With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments.
Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is currently suing for alleged failure to repay £1.7 million in loans for ambitious recording and performance projects.
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Emily Saunders Moon Shifts Oceans (The Mix Sounds)
The musician Abel Selaocoe reaches out to the ancestors, African and European, continuing a journey that spans continents and centuries, an adventurer guided by love and respect for those who have departed, and yet nourish by the splendour of now.
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio shows is a conversation with Joe Boyd whose recent tome, published by Faber, is a magisterial sweep through global and popular music called And the Roots of Rhythm Remain.
TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW
https://www.mixcloud.com/MusicBoxRadioUK/the-arts-desk-with-joe-boyd-thursday-9th-january-2025/
The writer-director of 2017’s I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni, has come up with another scorcher, this time taking aim at Zambia’s social structures, in which women’s power can become petty tyranny. Nyoni’s Zambian scenarios are populated with “aunties” and “uncles” and the occasional “grandma”. These titles designate the elders of the kinship group, the leaders who speak for the rest. In the case of our heroine’s Auntie Christine, that means a non-stop stream of aggressive accusations.
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Hannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Mike Lindsay Supershapes: Volume 1 (Moshi Moshi)
The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-electronic rock tinged with exotica and Middle Eastern flavour. Very WOMAD, in other words.