If there’s a joy in translating artist biographies, which despite their mundane commercial purpose are often well considered and well written, it’s discovering something new and enticing. The No Format! label is a dependable source for such discoveries. I’m not a big connoisseur of Cuban music, but it’s always a boon to hear something young…
Simonobisick is a character from Blick Bassy’s remarkable novel Le Moabi Cinema. He spends his time hanging out with his mates in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon in West Africa. None of them have jobs, or much in the way of prospects. They sit around drinking large amounts of beer, dreaming of wealth, of bagging a…
TalkingGigs marry stripped down musical performance with conversation, stories, lyrics, anecdotes, images and video – a kind of musical theatre that engaging, insightful and entertaining.
With The Gotan Project, Christoph Müller and Eduardo Makaroff turned tango on its head. Now they’re doing it again, with the Plaza Francia Orchestra
In April 2019 I travelled to Japan. I took far too many photos. Here are just a few of them…
In this, the opening passage from my book Blick Bassy – 1958, I imagine the nocturnal reveries of Ruben Um Nyobè, the revolutionary leader of pre-independence Cameroun who was gunned down by the French army in September 1958
Three generations of poets guitarists sing of their hopes for the Sahara at the Taragalte Festival 2016 in Morocco
With the world’s media riveted to events in Washington, the West African nation of Mali might be forgiven for feeling a little abandoned in one of its darkest hours since independence. Last Tuesday January 17th at 9am a young jihadist by the name of Abdel Hadi al Foulani drove a pickup truck into a military…
If the master plan succeeds, Mbongwana Star could become the Trojan Horse that penetrates the bastion of the world’s indifference (and revulsion and paranoia) and lifts the curse to bring that creative power out of rue Kato, the Beaux Arts, and other parts of Kinshasa. “The Beaux Arts is like a town within a town,” says Renaud. “Mbongwana Star has started rehearsing there and there’s a correlation with visual artists, stylists, people working on logos etc. It’s this kind of electric movement, this new vibe in Kinshasa that we’re trying to mix in with the music and the image.”
“I think we’re lacking a lot of tolerance,” says Souad Massi, “and I think that we must give the power to the learned people in Islam… They’re the ones who will show us the way.”
