Music

A stunning musical heritage is one of the things that keeps this disparate nation together – even through the hard times. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports ‘Music is our cotton, our gold and our diamonds,’ says Grammy-winning Malian musician Toumani Diabaté, a key ambassador for the music of his homeland. Landlocked and half desert, Mali boasts a […]

How Italians are using their shared musical heritage to get through a national crisis. Medical staff from Rome’s Forlanini Hospital step out with protective masks to join a flash mob performance of “Volare”. Picture: Getty Images – Credit: Corbis via Getty Images Across Italy, music has been connecting people as 60 million have been confined […]

The Icelandic capital has had a cultural impact out of all proportion with its size, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. Iceland’s iconic natural features belie the new dance craze taking the capital by storm. PHOTO: C Hutchinson – Credit: Archant Rarely has the world needed a silly dance craze more, and Iceland – a place of deep […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK reports on the troubled yet creative Mexican city. Tijuana is a city in crisis. Home to one of the world’s busiest border crossings, it has become a flashpoint in Trump’s border wall war. Its international bridge is a principal point of entry to the US and in this city Mexicans running from the […]

The Polish capital is freighted with a traumatic past but musically that has never held it back, says Sophia Deboick In the last century, Warsaw became a byword of bleakness and destruction. A city completely levelled by the Nazis after the failed Warsaw Uprising of the summer of 1944, in its communist era it was […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a genre which tells the story of a city – and a nation – through the good times and the bad. “Without the streets or dusks of Buenos Aires, a tango cannot be written.” This was how Jorge Luis Borges, Buenos Aries’ – and Argentina’s – most famous poet summed up the […]

Once a byword for glamour and exuberance, the Chinese city was effectively silenced for much of the 20th century. But now it is becoming a centre for music publishing and distribution, says Sophia Deboick. The financial district of Pudong in Shanghai. Photo: Getty Images – Credit: AFP via Getty Images Few places have been subject […]

The French town may not have produced much of its own musical heritage, yet it boasts one of the greatest venues in the world. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The atmosphere of a venue can make the difference between a so-so musical experience and one that speaks to the soul. There are no more affecting venues than […]

SOHPIA DEBOICK on how the Yorkshire city, unbound by fashion, political orthodoxy or gender division, spawned a look and sound that lasted. Leeds loomed largest in rock mythology when the Who’s landmark Live at Leeds (1970) was recorded at the unlikely venue of the university’s parquet-floored refectory. The record was seen as marking a return […]

The great city is known for melding different cultural influences, says SOPHIA DEBOICK, but that does not mean it lacks a voice of its own. Mumbai is the entertainment capital of India, the home of a film industry that has become one of the country’s cultural touchstones. Yet Bollywood, like the city itself, is the […]

The city’s legendarily sweaty pub circuit has produced some unforgettable rock sounds, some macho, some political and some sentimental. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. For thousands for years, Sydney was the dominion of the Eora nation, but it took only 100 years for that to be irrevocably changed and for the rich musical culture of indigenous Australians […]

The German city has had a long association with elegance and fashion, and a more recent one with ground-breaking music. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Berlin might have a reputation as the gritty home of Germany’s musical cutting edge, but on the other side of the country is a small, chic city that has produced some of […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the sounds of the Scottish capital Princess Street Garden and Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland When: 16 Jul 2015 – Credit: Archant In the 17th century, Scotland rediscovered itself, and Edinburgh was the centre of that rediscovery. The 1739 publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, by the city’s own David Hume heralded […]

Never mind the musicians the capital has produced, SOPHIA DEBOICK concentrates on the songs it has inspired. While London has been an international musical hub since the days of Handel, the legendary albums made and visionaries born there countless, it is as a songwriting subject that the city has been most intriguing. London’s landmarks have […]

Phil Spector was responsible for one of the greatest Christmas records ever made. SOPHIA DEBOICK tells the story and asks if we must reassess it in the light of his later murder conviction. He was the one producer deserving of the overused term ‘genius’, but Phil Spector will spend Christmas – and his 80th birthday […]

Jamaica’s capital not only gave the world one of its greatest music stars, it produced a sound that has taken root around the globe. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Kingston teenagers Althea and Donna had a No.1 with Uptown Top Ranking in 1977. Picture: Fin Costello/Redfems – Credit: Archant Since the middle of the last century, music […]

The Russian city has not only produced brilliant music, but – amid horrors of war – one of history’s greatest performances. Saint Petersburg is a city of beauty and brutality. Peter the Great founded his grand capital in 1703 as a Baltic port city that “hack[ed] a window through to Europe”. But while it took […]

Classical music may have played a central role in Finland’s history, but so has classic rock. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Finland is a land of extremes. With a population of five-and-a-half million, it is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union, and it is also the EU’s most northerly country, its northernmost third lying […]

Released 40 years ago and now the subject of its own exhibition, The Clash’s London Calling simultaneously paid tribute to rock ‘n’ roll and took an iconoclast’s Hammer to it. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Joe Strummer of The Clash exchanges his shirt with a member of the audience during a concert. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis […]

It may lack the glitz of more renowned musical hubs, but in Stockton it’s the soul that counts says SOPHIA DEBOICK. While some places are synonymous with music industry glamour, others entirely lack mystique. Stockton-on-Tees’ claims to fame include the invention of the friction match in a chemist’s shop on its high street (the widest […]

The Austrian capital’s somewhat stuffy image as the home of classical music overlooks the fact it has always been keen on celebration, says SOPHIA DEBOICK Vienna is the classical music capital of the world. The masters of the first Viennese school – Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn – all lived and died there, sustained by […]

Musicians have always reflected the two sides of Vegas, the glitz on the surface and the pathos that lies below. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. For a place that is a byword for hedonism, Las Vegas had humdrum beginnings. A Mojave Desert rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail trade route between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, […]

Botswana’s capital is home to a diverse musical culture, where traditional sounds infuse many genres – not least its thriving heavy metal scene. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Botswana is a country unlike any other in Africa. Since its 1966 independence it has been one of the most politically stable nations on the continent and has enjoyed […]

For centuries the French capital has been a centre for freedom of expression, a status that has produced legendary artists and venues. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Paris is where legends are made. Or rather where they make themselves. The icons of French music have routinely spun mythical backstories for themselves, and the very streets of the […]

He might have ended up as a byword for naffness, but Demis Roussos had taken an eventful and experimental route to get there. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports on the singer and other Greek greats. “Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So do […]

Battered by the bombs and the collapse of its motor industry, the West Midlands hub responded with regeneration through sound. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Guitarist Lynval Golding of The Specials performs live on stage during their 40th Anniversary Tour at Coventry Cathedral ruins. Photo: Jim Bennett/Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images Coventry has become near-synonymous with […]

From bossa nova to baile, the Brazilian city has always danced to its own beat. Sophie Deboick reports. For Rio de Janeiro, music is always the answer. Whether in tragedy or triumph, a musical response can always be counted on, and in a city that suffers some of the most obscene inequality and grinding poverty […]

Mormonism is a movement with music in its soul, from its earliest days to the most modern sounds. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The Beach Boys’ 1965 album track ‘Salt Lake City’ paid tribute to the place that, the lyric’s claimed, had “the grooviest kids”. Photo: RB/Redferns – Credit: Redferns In 1847 a former carpenter, Brigham Young, […]

The South Korean capital is known for its slick and boundlessly exuberant pop. Yet the ebullience belies a complex and dark history. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Seoul is a pop powerhouse. In just a few years, its K-pop industry has gone from a localised East Asian craze to a global force, with comic rapper Psy, of […]

In the past, Estoniabs have literally sung for their freedom. And their capital city remains the crucible of this national pastime. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Estonia presents a forbidding face to the world. The most northerly of the Baltic states, it is a country half covered by forests, fringed with windswept islands and islets. There is […]

Few cities possess as intimate a connection to a musical style as Seville, SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. The cultural energy of Seville pulsates to a musical beat. Whether it’s found in the processions of Semana Santa (Holy Week), where religious statues sway through the streets to a sombre accompaniment of brass bands, or the march of […]

A city with a musical pedigree to match any, Sheffield is still producing acts that could not have come from anywhere else, as Sophia Deboick reports Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of English rock band Pulp, performs live on the NME stage at the Glastonbury Festival near Pilton, Somerset on 26th June 1994. Photo: Michael Putland/Getty […]