View From Inside Festival Republic’s Melvin Benn On Why Festivals Don’t Always Have To Be About Music Extra Global Sounds The Music When you’re a teenager and country –possibly not in the world. you’ve been crammed with When an exciting idea has come books at school, you want to to fruition, it’s a fantastic feeling. put them down and rock out, This year, Latitude has people such essentially. As you get older, from as Thom Yorke and the Pet Shop your mid-twenties onwards, you Boys, so the music is still key, but Toosafefor a realise that life isn’t all about music when poets like Simon Armitage to the exclusion of everything else. read from their collections to lub culture is still a So when I realised this, it wasn’t packed audiences – he did so last major catalyst for long before I hit upon an idea for a year and will again this year – international music. festival that could cover music but they tell me that for a short period Here, dance-floor also literature, film, theatre, they feel like the rock stars on the anthems have driven television, poetry, art and comedy. music stages on the other side of global genres from That idea was the festival. bhangra to reggaeton Latitude. As for what I shall be doing in into the commercial charts and I genuinely two weeks’ time, I can’t wait to CBritish club nights remain a hotbed believed hear Thom Yorke’s first ever solo of emerging and revived styles, back in live set and I’m really keen to listen whether it’s Afro-Latin kuduro beats 2006 to Andrew Motion; I don’t know or Colombian cumbia. So the clubby that there whether they actually do it but in collaboration of The Revolution wasn’t my mind the Poet Laureate reads Presents Revolution (Rapster) a festival poems to the Queen. And so now should be an exciting prospect: this doing that he’s retired from doing that and new album stars a multifaceted in this instead will read them to the Cuban music ensemble along with masses. I think that’s rather various British and American nice, don’t you? producers and artists such as sample The Latitude Festival enthusiast Norman Cook and rapper runs from July 17 to 19. Lateef Daumont. www.latitudefestival.co.uk It’s a curious combination and one that works in fits and bursts. The thrusting Latin electro of Crazy Love (featuring Björk/Talvin Singh producer Guy Sigsworth) is an Celebrate The City immediate highlight, and there are ace turns including Havana hip hop combo Orishas and Róisín Murphy. with Metro Elsewhere, Marius de Vries’s intense patter lends a menacing air to the tropical beats and high-pressure brass of Guantanamero. Special mention goes to the four- Good fun: Norman part harmonies of female vocalists Cook and tres player Sexto Sentido and Harold Lopez- Armando Cosmea Nussa Torres’s great piano flourishes appear on Revolution but fans of raw Cuban roots might venerable US guitarist/songwriter up this morning’ lament in a find this a safe compromise. This Gary Lucas (whose previous work fabulously different direction. Revolution is mainly lively, bilingual spans Captain Beefheart to Jeff British DJ/writer Charlie Gillett dance pop – good fun, but with a Buckley) offer their own spin on has been an enduring champion of bit more risk-taking and imagination, the blues with Rishte (World global music and he’s compiled it might have been a really Village). It’s not a flawless fusion – another exceptional modern exhilarating stormer. occasionally Akhtar’s spiralling selection in Otro Mundo (WCJ), The combination of blues and tones career away from Lucas’s part of his Sound Of The World international styles has yielded moody instrumentation – but series. This double album includes some standout records in recent there is a definite allure to these 34 acts from 34 countries and years, including Tinariwen’s electric melodies, especially the steel- Gillett’s broad-ranging, effusive desert riffs and collaborations such infused, balmy Fragrance, the perspective ensures it flows ‘JULIET STEVENSON GIVES THE as that between Justin Adams and pulsing rhythm and drone of Daaya enticingly from Calexico’s southern- PERFORMANCE OF A LIFETIME’ Gambia’s Juldeh Camara. British- and Special Rider Blues, where fried Americana and the Ethiopian Evening Standard Asian singer Najma Akhtar and Akhtar takes the standard ‘woke reggae-soul of Dub Colossus to the

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