tue 03/10/2023

Latin

Manu Chao, Coronet Theatre

“It’s not often you get a global superstar down at the Elephant and Castle,” marvelled a local who spent the evening dancing like a dervish to the infectious music of Manu Chao, who had breezed into London for a rare show last night off the back of...

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Moombahton, Boombahchero and 21st-century genre meltdown

A suitably confusing image for a confusing sound

Some days I feel like I've woken up on the other side of some wormhole in the spacetime continuum, and the world is a subtly but definitely different place to yesterday. So it was last week when I got a slightly drunken email from a music...

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My Summer Reading: Dancer Carlos Acosta

Carlos Acosta is not just a superstar dancer with the Royal Ballet and around the world, he is an avid reader - and indeed writer. After writing his autobiography No Way Home, he has also scripted dance shows and is now writing a novel....

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The Maid (La Nana)

Domestics of varying kinds have always figured prominently in the cinema, from Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Mary Reilly. (Julia Roberts playing the hired help? Uh, don't think so.) But there's rarely been as...

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Pink Martini, Barbican

“You see! This is America! All races, genders and everything else blending together to make something beautiful!” This a quote from an American fan living in the Middle East currently on Pink Martini’s website. Thomas Lauderdale, the musical...

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Dinner with Caetano Veloso

You forget how fast the night descends in the tropics, in half an hour the light goes, the sun disappearing with a grand melodramatic finality. You understand the Mexican tribe who believe without their prayers it will never rise again. But it...

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Latin Music USA, BBC Four

Los Tigres del Norte, Grammy-winning Tex-Mex Superstars

Latin Music USA is a long-overdue exploration of the Latino influence on American popular music. The four-part BBC Four Friday-night series zooms in on the bicultural American populations rooted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico, but living in their...

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Havana Rakatan, Peacock Theatre

Havana Rakatan, on stage, Peacock Theatre, London.

Ballet was never meant to be like this: the London production of Havana Rakatan at the Peacock Theatre last night shattered all definitions and formalities and left the audience uttering squeals and sighs of delight (and sexual ecstasy) in response...

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South Bank goes Brazilian for the summer

As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here for the initial programme). That is certainly exciting for a city like London trying to live down its last decade (...

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Lhasa de Sela 1972-2010

Lhasa de Sela: 'Honesty is one of the most exciting things in the world'

The singer Lhasa de Sela passed away from breast cancer in her Montreal home on 1 January just before midnight, at the age of 37. Since this news emerged my email box has had numerous messages about this tragic loss, including from theartsdesk...

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Garifuna Blues: Aurelio Martinez and Andy Palacio

Aurelio Martinez (right) with mentor Youssou N'Dour

The new album of Honduran singer Aurelio Martinez hasn’t got a title yet, or a record label, and will probably come out next year. But already there’s enough buzz about him and it for his UK debut to bring out the great and good from the world music...

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Film: Birdwatchers

The tourist cruise boat chugging up the Amazon pauses for another photo opportunity. A dozen or so tribesman with clay-daubed faces and loincloths are discovered posed like a tableau: a colourful addition to the rainforest fauna. The boat marks time...

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