Tag: The Alchemist

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It speaks to the plethora of racist caricatures and epithets which proliferated in the United States that the golliwog rag doll with its black skin, frizzy hair and blood-red lips has been described by the Jim Crow Museum as the 'least known' of the group. That certainly wasn't the case when I grew up in England, where the golliwog...

The saxophonist Jorga Mesfin grew up in a house full of jazz records, immersed in the melodies of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and the organist Jimmy Smith, the dolorous vocalist and krar player Kassa Tessema who was the focus of one of those Éthiopiques volumes which recuperated the efforts of Amha Records and Kaifa Records during the golden age...

In the year of 2023 artists from Tyla, Bad Bunny and NewJeans to Vagabon, Tems and Sofia Kourtesis continued to redefine the borders of contemporary pop, while Cassandra Miller covered Beethoven's 'Heiliger Dankgesang' and Arvo Pärt looked back a couple of centuries to a 'tiresome footling little Anglican parson' as the Estonian minimalist reworked his Littlemore Tractus. Familiar faces...