black culture
From Historical to Hip-Hop, Classically Black Music Festival, Kings Place review - a cluster of impressive stars for the futureTuesday, 21 October 2025
To hear Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason speaking live is to hear a woman who very much recognises that her lifelong mission to challenge the perception of who should play classical music is ongoing. Though she has given birth to seven children who have gone on... Read more... |
Yazmin Lacey confirms her place in a vital soul movement with 'Teal Dreams'Wednesday, 22 October 2025
We are in – it needs to be shouted from the rooftops every day – a golden age of British soul and jazz. It isn’t just about a few quality artists, either, but a movement. Londoner Yazmin Lacey is key within that: in the past year, she’s featured on... Read more... |
Kerry James Marshall: The Histories, Royal Academy review - a triumphant celebration of blacknessTuesday, 30 September 2025
This must be the first time a black artist has been honoured with a retrospective that fills the main galleries of the Royal Academy. Celebrating Kerry James Marshall’s 70th birthday, The Histories occupies these grand rooms with such joyous ease... Read more... |
The Harder They Come, Stratford East review - still packs a punch, half a century onWednesday, 24 September 2025
The impact of great art is physical as much as it is psychological. I recall the first time I saw Perry Henzell’s 1972 film, The Harder They Come. I’d been in the pub and, as we did then with just four channels, slumped in front of the television to... Read more... |
First Person: Musician ALA.NI on how thoughts of empire and reparation influenced a songThursday, 18 September 2025
I’ve never thought of myself as a political artist. I write about love. The tender bits, the messy bits, the heartbreak that rearranges a life. That’s where songwriting usually finds me. “TIEF”, from my forthcoming album Sunshine Music, arrived... Read more... |
Fat Ham, RSC, Stratford review - it's Hamlet Jim, but not as we know itThursday, 28 August 2025
$8.2B. That’s what can happen when you re-imagine Hamlet.I doubt that writer, James Ijames, had The Lion King’s box office in mind when he set out to create a Deep South, black and contemporary version of Shakespeare’s drama of familial dysfunction... Read more... |
Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse review - life-affirming entertainment, both then and nowTuesday, 29 July 2025
What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really strong story stand on its own two feet. Like a late one at the Brixton Academy itself, this is a helluva night out.... Read more... |
Album: Mádé Kuti - Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?Friday, 25 July 2025
There can be few musicians on the planet from a more storied musical dynasty than Mádé Kuti. He is the son of Femi, the grandson of Fela. He grew up in and around Femi’s New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, international hub of all things Afrobeat. A multi-... Read more... |
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire review - a mysterious silenceSaturday, 19 July 2025
A glamorous black woman sits in a Forties bar under a Vichy cop’s gaze, cigarette tilted at an angle, till two male companions join her in clandestine conversation. The woman is Suzanne Césaire (Zita Hanrot), an influential Martinican journalist and... Read more... |
Intimate Apparel, Donmar Warehouse review - stirring story of Black survival in 1905 New YorkSaturday, 28 June 2025
The corset is an unlikely star of the latest Lynn Nottage play to arrive at the Donmar Warehouse, 2003’s Intimate Apparel. After the more male-dominated Sweat and Clyde’s at the same address, this is a personal piece about the lot of Black women,... Read more... |
Album: Yaya Bey - do it afraidMonday, 16 June 2025
One of the great untold stories of the past decade is just how potent a cultural force R&B has been. It might not have had the wild musical innovation it did in the 2000s when the likes of Neptunes, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins... Read more... |
Miss Myrtle’s Garden, Bush Theatre review - flowering talent, but needs weedingSunday, 08 June 2025
The Bush Theatre is becoming a garden centre. Earlier this year, the venue staged Coral Wylie’s Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew, which featured an abundance of plant life, and now it’s the turn of talented novelist and screenwriter Danny James... Read more... |
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