New Music Features
Omar Souleyman, New World Music Sensation?Friday, 27 August 2010
The world music scene is hungry for new sensations - and Omar Souleyman, about to hit London and the Shambhala Festival, well deserves to be one of them. In the early 1980s the hunger for the exotic focused on anything that came from the parallel universes untouched by the pressures of commercialisation: polyphonic pygmy singing from Central Africa, ecstatic Sufi soul doctors from Pakistan, drone-drenched bagpipe players from Bulgaria or heart-invading praise singers from Mali. Souleyman is... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Kerry Ellis InterviewFriday, 20 August 2010
Kerry Ellis amassed a legion of adoring fans when she went "green" playing Elphaba in Stephen Schwartz's smash-hit musical both in London and on Broadway. But her pre-eminence as a musical-theatre-diva-cum-rock-chick was secured earlier still when Brian May, the celebrated lead guitarist of Queen, asked her to play Meat in the Queen/ Ben Elton show We Will Rock You. May quickly recognised a symbiosis between them and their CD single Wicked in Rock sprung a rip-roaring...
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Serge Gainsbourg vs The Anglo-SaxonsWednesday, 28 July 2010
The arrival of Gainsbourg: Vie Héroique in British cinemas this week – under its Anglo-Saxon title Gainsbourg – assumes that distributors think there’s an audience. Even so, Gainsbourg hardly has the appeal of a Johnny Cash biopic. Or even an Ike Turner biopic. Read more... |
Larkin's Jazz, Proper RecordsTuesday, 27 July 2010
“A E Housman said he could recognise poetry because it made his throat tighten and his eyes water. I can recognise jazz because it makes me tap my foot, grunt affirmative exhortations, or even get up and caper round the room.” For those curious to discover the kind of music that made poet Philip Larkin leap around shouting “Yeah, man”, help is at hand. Read more... |
Interview: Os MutantesFriday, 16 July 2010
Arnaldo Baptista of Os Mutantes is telling me why South American music can be so compelling: "It's the historical mix, Incas, black Africans, Europeans, beings from Outer Space." I beg his pardon. "Oh, yes, I have seen many flying saucers". Arnaldo is being perfectly serious and launches into his theory of Time (he has formulas and diagrams) which state that once humans go faster than the speed of light, we will be able to travel back to the past. He thinks will freeze himself cryogenically and... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Sting InterviewMonday, 12 July 2010
The location is Sting's beachside house in Malibu the morning after the night before: another night, another venue - the Hollywood Bowl - another three-hour Concert of his songs. That's concert with a capital "C" because this time Sting has brought along more than just a few of his favourite musicians to join him, he's brought along the 50-strong Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, "the biggest band I've ever worked with". |
theartsdesk in Copenhagen: The Copenhagen Jazz FestivalSunday, 11 July 2010
It's Friday afternoon, the sun's beating down, and I'm kicking back with a cold one in Kongens Have, Copenhagen's oldest and most idyllic park. From the bandstand, the music of Duke Ellington falls mellifluously on my ears, the languorously swinging, behind-the-beat groove of the specially assembled Band Leader Session perfectly suiting the sultry atmosphere. We can't know for sure what heaven will be like, but I'm hoping it'll be something like this. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Gnawa Festival, EssaouiraTuesday, 06 July 2010
Come the end of June in Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, up to half a million festival-goers team the narrow, traffic-free streets of the medina, its two huge open squares, and numerous courtyards and riyads around town, for what must be the world’s biggest free festival. It is dedicated to Gnawa, the trance and healing music of African Moroccans who had been inveigled into slavery in centuries past – there was a slave market in Essaouria until the early part of the 20th century – and... Read more... |
UK Festivals 2010 Round-UpTuesday, 06 July 2010
Get your tent and ice-box and plan your summer's entertainment with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from heavy rock by Scottish lochs to Morris-dancing in the south west, and taking on opera, classical and major international arts festivals for good measure. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Fes: The World Sacred Music FestivalMonday, 28 June 2010
The interior world of Morocco seems a magical place where music and words have more power than in the disenchanted, cold light of the North. On the plane on my first trip to Fes I met a businessman, in import-export, wearing a Burton suit. The strangeness of Morocco revealed itself when he started telling me of his current problem, that his daughter has been put under a spell by a djinn (he translated the word as “devil”) residing in a frog. His mother was a member of the Hamdashas... Read more... |
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