thu 31/07/2025

black culture

Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse review - life-affirming entertainment, both then and now

What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really strong story stand on its own two feet. Like a late one at the Brixton Academy itself, this is a helluva night out....

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Album: Mádé Kuti - Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?

There can be few musicians on the planet from a more storied musical dynasty than Mádé Kuti. He is the son of Femi, the grandson of Fela. He grew up in and around Femi’s New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, international hub of all things Afrobeat. A multi-...

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The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire review - a mysterious silence

A glamorous black woman sits in a Forties bar under a Vichy cop’s gaze, cigarette tilted at an angle, till two male companions join her in clandestine conversation. The woman is Suzanne Césaire (Zita Hanrot), an influential Martinican journalist and...

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Intimate Apparel, Donmar Warehouse review - stirring story of Black survival in 1905 New York

The corset is an unlikely star of the latest Lynn Nottage play to arrive at the Donmar Warehouse, 2003’s Intimate Apparel. After the more male-dominated Sweat and Clyde’s at the same address, this is a personal piece about the lot of Black women,...

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Album: Yaya Bey - do it afraid

One of the great untold stories of the past decade is just how potent a cultural force R&B has been. It might not have had the wild musical innovation it did in the 2000s when the likes of Neptunes, Missy Elliot, Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins...

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Miss Myrtle’s Garden, Bush Theatre review - flowering talent, but needs weeding

The Bush Theatre is becoming a garden centre. Earlier this year, the venue staged Coral Wylie’s Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew, which featured an abundance of plant life, and now it’s the turn of talented novelist and screenwriter Danny James...

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Album: Little Simz - Lotus

Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is...

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Lizz Wright, Barbican review - sweet inspiration

Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many interwoven strands of the African-American experience. Wright thrives on singing to an audience: her recorded output is wonderful...

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Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs of ambition

Plays about the Windrush Generation are no longer a rarity, but it’s still unusual for revivals of black British classics to get the full resources of the National Theatre. Guyana-born playwright Michael Abbensetts, who died in 2016, is often...

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Mickalene Thomas, All About Love, Hayward Gallery review - all that glitters

On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick...

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Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully present

Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm of his hand is a fragile dwelling whose flimsy walls are held together by pins. This tiny model is made from pieces of the...

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Captain America: Brave New World review - talking loud, saying nothing

In his first weeks in office, Harrison Ford’s US president survives an assassination attempt inside the White House, goes to war with Japan and mutates into Red Hulk when he gets mad, trashing said White House with a Stars and Stripes flag-holder....

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