Jake Blount on his Afrofuturist folk climate eulogy: ‘What would music sound like when we’re dead?’
When Florida security guard George Zimmerman was acquitted over his shooting of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2013,...
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- Sep 12
Violinist 4stringz on manifesting success & the importance of representation
Composer and producer 4stringsz has had an innate connection with the violin for as long as he can remember. “The first time I picked one...
- Sep 9
Sudan Archives: ‘In so many places in the world the violin brings the party’
Brittney Parks is on a mission “to show the Blackness of the violin”, she says. As a child in Ohio, she learned to play the instrument by...
- Aug 16
‘Maybe we’ll become a genre’: Wu-Lu, the punky lo-fi hip-hop star moving fast to transcend labels
You can hear the screaming from across the street. Through the window of a Brixton skate shop, two drummers are pounding away at a kit on...
- Aug 2
Rimzee on the price of being an independent voice
“I have always been a hustler,” Rimzee says. “Music comes second because even though people say that your dream will eventually pay you,...
- Aug 2
‘The establishment didn’t know what to do with me’: Sanjeev Bhaskar on marriage, success and stereot
In 1995, 31-year-old Sanjeev Bhaskar was performing a two-week run of The Secret Asians, his comedy double act with the musician Nitin...
- Jul 4
‘I smoke weed and I go to strip clubs. But I care about people!’ Killer Mike Interview
"I definitely lead a non-politician life; I smoke weed and I go to strip clubs with my wife,” the rapper Killer Mike says with a laugh....
- May 31
Jamming with Jokerman: how Bob Marley and Bob Dylan’s songs powered hit musicals
It’s not often you get the green light from Bob Dylan to run riot with his songs. But for composer Simon Hale and playwright Conor...
- May 29
Sean Paul: ‘A new generation are making dancehall their own’
Sean Paul is a party-starter. Few artists have a back catalogue better primed for the dancefloor than the multimillion-selling Jamaican...
- May 24
Soul veteran Jean Carne: ‘Duke Ellington was a wonderful, grandfatherly gentleman’
At 21, the singer Jean Carne had uprooted her life in Atlanta, Georgia, to elope to Hollywood with jazz pianist Doug Carn. It was 1969,...
- May 16
‘We have to fight – and I’ll do my part’: John Legend on Roe v Wade, Kanye West and his mother’s add
When he was 15, John Stephens of Springfield, Ohio, entered an essay competition run by McDonald’s for Black History Month. Asked “How do...
- May 12
Richard Jacques: ‘Orchestral scores in games provide such a human connection for the player’
Unlike typical teens, composer Richard Jacques was an early riser. Waking up with the dawn chorus was a necessity — not because his...
- Apr 17
Tan France: ‘I was conditioned to think light skin was better’
When Tan France released his autobiography in 2019, it wasn’t the accounts of the constant racism he experienced growing up in Doncaster...
- Mar 29
Immanuel Wilkins Preaches the Word
“My work is the intersection between spiritual practice and Black aesthetics,” Immanuel Wilkins says. “The two symbols I draw from are...
- Mar 25
‘My music is singular to me’: Arooj Aftab, the brightest new star at this year’s Grammys
"Now I am a full-time artist, maybe I won’t just die of natural causes sitting at my office desk,” says a relieved Arooj Aftab. “Maybe...
- Feb 24
Jeremy Pope: ‘I’m in the healing business, since art can change the way that you think’
When Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s debut show of collaborative paintings premiered in 1985, it was panned by the critics....
- Jan 4
Music Always Remains : The Nubya Garcia Interview
Nubya Garcia is finally back on tour. After two years of coronavirus-related delays and endless rescheduling, the saxophonist and...
- Dec 3, 2021
‘Evolution is part of tradition’: musician Makaya McCraven on the future of jazz
Each day we have so many choices to make and we are constantly improvising them, just like playing jazz,” says the drummer-composer...
- Nov 24, 2021
Balwinder Singh Rana: the fearless anti-fascist who fought racism at work – then on the streets
Balwinder Rana was 16 when he first spoke to a white person. It was 1963, on a sunlit but freezing spring day, and he had just landed at...
- Nov 17, 2021
‘I reach a trance state. I’m almost sleepwalking’: the mystical jazz of Nala Sinephro
Under a cold, moonlit sky in south London’s Horniman Museum conservatory, Nala Sinephro is cradling her pedal harp like a child softly...