Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
Latest editorial
Mesmerically soothing soundscapes
GEORGE FOGARTY highly recommends the Darbar Festival at the Barbican
VIRTUOSOS: Ramana Batachandran and Sabir Khan
[Rehmat Rayatt/Barbican]
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
New releases from The Mountains Goats, Ed O’Brien, and YHWH Nailgun
ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
Sabir Khan and Ramana Batachandran
The Darbar Festival
Barbican Centre
DARBAR is a musical scale within the classical Indian tradition, used as a basis for ragas, improvised pieces of music around a melodic framework.
But it refers also to the overall tradition and heritage of the music, a heritage the Darbar festival has now been bringing to London for 16 years.
The festival was founded in memory of Gurmit Singh Ju Virdee, a master tabla teacher born in the Punjab, and raised in Kenya, who moved to Southall in the 1970s where he would teach tabla classes to as many as 50 students at a time, before eventually settling in Leicester.
Similar stories
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
GEORGE FOGARTY is dazzled by a breathtakingly skillful puppet version of Shakespeare’s greatest love poem
WILL STONE witnesses an experimental piano concerto inspired by the work of a young Jewish victim of the Nazis
As part of the 2025 London Jazz Festival Rich Mix offered intriguing sessions titled 'Persian Jazz,' CHRIS SEARLE was there