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Articles by Peter Culshaw
Medicine Festival 2026 review - the gathering of the new, but stylish hippies
Help secure the future of arts journalism In this era of algorithmic recommendation, opaquely sponsored content and AI slop, theartsdesk’s mission to preserve real journalistic and critical values has never been more important. If you like what you see here, please join us in this mission. Subscribing to the site will help us in our coming redesign and expansion. If you do this before the 9th September this will be at our guaranteed founder’s rate: your subs will never increase again.
theartsdesk Radio Show 38 - with film-maker and WOMAD originator Mark Kidel
Help secure the future of arts journalism In this era of algorithmic recommendation, opaquely sponsored content and AI slop, theartsdesk’s mission to preserve real journalistic and critical values has never been more important. If you like what you see here, please join us in this mission. Subscribing to the site will help us in our coming redesign and expansion. If you do this before the 9th September this will be at our guaranteed founder’s rate: your subs will never increase again.
the artsdesk in Fez: A global Sufi safari with added techno
It has a reputation as one of the Islamic world’s great spiritual cities, you feel the energy of the Sufi saints in the air. Yet it is also earthy, with the stinky leather making district, and mysterious - the architecture is introverted, behind some anonymous door in the medina there may be a fabulous palace. And just like the alleyways, nothing is strait-forward. The city is quite Scorpio, passionate, loves the hidden, and may sting you if you make the wrong move.
theartsdesk in Fez - a global Sufi safari with added techno
It has a reputation as one of the Islamic world’s great spiritual cities, you feel the energy of the Sufi saints in the air. Yet it is also earthy, with the stinky leather making district, and mysterious - the architecture is introverted, behind some anonymous door in the medina there may be a fabulous palace. And just like the alleyways, nothing is strait-forward. The city is quite Scorpio, passionate, loves the hidden, and may sting you if you make the wrong move.
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theartsdesk Radio Show 37 - Pete Lawrence of the Big Chill discusses the power of protest music and his new project This Is The Fire
This edition of Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio show features guest Pete Lawrence. Pete is one of the good guys - a positive force in the culture, as he says "my life's work is bringing people together".
theartsdesk in Fes - world music central
With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments. The Fes Festival came into existence as a response to the first Gulf War, given further impetus by 9/11 and is important in reflecting a more tolerant side of Islam, with lots of respect to other faiths.
the artsdesk in Fes - world music central
With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments. The Fes Festival came into existence as a response to the first Gulf War, given further impetus by 9/11 and is important in reflecting a more tolerant side of Islam, with lots of respect to other faiths.
theartsdesk Radio Show 36 - legendary producer Joe Boyd discusses his recent book on global music
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio shows is a conversation with Joe Boyd whose recent tome, published by Faber, is a magisterial sweep through global and popular music called And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW https://www.mixcloud.com/MusicBoxRadioUK/the-arts-desk-with-joe-boyd-thu... Boyd bridled when called a Zelig because “Zelig was just there and didn’t do anything” whereas he, au contraire, was definitely an active participant.
Medicine Festival review - sound and music healing in the depths of Berkshire
I had been softened up for the Medicine Festival by a recent visit to the global music extravaganza WOMAD – a trio of us met a guy called Paul aka SpriITman – an ex-IT expert who after a health crisis realised he was a healer. Bear with me on this. All three of us, no spring chickens, had health issues. I had been hospitalised for a couple of nights after a bad bike crash and couldn’t sleep on my shoulder, one of us had bad skin problems on her hands, and other had a damaged knee.
Medicine Festival review - the new New Age gathers in leafy Berkshire
Fia is a Swedish singer with a crystalline voice and a ear for a great melody. Her singalong choruses are not typical for a festival Friday night headliner, like getting the audience to join in with “Sit with your pain/ cradle it close/ and when you’re ready/ Let it go.” This had a hypnotic effect on the audience, more mass therapy than a having a good time.
theartsdesk Radio Show 35 - with writer/composer Amit Chaudhuri
Welcome to one of Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio shows, hosted by Music Box. Today’s guest is the celebrated essayist, novelist, music composer and singer Amit Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri became known for some strange juxtapositions of western and Indian ragas – a version of "Layla " or a Doors number can collide with Indian music to spectacular and usually charming effect.
'The music business was created for people like me who are not criminal enough to go to jail, and not mad enough to go to the nuthouse'. Sinéad O'Connor, 1966-2023
Morrissey was not the only one to point out the lack of support for her art for the last 30 years from mainstream companies and media. Now that she has passed she can safely be made a saintly legend. “In the middle ages, I would have been burnt as a witch” she told Peter Culshaw in their 2013 interview, republished below.
theartsdesk Radio Show 34 - with post-punk visionary Lu Edmonds
Welcome to the latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s occasional radio show, which normally has a global music focus. This week’s guest for the entire two hours is the musical cult hero and all-round good bloke Lu Edmonds. Lu has an unusual background, being brought up in Moscow and Caracas, and speaks Spanish and Russian. If you want someone with a widescreen take on pop and punk and post-punk music in the last 40 plus years, Lu is uniquely placed.
Park Jiha, Stone Nest, K-Music - timeless evocative East-West soundscapes
Even those with the vaguest most tangential connection to pop music will be aware that K-Pop is all conquering, and the likes of BTS and BlackPink are on some metrics the most successful of recent acts anywhere. But at the same time, there is also a growing awareness that there is a burgeoning Korean Indie and art music scene, the flames of which have been fanned by what has become one of London’s most interesting and enterprising annual festivals, K-Music.
Frida Kahlo Through Indian Classical Music, Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall review - a strangely effective meeting of cultures
This one sounded implausible. Frida Kahlo, the great (and fashionable – collected by the likes of Madonna) Mexican painter interpreted by Indian classical music at the Elgar Room in the Royal Albert Hall. It was, however, entrancing, made a curious sense, and was a different way of immersing yourself both in the music and paintings.
theartsdesk Radio Show 33: Ukraine special - musicians and artists direct from Ukraine, with co-host Anastasia Piliavsky
Culshaw has reported over the years on the Odessa Film and Jazz festivals for theartsdesk, and written for the Odessa Review, Songlines and the Guardian on Ukrainian music and film. He argues that Ukraine was becoming too attractive, democratic, hip and culturally and technologically innovative – and that such a flowering had to be stamped out by Russia before it spread. We also discuss whether World War 3 has actually started.
theartsdesk Radio Show 32: a conversation with Matt Johnson of The The
theartsdesk Radio Show 32: a conversation with Matt Johnson of The The | reviews, news & interviews theartsdesk Radio Show 32: a conversation with Matt Johnson of The The A two-hour chat with leading post-punk artist on fighting skyscrapers, an East End childhood, Johnny Marr and laziness by Peter CulshawSaturday, 06 November 2021 Matt Johnson: a 'Charming Man' Peter Culshaw’s occasional global music radio show returns with a two-hour conversation with one of the most innovative and enduring...
A Parigi con Manu Chao, in lotta col mondo
“Pig’s Alley” è il soprannome che le forze dell’ordine hanno dato a Pigalle, lo squallido quartiere parigino dove Manu possiede un piccolo monolocale sopra all’ufficio della Corida, il suo management. Siamo d’accordo di incontrarci lì. Appena girato l’angolo un uomo dalla pelle a chiazze, bianco quanto un orso polare per la mancanza di luce, inveisce contro di me per non aver preso il suo biglietto da visita che pubblicizza un night club nei paraggi.
theartsdesk Radio Show 31 - special guest: TV soundtrack maestro Dominik Sherrer
Peter Culshaw’s periodic global themed radio show is allowed back in the MusicBox Radio studio with special guest, the distinguished soundtrack composer Dominik Sherrer. Dominik’s latest hit series was The Serpent, the dark tale of Charles Sobraj, the “Bikini Killer” or “The Serpent” who killed young often lost, idealistic Western travellers mainly in Bangkok in the 1970s, but also elsewhere on the hippy trail east. Sobraj drugged and killed many travellers.
theartsdesk Radio Show 31 - special guest: TV soundtrack maestro Dominik Scherrer
Peter Culshaw’s periodic global themed radio show is allowed back in the MusicBox Radio studio with special guest, the distinguished soundtrack composer Dominik Scherrer. Dominik’s latest hit series was The Serpent, the dark tale of Charles Sobhraj, the “Bikini Killer” or “The Serpent” who killed young often lost, idealistic Western travellers mainly in Bangkok in the 1970s, but also elsewhere on the hippy trail east. Sobraj drugged and killed many travellers.
London Bulgarian Choir, Kings Place review - dark Slavic tales in waves of sound
So, blinking, after too much isolation, into a spring evening for a first live indoor gig for over a year was always going to be exciting, if just for novelty value. But for a gentle breaking-in to live music, the London Bulgarian Choir was an inspiring choice. Having 26 singers on stage is an achievement at the best of times. In the excellent acoustics of Kings Place the choir somehow managed to oscillate between the earthy and the unearthly in waves of sound.
GogolFest:Dream review - the best music festival of the summer?
GogolFest:Dream in Kherson, somewhere near the Crimea in Ukraine was the music festival of the summer. Admittedly, in my case and for many, having missed out on WOMAD, Glastonbury, Fez, and others it was the only festival of the summer, and the bar didn’t have to that high to satisfy a festival junkie in need of a fix. It was, in any case, a fascinating event, featuring not merely some of the best bands of Eastern Europe, but theatre, lots of opera, and assorted talks and seminars.
theartsdesk Radio Show 30 - podcast on Malcolm McLaren with Paul Gorman, his biographer
This episode of Peter Culshaw’s episodic global music radio show is a celebration of the life and times of Malcolm McLaren, visionary and provocateur, who died 10 years ago.
theartsdesk Radio Show 29 - Morricone, Moroccan psychedelia and Sudanese techno
theartsdesk Radio Show 29 - Morricone, Moroccan psychedelia and Sudanese techno New, re-released and just damn fine music from around the planet by Peter CulshawSaturday, 11 July 2020 Nayda fron Bab L'Bluz: new Moroccan star power Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio update is back, quicker than usual as there is some catching up to do.
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who create a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a unique style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill. theartsdesk's Joe Muggs was discussing today on Facebook about his influence on dubstep and Jamaican music, for example. He was uncompromising, never learning English or moving to Hollywood, however much cajoled by film types there.
theartsdesk Radio Show 28 - Tony Allen tribute with guest Stephen Budd
theartsdesk Radio Show 28 - Tony Allen tribute with guest Stephen Budd Homage to the late Afro-beat legend, and interview about him with the co-founder of Africa Express by Peter CulshawSaturday, 04 July 2020 Rhythm pioneer:Tony Allen Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio music show comes blinking into the light after lockdown, as MusicBox radio’s studio In London’s Clerkenwell has tentatively, antiseptically, opened.
theartsdesk Radio Show 27 - direct from Sāo Paulo with guest stars including Chico César
The latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s global music radio update was recorded on the road in São Paulo, Brazil, featuring some of the most interesting local musicians a couple of weeks ago – before the virus tsunami hit (Brazil was behind the curve, its first case only reported on 25 February).
theartsdesk Radio Show 26 - with guest from the Amazon, the latest Brazilian star Arthur Nogueira
theartsdesk Radio Show 26 - with guest from the Amazon, the latest Brazilian star Arthur Nogueira Amazonian grooves, poetic songs and guitar riffage from deepest Brazil by Peter CulshawMonday, 25 November 2019 Arthur Nogueira: Poetry from Pará This edition of Peter Culshaw’s global music radio show has a great guest – the hugely talented Brazilian singer, writer and producer Arthur Nogueira who just played his first-ever concert in London.
theartsdesk Radio Show 25 - with bohemian chanteuse Anne Pigalle
theartsdesk Radio Show 25 - with bohemian chanteuse Anne Pigalle A tour of Soho, Montmartre, bohemians, Paris jazz, punk, Mano Negra and Malcolm Mclaren by Peter CulshawSaturday, 26 October 2019 Anne Pigalle: trés chic This edition of Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio show features guest special guest Anne Pigalle.
theartsdesk Radio Show 24 - hot subcontinental sounds with guest Viveick Rajagopalan
theartsdesk Radio Show 24 - hot subcontinental sounds with guest Viveick Rajagopalan Viveick Rajagopalan: Carnatic and rap collisions by Peter CulshawSaturday, 21 September 2019 Viveick Rajagopalan: New Indian Maestro This episode of Peter Culshaw's occasional global music radio update features guest interview Viveick Rajagopalan, one of the hits of this summers WOMAD Festival.
WOMAD, Charlton Park review - a gloriously defiant global music celebration
This was a year of superb musical standards, smooth organisation and a real sense of celebration. In the last couple of years, WOMAD being more liberal and internationalist than nearly anywhere else, there was a sense in the air of a collective political shock - maybe the future wasn’t with our tribe of happy cultural globalists after all. This year, even with the new PM, there was a more defiant sense that the WOMAD spirit will prevail after the current nationalist neurosis blows off some steam.
10th Odessa International Film Festival review - exquisite gay love stories and visionary new music
Odessa, the so-called "the pearl of the Black Sea", is a Ukrainian city full of lovely 19th-century Italianate architecture and sandy beaches, with a reputation, even in Soviet times, for a certain bohemian sense of freedom. It has also, for the past ten years, hosted an impressive international film festival, the "Cannes of the East".
Oumou Sangaré, Earth review - the new Mama Africa takes her crown
Oumou Sangaré is not a woman to be trifled with – tales of people who have crossed her and lived to regret it abound: one story (of many) has her personally hiring a bulldozer in a land dispute and getting a recalcitrant local official sacked. She looked super-glamorous at Earth in a white dress and blue nails, and her backing singers looked and sounded ravishing in vertiginous heels and 70s hairdos.
theartsdesk Radio Show 23 - the hottest Brazil sounds for 2019 with guest Tiago Di Mauro
The focus of this radio show, one of Peter Culshaw’s occasional updates of global music, is the new sounds coming from Brazil in 2019. The country seems to entering a dark period with new President Bolsanaro having just taken office, but however unsavoury the regime, the beat as always goes on.
theartsdesk Radio Show 22 - the autumn's newest global sounds
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s occasional updates in the best of new global music features unreleased tracks from forthcoming autumn releases and re-releases dug up by eccentric crate-diggers. Even more lunatically eclectic than usual we have some Somalian funk, Bollywood-meets-Sakamoto (Anchorsong - main picture), French Tango and Turkish psychedelia.
' I read French from left to right and Arabic from right to left': remembering Algerian rebel rocker Rachid Taha
Rachid Taha, rockeur and provocateur died this week of a heart attack. He was one of the last of the rebel rockers, a devotee of both The Clash and Oum Khalsoum. He brought rock and Algerian music together in a fabulously invigorating way. And while many younger rockers do yoga and sip herbal tea, he was committed to the Rimbaudian derangement of the senses and was great fun to get trashed with - I spent a few memorable all-nighters with him in Paris.
BaianaSystem, Village Underground - the new Brazilian contenders
The post-modernists have taken over the asylum. At least, that's what I thought twice this week. Once when I saw Vlad Putin on YouTube doing karaoke to an adoring audience. The other was seeing Brazil’s latest contenders BaianaSystem, who played to a sweaty packed-out house at the Village Underground. "Post-modern" in the sense of beyond defineable genre and with a dose of irony thrown in, and not quite beleiving what is in front of your eyes.
WOMAD 2, Charlton Park review - rainbows and rumba
In the days around WOMAD there have been plenty of media about how the “hostile environment” towards migrants has created all sorts of problems for artists attempting to get here from around the world. Certainly, we are being denied some of the hottest new acts - like the wild blue-haired Moonchild Sanelly from South Africa or the hottest new act from Nigeria, Chicoco Sounds.
David Byrne, Eventim Apollo review - twice in a lifetime?
Forgive the sports metaphor, but David Byrne knocked this one out of the park. Coming out of the concert at the Eventim Apollo, you felt that the presentation of popular music had changed - that to go on stage with a conventional band with the usual clichéd movements - everything from the wince of a complicated guitar solo to the vocalist waving to the crowd to join in - all should be banished to history’s dustbin.
How the Aga Khan funded a music renaissance
Many of us recognise that rather striking modernist building in Cromwell Gardens near South Kensington tube, having seen it on the way to the V&A or perhaps a Prom at the Albert Hall but not been sure what it is exactly. I hadn't actually been inside until last week when I was given a guided tour. The space was discussed at one point as a potential site for the National Theatre.
Africa: A Journey Into Music, BBC Four Review
BBC Four is the TV music equivalent of those oldsters music mags like Q and Mojo. Have there been five, or is it six, documentaries about Queen on the channel? You can sense the commissioners feeling with this new series they have now done their bit for African music for the next few years. In general, the BBC, unlike counterparts in places like France, have been ridiculously Anglocentric in their music coverage – like having a cooking channel that leaves out Indian, Chinese and Japanese food.
theartsdesk in Ramallah - the music biz turns its sights on Palestine
Maen, a member of the rap collective Sa’aleek, was working one night in their small makeshift studio in the Qalandia refugee camp near Ramallah. He dozed off, only to find the studio door had been concreted over and he was trapped. It took fellow band members 36 hours to dig him out, but Maen didn't seem that worse for wear. As studio disaster anecdotes go, that takes some beating...
theartsdesk Radio Show 21
The latest of Peter Culshaw’s irregular global music round-up of new and re-released sounds features new albums from veteran Afro-beat pioneer Tony Allen, an astonishing collaboration between revered string quartet Kronos and Malian traditionalists Trio Da Kali (pictured above) and adventurous South Italian acoustic tranciness from Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino.
Sue Steward 1946-2017: She came, she saw, she salsa'd
Sue Steward, who died suddenly last week from a brain haemorrhage, was one of theartsdesk’s most loved members, her free spirit and her double specialism in world music and photography making her an intrinsic asset to this pioneering critics’ site in 2009. Her unfussy eye for colour and composition also influenced the early design of The Arts Desk and traces remain today.
WOMAD 2017, Charlton Park review 2 - Utopian globalist festival dances through the rain
Arriving on Thursday for the opening act Orchestra Baobab’s instantly recognisable mellifluous tones spreading out from the main stage over the Wiltshire countryside, it was clear that a high standard had been set for the rest of WOMAD. Whether it's in a small bar in Dakar, the Jazz Café in London, or playing to many thousands here, they are one of the great bands – fabulously musical without being flashy.
theartsdesk Radio Show 19
New global sounds this month include tracks from the scintillating new album from Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, electro-Sufi grooves, Afro-folk from Koral Society, the soundtrack from They Will Have to Kill Us First (about the struggle of Malian musicians against extreme Islamicists) and classic Cuban nostalgia from Celina González and Estrellas de Arieto. Not to mention some contemporary Japanese composition and São Paulo Frippertronics. TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW CLICK HERE 5.
On Vlad Troitsky: Ukraine’s Great Cultural Impresario - Odessa Review
A profile of the an artist, director, promoter, set designer who who is arguably the most interesting man now working in Ukrainian theater as he prepares fore the premiere of his opera “Babylon,” which is set to open this August. I have come across very few arts visionaries who seem to alter the energy of those around them, and who, even with their outlandish ideas, change reality by the force of their imagination. What is now real was once imagined, in the words of William Blake.
Buena Vista Social Club: ‘The end of the old music’?
Some of my earliest childhood memories are of dancing to Cuban music. My grandparents were Latin music fans and every Thursday they’d go to the Grand Hotel in Leicester to drink cocktails and dream of the palm trees and tropical nights.
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