MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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A joyful reimagining of Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece
DAN NOLAN thoroughly enjoys a flawed but heartfelt rendition of the politically charged song cycle, performed by an exciting jazz orchestra that’s bursting with talent
Nu Civilisation Orchestra in full swing
[Tatiana Gorilovsky]
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Nu Civilisation Orchestra: What’s Going On
Royal Festival Hall, London
THERE has been plenty of focus on the politics of What’s Going On this year, as Marvin Gaye’s crowning achievement turns 50. Soaked in the blood of war, of racial hatred, poverty, struggle, and a crumbling ecology, there’s likely no better expression of our current predicament than the one he put on record in Detroit and West Hollywood five decades ago.
As with so much great political art, its relevance is sustained more by the questions it asks than any concrete answer it gives; the album never really finds the solution to its title’s query except to reaffirm it as a statement — on telling harsh truths, and offering solidarity to those suffering through them.
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