Latest editorial
GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
‘Yes to everything for the many’
MIQUEAS ‘PIKI’ FIGUEROA, lead singer and songwriter of one of Venezuela’s top hip hop groups, tells Michal Boncza what Bituaya are all about
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
ANDY HEDGECOCK is charmed by a skilful adaptation of Tove Jansson’s lyrical portrait of three generations of a family, overcoming grief
ALEX HALL treads warily through a messy, dialectical struggle fought in the mundane machinery of driving licences, criminal law, and birth registries
MICHAL BONCZA, FIONA O’CONNOR, JAMES WALSH and ANGUS REID review Atlas of Disappearance, Love Me Tender, Bouchra, and This Tempting Madness
Flitting between myth and the modern world, Medusa is determined to steer clear of human affairs. When her resolve crumbles, the result is petrifying in every sense
ALTHOUGH separated by a telephone line “Piki” Figueroa’s calm and eloquent yet emotionally charged take on art, politics and the Bolivarian process is utterly compelling.
His band’s name Bituaya is a generic one for the Venezuelan root vegetables “you make soup with,” he tells me and it’s an apt summation of the band’s quest for the ancestral soul of the continent they call by its native name of Abiayala.
The band evolved in the Tiuna el Fuerte (“Fort”) political and cultural collective in the working-class neighbourhood of El Valle in Caracas.
Similar stories
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
GEORGE FOGARTY reflects on the politics expressed at this year’s festival where contradictions abound, but the music kept it real
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger