Chris Searle speaks to former bandmate CHRIS BISCOE about the committed socialist jazzman, Mike Westbrook

STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards

by Monica Manolachi

New releases from Joe Wilkes, Honey and the Bear, and Hannah James and Toby Kuhn

While people keep pigeons around the world today, new evidence suggests this tradition is millennia old, says WILL SMITH

Reviews of T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Tamikrest, and Dub Colossus  

BOB NEWLAND recommends a radio play about the covert action against the apartheid regime

Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album

BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states

WILL PODMORE admires an account of the liberation of Berlin that overthrows the conventional US army-inspired account

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a highly useful guide to the benefits and hazards of different approaches to immigration

PAUL DONOVAN recommends a thorough explanation of why Starmer’s Labour travels light on policy, and bending to knee to neoliberalism

KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music

CAYENNA PONCHIONE-BAILEY celebrates a new recording of all the surviving works of a great female composer and equal of Mozart

This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE

The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer

MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja

ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert

CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician

by John Chinaka Onyech

TONY BURKE speaks to Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist FATOUMATA DIAWARA

SUSAN DARLINGTON is fascinated by an exhibition that explores a colonial display to reveal the overlooked histories of migration and protest that continue to shape Bradford today

FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within

KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters