The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
What a Womad wants
GEORGE FOGARTY asks why the great music of the colonised isn’t accompanied by an equally great political discussion
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
Womad Festival
Chartlon Park, London
THE Womad Festival, now in it’s 42nd year, has always had a political edge. Indeed, the showcasing of artists predominantly from the majority world in the heartlands of their former colonisers could hardly avoid the traces of that relationship, and is pregnant with commentary on it, regardless of the extent to which it is explicitly articulated.
But explicitly articulated it often is, and a spirit of joyful defiance — of coloniality, of chauvinism, of borders and boundaries of all hues — is in many ways a defining characteristic of many of the acts here.
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