Latest Issue

The Master

Tony MacMahon

'To have crossed his path as a listener was enriching; to have had him as a mentor was unforgettable,' writes Tony MacMahon of the uilleann piper Séamus Ennis. In New York and Dublin in the 1960s, MacMahon lived with, played with and learned from Ennis, and here he recalls some of the rituals and skills of the artist that made him unique.

A Whole New Thing

Alice Echols

Alice Echols tells the forgotten story of the daring, cross-racial experimentation that happened across rock, funk and disco during the 1970s.

After Franco

Kasongo Musanga

From the 1950s until the 1980s, Franco Luambo Makiadi and his TPOK Jazz orchestra profoundly shaped the sound of African music across the continent, and subsequently the popular music of the world through artists such as Paul Simon and Talking Heads. Yet Franco is little known outside Africa and his 1,000 compositions are hardly represented on recordings. Now just over twenty years since Franco’s death in 1989, Kasongo Musanga tells the story of ‘The Sorcerer of the Guitar’, from whose shadow Congolese music is still emerging.

Ghost Story

Tim Lawrence

Arthur Russell, cellist and composer, was born in 1951. In 1973, he moved to New York City and lived in the same East Village apartment for almost twenty years. A recent revival of interest in his music has manifested itself in several recordings, a film documentary and a biography entitled Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–1992 by Tim Lawrence. Here, Lawrence tells the story of the composer’s final work, World of Echo. Russell died of AIDS on 4 April 1992.