MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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‘The music of human flesh’
CHRIS SEARLE talks with the Moscow-born Israeli saxophonist Lena Bloch about the release of and inspirations behind her album Rose of Lifta
SUPPORT FOR PALESTINE: Lena Bloch
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
JAZZ and poetry have always been comrades of culture. Remember Charles Mingus’s collaborations with Langston Hughes, Mike Westbrook’s versions of Blake or Evan Parker’s evocations of William Morris on his solo album Winn’s Win.
But the momentous beauty of tenor saxophonist Lena Bloch’s album Rose of Lifta and its kinship with the Palestinian laureate Mahmoud Darwish creates a sound both unique and an expression of what Darwish called “the music of human flesh.”
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