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
PLAZA FRANCIA: Tango’s long distance love affair
Category: Music & Culture
Article broadly about music, art and culture
An extract from my book Blick Bassy ‘1958’
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
MBONGWANA STAR – Kinshasa’s Afro-junk revolutionaries
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.”
CD SLEEVE NOTES – ‘Clychau Dibon’ by Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita
You don’t pair the greatest young harpist in Wales with one of the most innovative kora players from West Africa for the purposes of relaxation. Their music is too deep, full-blooded and fragile for that.
MUSIC AND JIHAD IN MALI – “Mali without music is an impossibility”
All the musicians I spoke to agreed; Mali without music would be like Egypt without cotton, a bird without wings, a man without a soul.
PHOTO ESSAY – Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita Live
Here’s a selection from a series of photo sessions I did in 2013 of Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita live in concert in Nottingham, Cardiff and Cardigan.
BOMBINO – Revving up beyond the sand
What’s more extraordinary however is Bombino’s fame at home. He’s become a bona fide head-turning airtime-hogging star in his own country, not just amongst the Touareg, who mainly live in Niger’s northern deserts, but amongst the youth of the entire nation. That’s something that no other Touareg artists has ever managed to do, not even Tinariwen.
KINSHASA SYMPHONY – The art of Haydn and debrouillardise
If the musicians in the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste are masters of individual survival, the orchestra itself is an epic example of debrouillardise, of thinking the impossible and then just doing it.
SONGHOY BLUES – “Without patience, nothing is possible”
Garba Touré and his guitar were a familiar sight on the streets of Diré, a dusty town on the banks on the Niger River, upstream from Timbuktu. But when armed jihadists took control of northern Mali in the spring of 2012, he knew it was time to leave.
TINARIWEN – Guitar poets in Nueva York
Ibrahim battles through the show, smiling only once. His grave immobile presence is like a challenge to the hip bubbling New York crowd. To do what? To imagine a simplicity and a silence that their city will never know.
