“I used to hear the guys singing acapella at my grandmother’s shebeen (illegal ‘booze shop’) in her back yard and grew to love music from there. I met some real characters. I made my own guitar out of a paraffin tin and fishing lines”
Read more "Vusi Mahlasela – Afrofolkist"This duo’s haunting music, inspired by the melancholia of the Portuguese soul, is refracted through the prism of the spaghetti western. They create open musical spaces in which to contemplate where fatalism meets fatality.
Read more "Dead Combo – Tales from Way Out West"Last night at the Barbican, Femi confirmed to an international audience what Nigerians have long known: Femi is a major star in his own right and has long since stepped out from the long shadow cast by his father.
Read more "Femi Kuti – Live at the Barbican"Earlier this evening, master afrobeat drumer Tony Allen played a flawless gig although his collaborators were rather less reliable
Read more "Tony Allen – Live at the Barbican"While Africa is full of elected officials who wish they were kings, Femi is the heir to his father’s throne but does everything in his power to deserve his good fortune. He practices longer, works out harder, prepares more rigorously and generally goes the extra mile in everything he does as a musician.
Read more "Femi Kuti – Live at the Shrine (DVD)"I have practically made a second job out of going to cafes on the Mediterranean and all I ever hear is Europop of the basest kind. In a perfect world, the music on this CD would accompany your mint tea/retsina/tinto verano/limoncello delete as appropriate. So make your own Med cafe in your living room with […]
Read more "V/A – The Rough Guide To Mediterranean Cafe Music"After the famine comes the feast. Coinciding with the Fela festivities at the Barbican, this Afrobeat collection has distinguished itself in a suddenly crowded field with two unique selling points…
Read more "V/A – Essential Afrobeat"He claims that making one of the biggest hits of recent times, ‘Yéké Yéké’, credited with blowing open the ethnic dance fusion flood gates, was the kind of happy accident that only the major record labels could conspire to do. All that is in the past though as we catch up with Mory Kante, modern-day […]
Read more "Mory Kante – The Reluctant World Star"Coming out of Ed Simpson’s band, Davide Mantovani went on to form Polaris. We catch up with him as part of our season of interviews with the artists at the London Jazz Fringe Festival
Read more "London Jazz Fringe Festival – Polaris"Femi Kuti has been as blessed by the prodigious talent running through his veins as he has been cursed by living in a creative world circumscribed by everyone’s expectations of him as the son of the extraordinary Fela Kuti.
Read more "Femi Kuti – Africa Shrine"
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