The surprising sounds of the Silk Roads
In the 1980s, Uzbekistan was a unique cultural meeting place. During the second world war, the Central Asian country became home for many...
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- Sep 12
Jaubi: a transcendent fusion of raga and jazz
“Raga is emotion. It’s music that can transform you from feeling happiness to feeling despair or vice versa,” says Ali Riaz Baqar. “And...
- Aug 13
‘It’s too raw’: comedians feel conflicted over using their routines to criticise Israel’s war on Gaza
On a hot Friday night in July, 120 people are gathered in the dark basement of a central London hotel, laughing raucously. They are...
- May 22
A moment that changed me: Should I laugh or cry? When I scattered my grandmother’s ashes, I did both
In October 2019, I was in India, standing by the dusty banks of the Ganges on a quest to spread my grandmother’s ashes. She hadn’t lived...
- May 2
Speed of Sound: Modu Moctar
Mdou Moctar isn’t one to sit still. Over the past decade, the Niger-born guitarist has been gigging almost constantly, honing his...
- Dec 29, 2023
From leather harnesses to sparkly lab coats: the best TV style of 2023
2023 has been another bumper year for TV costume departments. From the silk-lined luxury of Succession to the haute couture return of And...
- Oct 2, 2023
‘I’ve picked up 1.2m cigarette butts!’: five litter loathers who refuse to let it lie
On every street in Britain, you’re likely to find a piece of litter. It is estimated that 2m pieces of rubbish are dropped in the UK...
- Sep 22, 2023
Speakers Corner Quartet Step Into the Spotlight
In a corner of suburban South London, four musicians are hunkered in a dark room, sinking deep into a groove. On Moog synth and violin,...
- Sep 19, 2023
BCUC are finding strength in numbers
Not much comes close to the experience of watching BCUC live. The South African seven-piece have spent the past 20 years honing their...
- Jul 13, 2023
“Indo-Caribbeans are underrepresented”: How Windrush migration inspired a global club music movement
At 17, Riaz Bacchus was DJing on pirate radio stations in London when he stumbled on a genre of music that seemed to perfectly express...
- May 22, 2023
‘I didn’t even know men could get it’: the hidden impact of male postnatal depression
Seventy hours into the birth of his first child, Lewis was told that his wife needed to be rushed into surgery for an emergency...
- Apr 5, 2023
‘John Travolta was sizzling hot!’: an oral history of Grease
Forty-five years ago, audiences first glimpsed the sun-kissed, palm-lined campus of Rydell High, the school setting for the movie musical...
- Mar 27, 2023
‘It’s a rockstar album’: the UK jazz musicians marking five decades of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew
“We played for three days straight with no notes on the page and no repeats. There were 12 musicians in the room, just listening and...
- Jan 27, 2023
Farewell, Netflix password sharing
I used to watch an unhealthy amount of TV. A minimum of 24 shows per week for the best part of two years, to be precise, when I worked on...
- Jan 26, 2023
The one change that didn’t work: I deleted all my social media apps – and found myself bored
A year into the pandemic, in early 2021, I was spending most of my time online. I sat and I scrolled – on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram...
- Dec 28, 2022
‘I will be resisting the urge to watch so much TV’: the thing I’ll do differently in 2023
For two years, I watched a minimum of 24 TV shows every week. From Strictly Come Dancing to The Crown, BBC Four documentaries on canals...
- Nov 18, 2022
Blowing up: six of Britain’s new jazz musicians on making a living out of their passion
For much of the last decade, improvised music in the UK has been carving out its own path. Interweaving everything from saxophonist Nubya...
- Nov 16, 2022
‘The baddest technician’: how Don Cherry is still making jazz new
Nineteen fifty-nine was a pivotal year in jazz. In August, trumpeter Miles Davis released his landmark album Kind of Blue, which would go...
- Nov 14, 2022
How the jazz-dance underground has broken into the mainstream
For Ed Cawthorne, AKA producer and multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious, jazz came through the dancefloor. Finding his first love for...
- Oct 20, 2022
Work Sucks, I Know — Ammar Kalia on escaping the pigeonhole
“Another ‘race issues’ piece, is it?” A text pings from my older brother. We had been chatting about work, and I’d just sent him an...
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