MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Sensational salsa session
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Ran Kan Kan + Gerardo y su Rambacha
Old Fire Station, Oxford
RAN KAN KAN have been stalwarts of the Oxford music scene and a magnet for the city’s best budding salsa musicians since 2011.
Tonight, they've put together a fantastic bill, beginning with a masterclass in rumba dance from Ariel Rios, followed by a chance to put new-found skills to work with a performance by Gerardo y su Rambacha.
This powerful act play authentic Cuban rumba, a mesmerising and evocative art form viscerally stripped down to drums and voice. In rumba, the “traditional” — at least by modern Western standards — relationship between these two is reversed, with vocal chants providing a repetitive rhythmic base for the freer and more varied, even melodic, phrasing of the drums.
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