The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
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Sensational salsa session
Ran Kan Kan
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
New releases from Ibex Band, Lucy Dacus, and Various Artists
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire
WILL STONE appreciates an artist who can swerve from industrial noise to clubby trance pop without missing a step
Ran Kan Kan + Gerardo y su Rambacha
Old Fire Station, Oxford
RAN KAN KAN have been stalwarts of the Oxford music scene and a magnet for the city’s best budding salsa musicians since 2011.
Tonight, they've put together a fantastic bill, beginning with a masterclass in rumba dance from Ariel Rios, followed by a chance to put new-found skills to work with a performance by Gerardo y su Rambacha.
This powerful act play authentic Cuban rumba, a mesmerising and evocative art form viscerally stripped down to drums and voice. In rumba, the “traditional” — at least by modern Western standards — relationship between these two is reversed, with vocal chants providing a repetitive rhythmic base for the freer and more varied, even melodic, phrasing of the drums.
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