black culture
Nick Hasted
This is a tribute to a forgotten hero, gay black Quaker Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo), driving force behind the 1963 March on Washington, the vast peaceful protest that sanctified Martin Luther King as his oratory seemed to lift black America towards a Promised Land.King (Aml Ameen) is a cautious rising star here, a flawed figure who betrays Rustin early on, as his sexuality proves his Achilles Heel to Civil Rights movement enemies including the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins (grizzled Chris Rock) and black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (Jeffrey Wright, pictured below). Produced by the Obamas’ Higher Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
It’s closing time somewhere in the East End. Nah, not the pub, but at a small local shop. Inside, Denise is banging around with some big pans, while Carly is packing up the flowers. Their business is coming to an end and they are about to hand over the keys to the next tenant.It’s also the climax of Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s epic Death of England tetralogy, which began in early 2020, and has been one of the best new writing series recently staged at the flagship National Theatre. But while earlier episodes – Death of England, Delroy and Face to Face – featured the men, this time it’s the Read more ...
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi, a young Mauritian girl who lives in the novel’s titular village slum and is forced to give up school in order to work for the wealthy De Grandbourg family, Riambel focuses on the "other" side of Mauritius, the one not depicted on tourist postcards.Intertwined with Noemi’s poignant and beautifully recounted life story are those of other women, former enslaved mothers, daughters, sisters and girls. From beyond the Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Dance lovers with no access to a major city could feel genuinely hard done by were it not for Dance Consortium. This sainted organisation works to bring a company from overseas each autumn to a dozen or so large-scale theatres across the UK and Ireland – theatres whose dance offering might otherwise rarely extend beyond the latest Strictly spin-off.This year it’s the turn of Ailey 2, the younger sibling of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater that barely three weeks ago was garnering glowing reviews at Sadler’s Wells. And while it’s neither uncommon nor new for a major dance company to field a Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The work of the double Pulitzer-winning Black American dramatist Lynn Nottage has thankfully become a fixture in the UK. After its award-winning production of Sweat, the Donmar will stage the UK premiere of her Clyde’s next month, and MJ the Musical, for which she wrote the book, arrives in the West End in March 2024.But not to be missed right now is her 2018 play Mlima’s Tale at the Kiln. Out of a magazine article about the ivory trade, Nottage has spun a Brechtian yarn of corruption and mendacity, minus the Verfremdung and with a surprising number of laughs, that suggests a whole world Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s been a lot of flak flying around this album already. It’s mainly been triggered by Burna Boy’s public activities which have included disparaging the wider Afrobeats music scene of West Africa, and some somewhat overcooked expressions of his pan-Africanist philosophy.And this has then been mapped onto his seventh album itself, with various suggestions that he’s hit creative stagnation reflecting embitterment or backstage political shenanigans. If you listened to it blind, though, it would be hard to square it with this scenario. Yes, the artwork and presentation is more swaggering and Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
A full house, and television cameras: rarer events at the Proms than they used to be (or should be). Both lent a sense of occasion to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s visit to the Royal Albert Hall with their Conductor Laureate, Tadaaki Otaka. The cameras (for a BBC Four broadcast on Friday) had descended not for Cardiff’s long-serving Japanese stalwart – who first led BBC NOW in 1987 – but for Elena Urioste’s performance of the Violin Concerto by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The Proms first hosted this work to considerable acclaim in 1912, just weeks after the African-British composer’s Read more ...
India Lewis
Small Worlds, the second novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, is a delight: a book with a real feeling for sound and dance, and a sense of place from London to Ghana and back again. It’s a story of a first romance, the intricacies of family life, the importance of music, and the difficulties still faced by people of colour in the UK today. While it may not seem like it will set the world on fire, it’s a beautifully observed picture of the twists and turns of life and of love.Our protagonist, Stephen, is a young black trumpet player, destined for great things until he flunks his exams, forcing a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s been a good deal of discussion on “the socials” about how much Janelle Monáe’s sexy image is a new thing or a big deal.Casual viewers, still stuck on the sharp-suited, theatrically coiffured look with which she crashed into public consciousness in 2010, have acted shocked at her going almost or completely unclad in recent videos and shoots. In turn fans have pointed out the obvious – that her outré sense of fashion and costumery has manifested in many ways over the years, including in plenty of flesh-baring. However, while her looks may have pre-empted it, artistically Monáe Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There is a truly fascinating story to be written about the hidden Punjabi influence on UK bass music. Maybe it’s natural for kids growing up with the huge booming sounds of dhol and tabla drums to gravitate to big bass speakers, but some of the most unique and influential producers in the interface between reggae, grime and dubstep have been from Punjabi backgrounds: notably Kromestar, V.I.V.E.K. and brothers Sukh Knight and Squarewave.And perhaps most successful of all is Pahuldip Singh Sandhu from Newham, aka Steel Banglez. SB first made his mark in grime, and has effortlessly adapted to Read more ...
Glory to Sound: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Brighton Festival 2023 review - a reggae rebel's life in music
Nick Hasted
Straight-backed at 70, Linton Kwesi Johnson wears the smart garb of a British Caribbean elder – trilby, cream jacket, West Indies maroon jumper and tie, grey trousers, blue socks and grey shoes. His voice has resonant, slow-rolling authority befitting Britain’s pioneer, premier dub poet. He folds his legs, but raises a lecturing finger. Though relatively relaxed and ready to laugh, he shows, in attitude as much as posture, a stern, iron backbone.Marking his prose collection Time Come’s publication, LKJ has sold out the grand Theatre Royal for this talk and selection of laptop-played tracks Read more ...
David Nice
Two recent operas by women have opened in London’s two main houses within a week. Both have superbly crafted librettos dealing with gun violence without a shot being fired, giddyingly fine production values and true ensembles guided by perfect conducting. The main difference is that while Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence feels to me ice-cold musically, and not always coherent with dramatic or vocal possibilities, Jeanine Tesori’s Blue hits us in the guts when it matters most.The game-changer at the London Coliseum is that Blue (a reference to the colour of American police uniforms) features a cast Read more ...