Music

The country and western singer Merle Haggard, who has died, is best known for The Fighting Side of Me, a song in which he expressed the feelings of American patriots against the Americans who opposed US involvement in Vietnam: I hear people talkin’ bad About the way we have to live here in this country An’ gripin’ ‘bout the way things oughta be... An’ I don’t mind ‘em switchin’ sides An’ standin’ up for things they believe in... When you’re runnin’ down my country, man You’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me. Thus he expressed the feelings of most US workers at the time in face of what was...

On Made In The Manor , his fifth album, East London emcee Kano weaves a number of distinct thematic threads into a vivid, vital whole. Much analysis of this record will undoubtedly focus on its “realism”, or “grittiness”, ascribing a social-realist intent to Kano's tales of working-class black life in East London. But that would not do the lyrical content here justice. In fact, there's an almost magical-realist quality to much of the writing. The titular "manor" is evoked as a kind of nostalgic, contradictory dream space, frozen in time as a snapshot of a particular point in Kano's childhood...

A concert by the controversial Israeli-born jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon has been cancelled by the Royal Northern College of Music on the spurious grounds of threats to “safety” of the audience. This followed a petition from the North West Friends of Israel calling for cancellation on the basis of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism. This attack on the principle of free expression should be condemned, particularly as it is part of a growing wave of actions by University authorities responding to speakers or acts that may cause controversy or protest by banning them. It also precedes government moves to...

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Many children have an acute sense of injustice, will feel righteous anger when they don’t get a “fair go” at an activity or when their opinion is dismissed by an adult. A child’s sense of injustice is egocentric but reasonable and it’s probably essential if the individual is to develop a wider sense of injustice in the world. From as long as I can remember I had that wider view. The root of it is in my family history, and specifically my mother’s recollections of her childhood. My mother’s parents were both from well-off backgrounds. Her father’s family were North Yorkshire coal merchants, her...

Articles: No quaint period piece (Review of Richard the 3rd by Clive Bradley) Bringing it all back home (Jimmy Roberts on Bob Dylan) Forgotten sounds (Maurice Dunstan) Download PDF

This year Notting Hill Carnival will be held on 24-25 August. In between the photographs of smiling policemen and the swathes of tourists, it’s important to remember Carnival’s history of anti-racism. In August 1958, there were riots in London and Nottingham after racist murders such as that of Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane. Young white men, numbering in the hundreds, attacked the houses of Caribbean residents on Bramley Road, West London. Oswald Mosley and other fascists were also spreading hatred. Claudia Jones was a journalist from Trinidad, a Marxist-feminist who had been jailed in the...

Labour and political songs have existed since the beginning of the 19th century ranging from worker and abolitionist songs to farmers’ laments and spirituals. The songs tended to appear in broadsides and song sheets as well as labour publications. By the beginning of the 20th century a tradition had been established of using songs for labour organising goals- the ‘Wobbles’ being the organisation most associated with this means of agitating and organising. Their first publication was ‘Songs of the workers: On the road in the jungles and the shops’ in 1909 . It was better known as “The Little...

Hollywood has a long history of taking a real person and creating fictionalised versions. ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘Sunset Boulevard’, and ‘The Godfather’ all did this. The Coen Brothers did it themselves in ‘Barton Fink’ and they have done it again in their new film — ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’. Llewyn Davis, a former merchant seaman, is a folk singer on the Greenwich Village scene in the New York of the early 60s. Dave Van Ronk was a real folk singer who also used to be a merchant seaman. There are a couple of nods to some other similarities but one of the great strengths of the movie is that Llewyn Davis...

A number of student unions have decided they will not allow Robin Thicke’s number one single “Blurred Lines” to be played in their commercial venues. The trend began at Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) where the song was removed from playlists in line with their “End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus” policy. This policy was democratically approved at an open meeting of around 600 students. According to the union’s Vice President, and National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts member, Kirsty Haigh, the song “promotes an unhealthy attitude towards sex and consent”. When other...