The news that today is being celebrated as National Album Day has inspired me to post the following text on Nina Simone’s 1969 masterpiece Nina Simone and Piano! It’s a text that’s being lying dormant for a few years and now seems a good time to do something with it. The concept shouldn’t have been… Continue reading ppp: the personal, the political and the piano
Tag: politics
Nina Simone’s tribute to Martin Luther King – fifty years ago today
Fifty years ago today, Nina Simone and her band performed at Westbury Music Fair in New York. Three days had passed since the murder of Martin Luther King and Simone used her concert to stage an act of collective mourning and outrage. Below is a re-post of a 2013 entry from my blog So Transported:… Continue reading Nina Simone’s tribute to Martin Luther King – fifty years ago today
New essay on Robert Wyatt published
My essay ‘“Words Take the Place of Meaning”: Sound, Sense and Politics in the Music of Robert Wyatt’ has been published in The Singer-Songwriter in Europe: Paradigms, Politics and Place, edited by Isabelle Marc and Stuart Green (Routledge). ABSTRACT: When we speak of singer-songwriters we tend to consider voice as both literary tool and musical… Continue reading New essay on Robert Wyatt published
Pete Seeger, un hombre sincero
A piece by I wrote for PopMatters a few years back on Pete Seeger, who died yesterday. Pete Seeger is something of an enigma. On the one hand, he is a renowned veteran of the transnational folk music scene, a legendary figure who seems to have always been around. On the other, he remains somehow… Continue reading Pete Seeger, un hombre sincero
Fado article
An article by Naresh Fernandes on fado for Live Mint. Naresh interviewd me for the piece, during which process I was happy to discover his previous writing. Naresh is a journalist and author of the book Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age. There's a great blog to accompany that book, which also… Continue reading Fado article
Upcoming talk: A Dream Deferred
'A Dream Deferred: Nina Simone and the Work of Mourning' Tuesday, 19 November 2013, 16:15, Arts A155, University of Sussex I'll be giving a talk hosted by the Centre for American Studies, University of Sussex. This talk presents work from my recent book about the late singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone.… Continue reading Upcoming talk: A Dream Deferred
Víctor Jara: 40 years
It's forty years since the events that led to the murder of the Chilean singer, songwriter, theatre director and activist Víctor Jara (1932-1073). Here is a PDF of an article I wrote about Jara (and the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez) while researching my doctoral thesis. I was, and remain, as interested in Jara's posthumous career… Continue reading Víctor Jara: 40 years
Late Voice 