WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
‘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
[www.freshsoundrecords.com] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
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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CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Ethiopian vocalist SOFIA JERNBERG
