New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
One Caribbean!
CHRIS SEARLE is transported by a superfine tribute to James Baldwin
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
ANA ISABEL NUNES points to the empowering legacy of Augusto Boal’s Theatre Of The Oppressed
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE review Cottontail, Memoir of a Snail, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and Captain America: Brave New World
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by an account of the long history of Catholic Church’s involvement in espionage
ROGER McKENZIE welcomes an important contribution to the history of Africa, telling the story in its own right rather than in relation to Europeans
Neil Charles Dark Days Quartet
Tribute to James Baldwin
Cafe Oto, Dalston London
I REMEMBER being immersed in reading the first explosive 100 pages of James Baldwin’s epochal novel, Another Country, as I rode on a Greyhound bus to take part in the massive Poor People’s Campaign demonstration in Washington DC in July 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Baldwin’s words about racist oppression and the life and suicide of the jazz drummer, Rufus Scott, were a profound message of their times. So I was determined, now in 2024, to hear Neil Charles’s Dark Days Quartet in Dalston’s Cafe Oto, celebrating Baldwin’s centenary.
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An exploration of Baldwin’s writing and travels that overlooks his political radicalism does no service to him or the movement says JENNY FARRELL
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