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6 days ago

Global music column – July

Keleketla! – Keleketla! Call and response is a key form in music, from west African drum circles to jazz and hip-hop. It’s a means of mus...

6 days ago

'What if my kids are scared of me?': Alex Brooker on life as a disabled dad

Last year, Alex Brooker was swimming in the cold waters of Lake Windermere, struggling to reach the shore. The comic and TV presenter beg...

Jun 30

‘It’s like we just fell on to this planet’: the rise of psych-rockers Khruangbin

Onstage, the Texan trio Khruangbin are a strange sight to behold. At their sold-out show at London’s near-5,000 capacity O2 Academy Brixt...

Jun 30

My pandemic epiphany: I loved becoming a fitness junkie

Ever since my gym teacher stood, arms folded, laughing at my inability as a four-year-old to tuck myself into a ball and perform a somers...

Jun 16

Bootsy Collins: 'We're all funky, just not all of us know it'

At the age of 17, William “Bootsy” Collins packed up his homemade bass guitar and left home to tour the world with James Brown. He was he...

Jun 16

Global Music Column – June

Siti Muharam: Siti of Unguja The Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar has historically been a meeting place of cultures, from the Indian ...

May 30

Lil Dicky on Dave: 'Everything the show says about my penis is true'

‘I couldn’t ignore this thing that was the driving force of my childhood and my neuroticism,” Dave Burd tells me over the phone from Los ...

May 26

The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 10, Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through the Grapevine

It can be hard to grasp the depth and breadth of Marvin Gaye’s career. He seems to have lived one of those kaleidoscopic lives that could...

May 21

The Zoom boom: how video-calling became a blessing – and a curse

Just before lockdown, 29-year-old Ala Uddin became ill with coronavirus-related symptoms and had to self-isolate in his London flat. “For...

May 18

Murder, mystery and a hit record: the unbelievable story of Ike White

Ike White had the kind of life that sounds too outrageous to be true. Given a life sentence for murder at the age of 19, he spent his tim...

May 11

How we made The Story of Tracy Beaker

Jacqueline Wilson, author I’d been writing children’s books for a while, but they had mostly disappeared without a trace. One day, I saw ...

May 11

'I'd join you always': how Gogglebox's Leon and June captured our hearts

Everything from the nightly news to emails from an online store we ordered an appliance from five years ago is desperate to tell us about...

May 8

Global music column – May

Place: Ecuador While most would name Colombia as the home of South America’s forward-thinking club scene, neighbouring Ecuador has quietl...

May 8

'Can Tony Soprano make me a better parent?': the lessons we've learned from lockdown TV

Relationships I am a Pisces, which – if you believe in the eminently sketchy world of astrology – means that my personality should be cat...

May 8

I wish more people would read ... Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

There is a particular danger in enthusing over a big book. Namely, of becoming one of those people found on university campuses everywher...

May 8

Hollywood's Jeremy Pope: 'Is there room for another black man like me?'

"Can all of us be in the same room at the same time?,” Jeremy Pope asks over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. It is over a month i...

May 4

Remembering Tony Allen, the pioneering Afrobeat drummer who inspired generations

Drumming is often the pursuit of power. Look to the controlled whirlwinds of classic rock or big band swing, the notion of a steady groov...

May 2

Tony Allen: the Afrobeat pioneer's 10 finest recordings

Fela Kuti: Roforofo Fight (Roforofo Fight, 1972) Roforofo Fight is the earliest cohesive expression of Tony Allen and saxophonist Fela Ku...

May 2

The extreme loneliness of lockdown: 'Even though my partner is here, I’m struggling to cope'

Two days before Ireland went into lockdown, David’s wife, Maureen, went into a hospice. He stayed there with her for 10 days until she di...

May 2

Gilles Peterson: ‘This period is going to be one of nostalgia'

This is every record collector’s wet dream,” says Gilles Peterson. The DJ and broadcaster is speaking over the phone from his east London...

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