Tag: music

BLUE NOTES ON A DESERT ISLAND

March 29, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of Blue Note Records, the most iconic and influential of jazz labels, not just for its incomparable music but also for its group-breaking album covers. To mark that anniversary, Blue Note is re-releasing on vinyl 100 of its greatest albums (it was going to be 75 to coincide with the anniversary, but they found it impossible to squeeze their favourites down that […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: jazz, music

THE DEVIL’S TUNES AND THE MUSIC OF ANGELS

December 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The devil has the best tunes? Perhaps. But the music of angels can be damn fine too. So, here is a Christmas soundtrack splicing some of my favourite gospel tracks with songs in which the devil pops up (most of which derive, of course, from the blues/gospel tradition). For the music of the angels I could easily have created a whole soundtrack simply of Mahalia Jackson songs, but I have restricted myself to just two, which open and close the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, gospel, music, religion

TO BE BEWITCHED

August 18, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There are few musical instruments that can bewitch quite like a cello. I have been learning to play it, on and off, for almost a decade. Over the past year, as I have been finishing a book, it has been more off than on. Now, with the book safely tucked in bed, I can pick up a bow again. So, it seems a good time to put together a selection of my favourite cello pieces. It is in three parts. […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: cello, classical music, jazz, modernism, music

DING DONG! WHEN PROTEST SONGS WEREN’T DEAD

April 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

So, those who despise Margaret Thatcher for her vindictiveness and spitefulness want to celebrate her death by propelling into the charts a song about the death of a witch. Those who laud Thatcher for her supposed love of freedom want to ban that song. And the BBC settles on a cackhanded ‘compromise’ by censorsing the song while pretending it is doing no such thing. Nothing, perhaps, could better express the inanity of contemporary politics than the crass, puerile controversy around […]

Categories: Britain, Culture & Books • Tags: british politics, margaret thatcher, music, protest songs, protests, thatcherism

THE WEARY BLUES GO FORTH

January 27, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Last month, in The Weary Blues, I set out my 20 favourite blues tracks, mainly from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, the two traditional homes of the blues. Over the past half century the blues have travelled well beyond their origins and become anything but traditional. So here is a brief attempt to trace that journey. As ever, this is a personal, eclectic, even eccentric collection. There are 20 tracks split into three groups. The first group comprise singers whose […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, mali, music, world music

THE WEARY BLUES

December 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

. I have lately been re-reading a lot of Langston Hughes, one of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance. I had forgotten how much I liked his poem ‘The Weary Blues’: . Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway. . . . He did a lazy […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, langston hughes, music

LONDON CALLING

October 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Last month I posted my collection of favourite songs about New York. Now it’s London’s turn. Like the previous list, this one is personal, eclectic, even eccentric. Some great tracks (from Madness, Bowie, T Rex, the Jam, Blur, Ian Dury, etc) are missing – I had room only for 20. Despite the title of the post (and the image) London Calling is not on the list. I don’t much like it. (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais is, on the other hand, […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: london, music

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

September 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

On the anniversary of 9/11, here is a playlist of my 20 favourite songs about New York. Given that no city can boast as great a back catalogue, there are many tracks that I have been forced to leave out – Public Enemy’s ‘A Letter to the New York Post‘, for instance, the Ramones’ ’53rd and 3rd’, Ben E King’s ‘Spanish Harlem’, Billie Holiday’s ‘Autumn in New York City’, to mention but four – and there will be many more […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: 9/11, music, new york

LISTENING TO THE BANNED

August 19, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the week in which three members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned at the end of what was effectively a show trial in Moscow, it is worth flagging up this album of music by artists who have been banned, censored or imprisoned in their homeland. It is produced by the Norwegian artist Deeyah and Freemuse, an organization campaigning for freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide.

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: free speech, freedom struggles, music

TAKIN’ THE A-TRAIN

July 1, 2012 by Kenan Malik

New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik presented this week a wonderful, sideways look at New York in his BBC Radio 4 documentary ‘Take the A-train’, a history of the A-train and of its importance to New York, to new Yorkers and to jazz. There is also a short video cut of Gopnik’s documentary (with some superb photographs). Take the A Train was, of course, one of Duke Ellington’s great standards, and so here, for no reason other than it is a […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: jazz, music, new york

BABUR (NOT JUST) IN LONDON

June 14, 2012 by Kenan Malik

My name is Mo, short for Mohammed, I’m a second-generation immigrant cliché: Twenty-eight, disenfranchised, well educated. My mother is white, but I’m all Paki. My father owns a corner shop where I work, And I owe my allegiance to global Umma. My nation’s the Republic of Islam. So sings Mo, one of four would-be suicide bombers in a new opera Babur in London. Opera it may be, The Marriage of Figaro it ain’t. Babur in London explores issues of culture, identity, terrorism and history by […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: babur in london, islam, islamism, jeet thayil, music, muslims, opera

LLOYD BREVETT AND THE (OTHER) SOUNDS OF THE SIXTIES

May 5, 2012 by Kenan Malik

LLoyd Brevett, the great ska and rocksteady bassist, died on Thursday. He was one of the founders in 1963 of the Skatalites, the pioneers of ska, rocksteady and bluebeat. The group were together only for 18 months, but in those 18 months helped transform Jamaican music. Brevett went on to play with, and for, some of the greatest Jamaican bands and producers of the Sixties, including the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Prince Buster and Lee Perry. ‘All my bass lines from […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: music, ska

THE LONESOME DEATH OF TRAYVON MARTIN

March 21, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In 1963 Bob Dylan wrote ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, the story of the murder of a 51-year-old barmaid by the wealthy young tobacco farmer William Devereux ‘Billy’ Zantzinger, who eventually received a six month sentence for the killing. That sentence was handed down on the same day that Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech in Washington, at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dylan was one of the marchers. Returning […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: bob dylan, civil rights movement, hattie carroll, jim crow, music, racism, trayvon martin, usa

LAY MY BURDEN DOWN

September 1, 2011 by Kenan Malik

David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, the last of the great Delta bluesmen, who died this week:

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, david honeyboy edwards, delta blues, music

GIL SCOTT-HERON, 1949-2011

May 30, 2011 by Kenan Malik

One of the most memorable gigs that I have ever been to was Gil Scott-Heron at the Brixton Academy. Drinks, drugs and prison had ravaged both body and voice. But he could mesmerize like few others. He possessed a sharp, sardonic wit, an emotional palette of exceptional richness, and an ability to allow your spirit to take flight. He was undefinable, unique, inspirational. And nothing, perhaps, better expresses those qualities, and his attitude to life and to politics, than the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: gil scott-heron, jazz, music, poetry

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