BBC Proms hauls in jazz group
mainLast-minute programme addition:
The BBC Proms are delighted to announce that London jazz group KOKOROKO will be making their Proms debut live at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 7 September.
The 8-piece group, led by Sheila Maurice-Grey, have previously appeared at Glastonbury, 6 Music Festival, and jazz festivals around the globe. Drawing from Afrobeat, highlife and jazz influences, they celebrate West African music greats, and pay tribute to the unique music culture they grew up in. Percussionist Onome Edgeworth says “We love this music and want other people to love it the way we do”.
KOKOROKO will perform some of their most popular works, including Carry Me Home, Baba Ayoola, Age of Ascent, Uman, Ti-De and Abusey Junction.
Another last-minute programme addition: a vocal Rule, Britannia!
Welcome, Mr. Davie.
Tick those boxes. So dismal.
Woke wisdom (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) dictates that, as a black person, I should welcome this.
But I don’t. It is shallow, manipulative, insincere, and not intended to enhance the Proms in any way. Last-minute programme addition? Of course it was.
The BBC was deprived of its bit of fun when the Last Night had to be (almost) restored to it traditional format, now it is childishly saying ‘Ya Boo’ to its critics, like a grounded teenager protesting by dying her hair purple. Pathetic.
“dyeing”
Don’t be petty
Petty for not being convinced by this, or petty for correcting her own spelling mistake?
Does it? Do white people like classical music?
This is so transparently desperate that one almost feels a sort of affectionate pity for the pathetic saps that came up with it.
Anyway: How about an evening of nice Elizabethan madrigals at the next Notting Hill Carnival?
Really horrific the blatant racism of all too many readers of this site.
What could be better than Turlough O’Carolan’s Lord Inchiquin in county Kerry. Heaven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuHlY3BBho
Thank you for that, it was beautiful.
“KOKOROKO will perform some of their most popular works, including Carry Me Home, Baba Ayoola, Age of Ascent, Uman, Ti-De and Abusey Junction.”
hahahahahahahahahah “popular” hahahahahahaha
A quick YouTube check on Kokoroko Abusey Junction: 39,326,397 views. Try listening?
39,328,568 now.
But!
• (a) it’s not popular if I never heard of it before. And
• (b) if it’s not popular it’s not worth paying attention to. Also
• (c) anything that’s that popular can’t be good.
Therefore I win.
/eyeroll
P.S. I’m now playing another one of their videos that only has just over 3.4 million views. I will let others if that qualifies as popular, and whether its popularity (or lack thereof) means it’s good or bad.
P.P.S. the most-viewed version of RVW’s Tallis Fantasia has 30K views over 8 years. It’s with Barbirolli conducting. That’s popular, right?
I *think* you are making the point I was making! I used to be an awful snob about anything not ‘classical’; now I realize that there is an enormous amount of music, often made by extremely talented musicians, important to and enjoyed by millions, of which I am almost totally ignorant. I am not proud of that.
Because classical music is sooooooo popular…