To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Mesmerically soothing soundscapes
GEORGE FOGARTY highly recommends the Darbar Festival at the Barbican
VIRTUOSOS: Ramana Batachandran and Sabir Khan
[Rehmat Rayatt/Barbican]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
Sabir Khan and Ramana Batachandran
The Darbar Festival
Barbican Centre
DARBAR is a musical scale within the classical Indian tradition, used as a basis for ragas, improvised pieces of music around a melodic framework.
But it refers also to the overall tradition and heritage of the music, a heritage the Darbar festival has now been bringing to London for 16 years.
The festival was founded in memory of Gurmit Singh Ju Virdee, a master tabla teacher born in the Punjab, and raised in Kenya, who moved to Southall in the 1970s where he would teach tabla classes to as many as 50 students at a time, before eventually settling in Leicester.
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