History is made at night

South African singer Miriam Makeba died yesterday. An outspoken opponent of apartheid, she had her passport confiscated by the South Africa...

The Soho jazz clubs of the 1950s (discussed in previous post) act as the setting for the film Beat Girl (1960), in which art student Gillian...

A great piece from 1958, I believe from the Daily Mirror - journalist Anne Allen goes on a tour of London jazz clubs to try and understand...

'A cleric's call to ban partying and dancing in the Shiite holy city of Karbala has triggered a heated debate among residents, just ...

In April 1974, decades of fascist rule in Portugal were brought to an end in a coup staged by left wing military officers. In the weeks and ...

Australia: Riot Police called to Sydney Rave ( In the Mix, September 1 2008 ) 'A secret warehouse party in Sydney’s Inner West was shut...

Thanks to John Hutnyk at Trinketization for reminding me that today is the 51st anniversary of the launch of Spuntnik 2, with its passenger...

From the mid-1970s there was an explosion of independent music labels that coincided with the birth of punk. Some of these labels were one o...

I'm going to be in Berlin on Friday taking part in this... If you're within several hundred miles you should try and make it down! D...

One of my favourite quotes is from Walter Benjamin: “A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones act...

This weekend there has been a 'festival of New Orleans' in London, with Dr John playing for free at the O2 arena in Greenwich. Unfor...

... or at least the 'sounds' of pulsating stars detected by the Corot space telescope in France . Have a listen, some interesting no...

Anita Berber (1899-1928) was a dancer in pre-Nazi Germany, famous/notorious for a life of bisexuality, drugs and semi-naked performance. Wit...

A research study at the University of Illinois suggests that people were more effective at Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) if they wer...

My previous post on the notion of community mediated by the senses got me thinking about what senses come into play in music/dance spaces. ...

The relationship between music, dance and community is a recurring theme on this site, but the word 'community' has come to be appro...

Advance warning – I will be doing a talk in Berlin on Friday October 31st, part of an event to mark the tenth issue of Datacide zine. Not s...

Excellent post at Uncarved on UK reggae and the National Front , complete with a mix of the tracks he talks about. The racist NF, which pea...

It's been a while since I posted anything about space music (see here for the original Disconaut text ), but I came across this fine pi...

Some interesting reflections on tight trousers, masculinity and sexuality cropping up. The always excellent Pop Feminist has the remarkable...

With record shop Sister Ray in London's Berwick Street going into administration (and inevitably a facebook group set up to save it),...

Peter Stallybrass and Allon White on the carnivalesque , extracted from The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986): …in the long-ter...

I enjoyed Street and Studio: an Urban History of Photography at Tate Modern in London over the summer (the exhibition opens in Essen next w...

Around 1950 a new music and dance craze swept across the Americas - Mambo. It had emerged in Cuba during the 1930s as a series of variations...