Africa
Helen Hawkins
What’s in a name? In Benedict Lombe’s incendiary debut play at the Bush Theatre, the answer to this question encompasses a whole continent, an entire existential experience - the Black experience, to be exact - though not in the way that "roots" stories often proceed. The lost first name that the lead character of Lava needs for her British passport application is indeed her African one, long banned by her original home country, but not for the reason you’d expect. And home for this character, billed simply as Her (Ronke Adekoluejo), isn’t a straightforward proposition either. To Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Hailing from Benin and based in Paris since she was 23, Angélique Kidjo can sing in five languages, has collaborated with an A-list festival line-up of global stars ranging from Alicia Keys and Philip Glass to Herbie Hancock and Peter Gabriel, and had her first albums released by Island, after being spotted by label head Chris Blackwell. Each of them was studded with guest artists, including Branford Marsalis and Gilberto Gil, and featuring covers such as Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child”.She has won Grammys, travelled widely as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and set up a foundation to empower Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s periodic global themed radio show is allowed back in the MusicBox Radio studio with special guest, the distinguished soundtrack composer Dominik Scherrer. Dominik’s latest hit series was The Serpent, the dark tale of Charles Sobhraj, the “Bikini Killer” or “The Serpent” who killed young often lost, idealistic Western travellers mainly in Bangkok in the 1970s, but also elsewhere on the hippy trail east. Sobraj drugged and killed many travellers.The series had violent moments but also was full of groovy beach parties brilliantly recreated. We discuss ultra-violence and Kubrick, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Mdou Moctar is often dubbed as the “Hendrix of the desert”. He is not the first West African musician to be linked with African-American guitar stars. Just as you can hear echoes of John Lee Hooker in Ali Farka Toure, and Taj Mahal could collaborate seamlessly with Toumani Diabate, the young musicians emerging brutally into a world of international mining robbery and fundamentalist terror, naturally find inspiration in music from over the ocean. As with so much in music, the influences flow both way, or, from another point of view, there is an epigenetic kinship resounding through shared DNA. Read more ...
Tunde Jegede
In this era when there is so much talk and discussion around crossing musical boundaries, diversity in music and inter-disciplinary work it seems strange that there is still so little knowledge of how, why and when it works. Ironically, much of this type of work and collaborative process is much older than we often think and give credit to.As a composer I have always been interested in this type of work because it speaks to my experience both socially and culturally. Having studied instruments and traditions in both the UK and West Africa, I was acutely aware from an early age of differences Read more ...
simon.broughton
“Zanzibar, are you ready?” yells the singer from the stage.There’s a huge cheer. It seems the crowd – and it is a crowd – is certainly ready. In shades, a flat cap and dreadlocks down his back, singer Barnaba Classic (pictured below left) is on stage at Zanzibar’s Sauti za Busara festival. Over from Dar es Salaam, Barnaba is a big star in Tanzania and is headlining the festival’s first night after seven hours of music.Seeing it live on Plus TV, it seems like watching another world. A live band on stage and an audience of some 2500 people, mostly dancing. Usually audience cutaways Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever. More than 20 years after his death, and a funeral that attracted a million mourners (police claimed there were no crimes committed in Lagos over its three days) Afrobeat continues to pull dancers onto the floor in order to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Enlisting Hollywood giant Samuel L Jackson to host a series about the history of slavery, his own ancestors having been trafficked from West Africa to the Americas, was a headline-grabbing move, and scenes where we travelled with Jackson to the historic slaving hotspot of Gabon rang with a steely sense of commitment. Elsewhere, though, the editorial focus was slack and the content rambling, as though the project (on BBC Two) had undergone a last-minute salvage job using whatever was at hand.However often you hear them, the details of the slave trade are stomach-turning – it’s estimated that Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This fifth feature from Claire Denis must surely be the director’s most sheerly concentrated film. Scaling back narrative and dialogue alike – story elucidation relies mainly on intermittent retrospective voice-over narration – Beau Travail engages the viewer instead with its sensual elements (“A Cinema of Sensation” is the title of the essay by critic Girish Shambu that comes with this new Criterion edition). It’s absorbing in every sense – from the choreographically stylised gestures of its military protagonists to the parched desert surroundings of Djibouti, a striking presence in itself, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Filmed, as one would, well, imagine, prior to lockdown, Imagine .... My Name is Kwame hearkens to what now seems a bygone era of full and buzzy playhouses and adventurous theatre-making that was about the live experience and not some facsimile online. That the hourlong film, directed by Charlie Sever, tells of the multiple iterations over time of a theatre practitioner, Kwame Kwei-Armah, now running the Young Vic makes one long to be back in the whirligig of playgoing again to see where this multi-hyphenate talent will lead us next.But the focus of such programmes is inevitably to look Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio update is back, quicker than usual as there is some catching up to do. There’s a focus on Ennio Morricone, who died this week - with his amazing range from Westerns to lush soundscapes and experimental hipster 1960s hipster pop. A secondary focus is on re-issued and new Moroccan grooviness - the wonderfully stoned 1970s soundscapes of Abdou El Omari to the hot off the press fabulousness of Bab l’Bluz. Other sizzling new stuff includes a rework of Saint Germain’s “I Want You To Get Together Right Now”(who sampled it from Marlena Shaw in the first Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio music show comes blinking into the light after lockdown, as MusicBox radio’s studio In London’s Clerkenwell has tentatively, antiseptically, opened. In the months since March, we have lost numerous kings of rhythm, including, as mentioned in the show, Florian Schneider and Little Richard.This edition focuses on the legacy of the great drum legend Tony Allen, who pioneered Afro-beat with Fela Kuti. We talk to Stephen Budd, Tony Allen's friend, as well as an obsessive Afro-beat collector and DJ. He has had an illustrious career in music, from being a Read more ...