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
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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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