Africa
Sam Marlowe
A monolithic slab, like a giant incarnation of a Biblical tablet of stone, dominates Mark Thompson’s set for Jamie Lloyd's production of the third play by Alexi Kaye Campbell. Nothing else is so solid in this big, weighty work, which wrestles with abstract notions of faith, the human soul and the myths and narratives by which we choose to live.It’s an ambitious piece of writing, and at times Campbell trips over his own verbosity. In an evening of nearly three hours’ duration, carved up by two intervals, it’s difficult not to wish at times that he had more full-bloodedly dramatised his Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
One thing became clearer to me last night – just how much Steve Reich has borrowed from world music in his compositions – we had the flamenco-tinged Clapping, Electric Counterpoint, using Central African guitar lines, and Music for 18 Musicians, a mix of West African rhythms, Indonesian gamelan and other elements. It was also clear how much a sold-out late-night Prom audience had taken this music to their hearts, nearly 40 years after some of it was written. It still sounds fresh and, rather than being mindlessly repetitive, most of it shimmers away. Like an endless. Like an endless Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
WOMAD is in its 29th year, and ticket sales have gone up 29 per cent, we are told, with over 35,000 sold. World music, always rather beyond fashion, is thriving, at least in this live festival incarnation in Wiltshire. One criticism, according to The Independent among others (made by trendy middle-class people in a fit of self-loathing, generally), was that there were too many Cath Kidston tents and it has become too bourgeois. But there was enough strangeness and idiosyncrasy on display to undermine the idea that WOMAD has become complacent in its middle age.In fact, WOMAD has expanded Read more ...
sue.steward
Ten o'clock at night and the WOMAD air felt as hot as Dakar preparing for Baaba Maal. Sadly, given this year's hugely expanded audience, it was hard to see the stage unless you know how to glide to the front like a snake (which years of festival practice have taught me). Though I still missed close views of the opening three songs and the singer’s acoustic guitar accompaniment, it was impossible not to hear his voice, even adjusted to unusually soft and mellow soulful tones rather than the familiarly sharp, declamatory style that pierces the heart.A slow start and build-up was a plan Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Late on Friday night at WOMAD, on the more intimate Charlie Gillett Stage in Charlton Park, there was an unusual cross-cultural treat. Ballaké Sissoko is one of Mali’s most accomplished kora players: not as well known as his Bamako next-door neighbour Toumani Diabaté and more firmly rooted in Manding musical tradition, but undoubtedly in the same class. Vincent Ségal is a brilliant French cellist who moves with consummate ease from the classical repertoire to free jazz. They are both technical virtuosi but neither of them plays to the gallery.
In a manner consonant with some of the most Read more ...
howard.male
I’m pleased to report that the expression “like father like son” becomes more applicable to Vieux Farka Touré with each album he makes. But perhaps I should qualify that statement. It’s not about Vieux slavishly imitating the legendary Malian blues man’s unique guitar style, or becoming in any way a tribute act. But what The Secret represents is a certain maturing of his style and a noticeable calming down of his dependence on the kind of rock clichés and histrionics that can still mar his live performances.Also there are fewer nods towards hip hop or the dance floor. Instead the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Dan, a tall ginger streak of entitlement, had an issue with the hygiene. Channel 4 were about to lift him out of a five-star hotel in the Gambia and send him off to see how the other half lives. “They’re not going to be as clean as us,” he predicted nervously. Dan worried that he might have to survive sans moisturiser and hair gel. He hadn’t been warned about the lack of cutlery. And of loo roll. Nor that you approached each problem with the same manual solution.Who volunteers to make themselves look like utter tits for these films? Luxury-loving Londoners is who, said Tamsin Greig, slumming Read more ...
howard.male
Gagner l’argent Francais (which translates as “to earn French money”) begins, like any other West-targeted West African album, with the pitter-patter of tiny congas and some delicately picked kora. But then, two minutes in, a bright stab of reverb-heavy keyboard heralds the entrance of grungy rock guitar and drums. It’s a bold way to open an album in that it may alienate some of the Radio 3 Late Junction world music demographic. But it isn’t the first time Mamani Keita has put before her audience challenging and innovative music. I have particularly fond memories of Electro Bamako, her 2001 Read more ...
howard.male
Several of my favourite tracks of 2010 were on Tradi-Mods vs Rockers. This was a musically audacious project in which a bunch of Western pop and rock musicians dared to unpick the intricate fabric of some Congolese bands who were already making some definitively funky music of their own. The question that arose while I was reacquainting myself with this double CD yesterday, was how were these mostly cut'n'paste studio confections - made in the absence of the musicians that inspired them - going to be recreated live with the involvement of those very same musicians?I expected it would be a Read more ...
david.cheal
Paul Simon is now nearly 70 years old and as he walked onto the Hammersmith Apollo stage last night it struck me that he is beginning to look like the little old man he will eventually become: still nimble, enviably trim, but nevertheless, he was noticeably older and more fragile-looking than when I last saw him five years ago. The second thing that struck me was a certain weariness in the opening songs - a mechanical quality to the playing, and a concomitantly flat atmosphere. The opening song, “Crazy Love Vol II”, was ploddy, while “Dazzling Blue”, from his new So Beautiful or So Read more ...
Joe Muggs
This is where the delirium kicks in. Tired but happy, the attendees started the third day of Sónar festival slightly boggled by how to pick and choose from the strange delights on offer. Saturday was when the true musical variety of the festival was displayed: straight-up hip hop to eye-popping South African tribal dance displays, balmy ambient revivalism to apocalyptic techno, heartbroken electronica to deranged prog rock: it was all on offer...If day one was a warm-up, and day two when the energy levels peaked, this was where we just got swept along in the sheer diversity of the festival Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The adult craving for education isn't a well that film-makers visit often. Educating Rita gave Willy Russell his finest cinematic hour. Say what you like about Kate Winslet’s concentration camp guard in The Reader, but such was her love of a good book at least she learned to read. The First Grader, set in the dusty Kenyan outback, revisits the subject, but there all similarities stop. It tells the true story of a one-time freedom fighter who in 2003 arrived at his local school demanding to take up the government’s offer of free primary education. Unlike most new students, Kimani N'gan'ga Read more ...