Category Archives: Music

Music and Life: Telling it like it is

With Natacha Atlas on the cusp of releasing a new EP, The Inner and The Outer, the latest podcast in the series Telling It Like It Is presents a conversation with Atlas and long-term collaborator Samy Bishai.

Theatre, arts and culture

Theatre, arts and culture are under attack. Creatives, artists, institutions and structures which foster theatre, arts and culture are facing down the immediate effects of the Coronovirus pandemic while furloughed, without income or closed to the public. The delicate and fragile fabric of our national culture is unravelling to reveal a bleak future. Or isContinue reading “Theatre, arts and culture”

The Moon Shines Bright

Sam Lee is a celebrated folk singer, collector, interpreter and revivalist of old folk songs. With ‘The Moon Shines Bright’, Sam borrows from the Gypsy and traveller tradition a song which asks us to stop and see what our increasingly standardised world is doing to us. On ‘The Moon Shines Bright’ Sam’s joined by ElizabethContinue reading “The Moon Shines Bright”

Natacha Atlas – Strange Days

I heard a live preview of Natacha Atlas’s album STRANGE DAYS at an intimate gig in Blackheath earlier this summer. It was an extraordinary experience, hypnotic, transporting, musically accomplished, and unsettling too – a perfect metaphor for the times we live in. The album is out now, and its title – STRANGE DAYS – perfectlyContinue reading “Natacha Atlas – Strange Days”

Happiness

Happiness (below) is a short film made by Steve Cutts. It’s a masterpiece. We live in a society where the focus on well being and mindfulness is in the ascendant. It’s the natural corollary to lives lived in the shadow of an exploitative system – where what we buy is, we are told, what definesContinue reading “Happiness”