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| | | Leyla McCalla: Breaking the Thermometer review – the story of Radio Haiti brought to life | | by Neil Spencer Apr 30, 2022 | | (Anti-)
The Haitian-American musician explores the troubled history of creole-language Radio Haiti on her rewarding fourth album Born in New York to Haitian parents and now based in New Orleans, Leyla McCalla has explored her ancestral roots on previous solo albums. The result of a commission from Duke University in North Carolina, this fourth venture takes her deeper into the history of the Caribbean republic and that of Radio Haiti, the station that for decades confronted the corruption and brutality of regimes that arrested and tortured journalists and eventually murdered its founder. It was almost the only station that broadcast in the local creole language rather than French. McCalla delivers the story – which has also become a theatrical piece – with a mixture of original and traditional songs, dropping in the odd radio clip for effect. The pieces are mostly sung in creole, though there are English-language pieces such as Caetano Veloso’s Brazilian song of exile You Don’t Know Me. McCalla’s vocal style remains relaxed, but set against simple backings that ally her cello and banjo playing with sophisticated percussion, she conjures moods of abjection (Fort Dimanche concerns a notorious prison), protest (“We are the ones who bake the bread and get burnt at the oven,” complains Dodinin) and longing (Boukman’s Prayer). An ambitious, accomplished piece of work. Continue reading... | | | | | Downton Abbey: A New Era review – an artless cash-in with the Crawleys | | by Wendy Ide Apr 30, 2022 | | Reheated plot lines abound as the regular cast and writer Julian Fellowes go over old ground in their second big-screen outing The title of the second Downton Abbey movie promises a new era, but in fact this is a reheated serving of reassuringly familiar comfort food for fans of the series. The same crusty class certainties under the same cold, Wedgewood-blue skies; the same light sprinkling of xenophobia and the same eager score that bustles in between lines of dialogue like an over-solicitous waiter. The story takes up where the last picture, already something of a redundant postscript to the television series, left off: widower Tom Branson (Allen Leech) marries Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton). But the Crawley family is soon shaken by two events. First, fearsome matriarch Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith), whose bon mots are now a little bon moth-eaten but who remains one of the more entertaining characters, reveals that she has acquired a French villa. Second, a film crew invades Downton, causing much kerfuffle, but paying handsomely. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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