MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Four minds meet as one in joyful synthesis of Arab music and jazz
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
Anouar Brahem
Blue Maqams
(ECM)
BLUE Maqams is a brilliant amalgam of the Arab and jazz musical traditions, made by four veteran virtuosi who, despite or by virtue of the diversity of their origins, were born to make music together.
The quartet consists of oud player Anouar Brahem from Tunisia, Chicago-born drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Dave Holland, who hails from Wolverhampton, and Django Bates from Beckenham.
Brahem, writing about his first youthful encounters with jazz, emphasises its syncretic power.
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