Hackney, the last British stop for an RSC touring Hamlet that moves on from London to the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC in May. Let's hope the American capital takes to Simon Godwin's characteristically acute, alert production with the palpable affection that was afforded the staging closer to home one recent evening. Of Paapa Essiedu's occupancy of the title role, one thing seems clear: were the play's States-side sightings continuing westward to LA, this charismatic actor might risk being lost to the Read more ...