STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
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Music review: Goran Bregovic, Royal Festival Hall
Goran Bregovic’s Weddings and Funerals Orchestra produce a gloriously exuberant Balkans sound which is taking the world by storm
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
JAN WOOLF relishes an extensive history of our long relationship to trees in Britain that underlines the current emergency
DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
THE ORIGINS of Goran Bregovic’s music are in the Roma brass bands who combine the scales and melodic structures of their Rajasthani roots with the military brass traditions of the Ottoman Empire and the Slavic culture of the former Yugoslavia, taking in Jewish and Arabic influences along the way.
Unique and with universal appeal, it is a living, breathing testimony to the beauty of cultural interaction and evolution. And no one has done more to bring it to global attention than Mr Bregovic.
His latest project Three Letters from Sarajevo unpicks three specific elements that make up the city’s musical culture — Jewish, Islamic and Christian — and, through a focus on their different styles of violin playing, expands them out to their full glory, before recombining them in a glorious synthesis. Marxist musicology at its finest.
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