fri 29/03/2024

New Music Buzz

Lhasa de Sela 1972-2010

Peter Culshaw 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 critic Robert Sandall who wrote about her “extraordinary talent, amazing life… a total original, a real artist”, and adds a note below this article. Howard Male said, “The Living Road is one of the truly great albums in any...

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theartsdesk an essential site of 2009: BBC Radio 5 Live

theartsdesk

radio 5theartsdesk received a New Year's gift last night when we were given a significant accolade from BBC Radio 5 Live. In Web 2009 with Helen and Olly, the station's podcasters and self-styled "internet obsessives" Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann recognised theartsdesk as one of the five "essential sites of 20...

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New Year Birthdays on the Tube

Peter Culshaw

A series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

30 December 1910: Enough of all the seasonal jollity. With any luck, yours was more real than forced. The other side of New Years is, for many of us, a certain existential panic. What happened to the last year? How did we do? How the hell did it go so fast? And, more scarily, though hopefully invigoratingly, how many more do we have left?  Paul Bowles, best known as author of The Sheltering Sky, wasn’t a musician...

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Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommends

theartsdesk

The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week.

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A Merry Little Christmas Eve: theartsdesk recommends

theartsdesk

As we all have only one shopping day left, theartsdesk hopes to make Christmas Eve a little easier by offering a few enlightened recommendations. From our writers on new and classical music, opera and ballet, film and comedy, here is a list of CDs and DVDs that we hope will enhance your 11th-hour shopping experience. Happy Christmas from all at theartsdesk.

 

DVDs


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Noche de Rabanos, Oaxaca, Mexico

Peter Culshaw

Tonight, 23 December, is a significant night for culture in Oaxaca, Mexico – it’s the Noche de Rabanos. The Night of the Radishes. Thousands of people descend into the zocalo to witness sculptures carved from extremely large radishes, especially grown for the occasion.  It was certainly one of the most memorable Christmas exhibitions I’ve seen.

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Birthdays on the Tube, 13-19 December

Peter Culshaw

A continuing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

16 December 1899: Noel Coward, sharing a birthday with Beethoven, an early English rapper of the silk polka dot dressing gown and cigarette holder school.

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Birthdays on the Tube, 6-12 December

Peter Culshaw

An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

12 December 1944: The unprepossessing-looking Rob Tyner was the lead singer of the MC5, who along with The Stooges were Detroit's finest rock bands. The best evocation I've come across of the era is Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk and its origins, which graphically tells the whole story by interviewing a cast of hundreds. Most of whom should have known better.

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Birthdays on the Tube, 29 November-5 December

Peter Culshaw

An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.

2 December 1982: Britney Spears is 27. There is some resistance to Britney hereabouts, so I thought I'd post a version of "Toxic" sung acoustically by Galia Arad to demonstrate that she does have some terrific songs. If Galia - who with her cousin Lail, should become much better known in...

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Jeremy Deller on The Posters Came From The Walls

joe Muggs

"Depeche Mode," says Jeremy Deller, "have always been seen as a bit naff in this country, at least in the media. They could never shake off the image of their earliest Top Of The Pops appearances, so no matter how musically exploratory they got, they tended to be seen as this jumped-up rather silly pop band.

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