tue 19/03/2024

South Africa

Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Makhalemele & Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi - The Bull And The Lion

The Bull And The Lion was originally released in 1976 by Jo'burg, a South African label which opened-up for business in 1973 with a couple of singles and the first album by black singer Margaret Singana. Her debut LP was titled Lady Africa. The same...

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Selaocoe, Schimpelsberger, LSO, Ward, Barbican review - force of nature crowns dance jamboree

It was good of the EFG London Jazz Festival to support this concert and bring in a different audience from the one the LSO is used to. But how to define it? Jazz only briefly figured in works by Gary Carpenter, Bartók, Barber and Abel Selaocoe. The...

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DVD/Blu-ray: Cry, the Beloved Country (1951)

Movie Blu-rays and DVDs brim with superficially engaging extras that frequently fail to illuminate the main attraction. The opposite is true of Cry, the Beloved Country, which has been restored in 4K and newly released in StudioCanal’s Vintage...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Dark Noon / Concerned Others

Dark Noon, Pleasance at EICC ★★★★★If there’s a more ambitious theatre production than Dark Noon at the Fringe this year, I’ve yet to see it. That’s ambitious in terms of its staging: during the course of the show’s 100 minutes (yes, it’s a...

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The Sacrifice, Dada Masilo, Brighton Dome review - eye-popping dance from South Africa

The Soweto-born dancer-choreographer Dada Masilo has made her name  telling classic European stories in African dialect. The last piece she toured in the UK was a striking Giselle in which the avenging Wilis were not undead brides but ancestral...

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William Kentridge, Royal Academy review - from art to theatre, and back again

South African artist William Kentridge appears on video in his studio, twice. On the right he sits scribbling, waiting for an idea to surface. Meanwhile his alter ego stands impatiently by, trying to peek at his other half’s notes and, desperate for...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Abel Selaocoe

South-African cellist Abel Selaocoe is about to begin his third major concert in London in under a year. As the support artist for kora player Ballake Sissoko and cellist Vincent Segal at the Roundhouse in January, he received a lengthy ovation for...

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TUKS Camerata, Voces8 Live from London online review - a diverse choral selection

The Voces8 Live from London, now in its seventh iteration, has progressed from streaming choral chamber music from an empty studio to an 80-strong visiting choir in a packed Christ Church, Spitalfields. In doing this the festival has retained its...

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Blk Jks, Moth Club review - Johannesburg’s art-rockers are more straightforward live than on album

Figuratively, “Tselane” is Blk Jks’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Both songs begin quietly and move through passages of turbulence suggesting an impending tempest. Each has a command of dynamics which pulls the listener in, generating anticipation for what...

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Album: Wren Hinds - A Child's Chant for a New Millennium

Side Two of A Child’s Chant for a New Millennium opens with “Wrenbird,” a consideration of whether it’s possible to have a bird’s freedom of mobility. “Anywhere but here,” sings Wren Hinds. He may not be happy where he is, but the accompanying...

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William Hurt, great Hollywood contrarian, has died at 71

No actor had a classier time of it in the Eighties than William Hurt, who has died at the age of 71. Ramrod tall, blue-eyed and aquiline, with a high forehead swept clear of thin fair hair, he was a brash decade's intelligent male lead. Those years...

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Antony Sher: 'I discovered I could be other people'

The energy of Antony Sher, who has died at the age of 72, was prodigious. He not only acted like a fizzing firecracker. He wrote books about his most celebrated roles, and several novels set in his native South Africa. He also wrote plays, and he...

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