Africa
Tom Birchenough
Inua Ellams’ Three Sisters plays Chekhov in the shadow of war, specifically the Nigerian-Biafran secessionist conflict of the late 1960s which so bitterly divided that newly independent nation. It’s a bold move that adds decided new relevance to the action, grounding proceedings that are more often generalised in their listless disappointment to a very particular time and place. We certainly view the travails of the Chekhov’s eponymous protagonists – instead of Olga, Masha and Irina, here they are Lolo, Nne Chukwu and Udo – in a different light when starving refugees and the battle Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“What is wrong with us? What are we doing here?” Liam Payne asked the camera, as we neared the end of his jaunt round picturesque Namibia with his quizmaster Ant Middleton. The short answer would be “it’s for the publicity, you idiot,” but of course he knows that full well. He’d just leapt off a cliff face and swung in wide circles on a rope above the russet-coloured desert far below. It looked quite fun actually.The formula here was Bear Grylls Lite, as special forces veteran Middleton took a “journey of a lifetime” across Namibia by road and rail with X Factor and One Direction veteran Read more ...
Guy Oddy
By the time Vampire Weekend reached Birmingham on their latest UK jaunt, they had unfortunately managed to mislay their support band, the colourful Songhoy Blues. This was a great shame, as the Malians would surely have added a bit of colour to the early part of an evening that would most certainly have benefitted from a bit of light and shade. Instead, the O2 Academy was treated to an extensive recording of baroque chamber music, piped through the PA system, that felt like it would never end.However, end it thankfully did and onto the stage bounced Ezra Keonig, dressed in white trousers and Read more ...
howard.male
Last month this Western Saharan singer-songwriter stood on stage at London’s Jazz Café and turned the venue into a hallowed holy space with just her voice and the rhythm she summoned from her tabal drum. Translated from the orginal Arabic, two lines she sung were: "The only one who seeks war, is one who has never known it". These simple yet profound words come from "Cuatro Proverbios", the opening number of this, her third album. However, although Aziza sings a great deal about her poverty, her war-stricken childhood in Algerian refugee camps, and the pain of exile (she currently lives in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
What’s the most ridiculous programme that Channel 4 has ever made? Sex Box? The Execution of Gary Glitter? Extreme Celebrity Detox? Whatever, The British Tribe Next Door is up there vying for supremacy.The Moffatt family, from Bishop Auckland, have travelled to Otjeme in Western Namibia for a month, to live alongside the semi-nomadic Himba tribe. This is because Scarlett “Gogglebox” Moffatt – daughter of Mark and Betty and sister of Ava-Grace – is about 12 percent of a celebrity. They won’t be living in the Himba’s distinctive huts, but instead in a perfect replica of their own two-storey Read more ...
mark.kidel
Foals, the band with a trademark sound characterised by the African-style intricate interplay of rhythm rather than lead guitars, returns with what amounts to the second half of a double album. The first half was released last spring, and this new release might well feel like more of the same. But the band’s powers of invention are well up to creating tracks that shine on their own.Foals trade on high energy sophisticated pop. They have been compared to Talking Heads, and there is a similar mixture of intelligence and danceability. “Wash Out” is the stand-out track, with cross-threaded Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The American dramatist Katori Hall has created a work of rare accomplishment in Our Lady of Kibeho, a play that combines a beautifully established picture of a particular world – a church school in rural Rwanda, in the early 1980s – with profound themes such as faith and belief.That she brings her story, one that indirectly references the genocide that the country would experience a decade later, together with some choice character comedy is further testimony to her skill in combining the sacred and the secular. Premiered in New York in 2014, it reaches Theatre Royal Stratford East in James Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Tinariwen’s music has always been evocative of West African deserts with their mellow blues-like guitars and shuffling groove. Initially recording everything in Mali until it was invaded by religious fanatics who deemed playing music forbidden, Tinariwen have had to lay down their last few discs away from home. Amadjar, however, sees the band return to West Africa to team up with griotte singer, Noura Mint Seymali and her guitarist husband, Jeiche Ould Chighaly. Recorded in two weeks, in a large tent outside Nouakchott in Mauritania, Amadjar is soaked in nomadic grooves with a dromedary’s Read more ...
Jessica Payn
Reality follows dreams in José Eduardo Agualusa’s latest experiment in quixotic political fable. The book opens with journalist Daniel Benchimol waking at the Rainbow Hotel in Angola’s capital, Luanda: “I saw long black birds fly past. I’d dreamed about them. It was as though they had leaped from my dream up into the sky, a damp piece of dark-blue tissue paper, with bitter mould growing in the corners.” The birds seem to have escaped the innards of his dreamworld; they stain the sky with an uneasy, oneiric presence. That, or perhaps these birds – seen but already dreamed – occupy a zone of Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The cynicism of this film’s existence squeezes all the feeling from it. It approaches cherished childhood memories of the original The Lion King (1994) with a view to remonetising them. Technological advances apart, there’s no reason at all for this Lion King.The plot proceeds precisely as before, with lion cub Simba (the voice of Donald Glover once grown) pottering happily around the Pride Lands, an ecologically balanced Eden ruled by benign despot Mufasa (the returning James Earl Jones). Simba’s uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), pictured below, here ravaged and spectrally white, again plots Read more ...
howard.male
This debut is the best collaboration between a French producer and African musicians since Yves Wernert got together with Malian ngoni player Issa Bagoyogo for a string of masterful fusion albums during the Noughties. But his time around it was the electronica producer Débruit who was blessed by chance to encounter a bunch of inventive musicians in Kinshasa. Although "inventive" hardly covers it, because poverty dictated that KOKOKO! forged their instruments out of plastic water bottles and other garbage and junk. But don't let that put you off. A tight riff played on a one-stringed guitar Read more ...
Barney Harsent
You hear a lot about living legends, but there aren’t actually that many around – at least not since the first half of 2016. Carlos Santana, however, definitely fits the bill. From his early days stealing the show at Woodstock alongside drummer Michael Shrieve, to achieving bone fide icon status for his pioneering work in the field of fusion solos, he’s at a stage where he can do pretty much whatever he wants. This makes the intent and wide-reaching scope of Africa Speaks all the more impressive, and Santana’s claim that this is a project born out of a love and obsession for the music of Read more ...