Latest editorial
Alvaro Uribe is found guilty of witness tampering and procedural fraud, reports NICK MACWILLIAM
Steel drums make for a glorious sound
CHRIS SEARLE reviews Glass World by Rudy Smith Quartet (Stunt STU CD 17082)
On the anniversary of the implementation of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, ROGER McKENZIE warns that the legacy of black enslavement still looms in the Caribbean and beyond
Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestine only as long as Israel continues to massacre its inhabitants has been met with outrage, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London
RAMZY BAROUD explains why the world can no longer ignore Palestine
Starmer’s decision to suspend Diane Abbott yet again demonstrates a determination to maintain and propagate a hierarchy of racism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
A TRUE jazz pioneer is the Port of Spain-born (in 1943) Rudy “Two left” Smith who in the mid-’60s, when he arrived in Europe like thousands of other immigrant ships from the Caribbean, brought the vibrancy of his culture with him. Smith’s surprising and unique contribution was to make the steel pan a true and innovative jazz instrument.
The steel drum, which Trinidadian percussive love created from oil barrels discarded across the island by US-owned multinationals like Texaco, has its origins in west African musical artistry and the virtuosi of the kora, sansa (thumb piano) and balafon.
The beauty and excitation of its sounds would visit my ears every night in Tobago in the ’60s as I marked my students’ English essays. The steel band tent of Our Boys Steel Orchestra was 50 yards along from the flat I rented, and I would never tire of hearing the balladic and rhythmic artistry of the panbeaters’ notes.
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