MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

THE ORIGINS of Goran Bregovic’s music are in the Roma brass bands who combine the scales and melodic structures of their Rajasthani roots with the military brass traditions of the Ottoman Empire and the Slavic culture of the former Yugoslavia, taking in Jewish and Arabic influences along the way.
Unique and with universal appeal, it is a living, breathing testimony to the beauty of cultural interaction and evolution. And no one has done more to bring it to global attention than Mr Bregovic.
His latest project Three Letters from Sarajevo unpicks three specific elements that make up the city’s musical culture — Jewish, Islamic and Christian — and, through a focus on their different styles of violin playing, expands them out to their full glory, before recombining them in a glorious synthesis. Marxist musicology at its finest.

GEORGE FOGARTY relishes the music of black British artists that channels Carribbean, Latin and club sounds, along with contemporary west African radicalism

GEORGE FOGARTY falls under a spell of an unpretentious gathering that is as edifying as it is entertaining

GEORGE FOGARTY is stunned by the epic and life-affirming sound of an outstanding Palestinian musical collective
