Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Listening to the machines made him want to conduct them!
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to saxophonist, composer and orchestrator JULIAN SIEGEL
Jacquard lace-making machines, 1968; Julian Siegel, 2018
[Ages/CC; Schorle/CC]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
I’VE always argued that jazz grew and bloomed out of multiple acts of work.
The great blues singers like Bessie Smith (Washwoman’s Blues) or Big Bill Broonzy (Plowman’s Blues) sang about their aversion to alienating forms of labour, and some of the earliest jazz recordings invoked hard-working lives, including New Orleans pioneers Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet in Coal Cart Blues — where Armstrong sings of his boyhood hard labours of hauling sacks of coal — or trumpeter Freddie Keppard’s Chicago cattle abattoir narrative, Stockyard Strut, or Joe “King” Oliver’s paean to all Windy City workers, Working Man Blues.
Even early Duke Ellington tracks like Stevedore Stomp told of the travails of Harlem-based dockworkers.
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This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF
CHRIS SEARLE picks his favourites
Two new releases from Burkina Faso and Niger, one from French-based Afro Latin The Bongo Hop, and rare Mexican bootlegs