There were times during the performance when Mehmet Ali Sanlikol and the band seemed to fully enter the Ottoman empire.
Middle-East
Book Review: Roving Free Agents of the Imagination
Autobiography, personal essay, history, current affairs, or literary criticism, many are the guises under which travel writing has seduced readers of decidedly categorical bent.
Stage Interview: Eclectic Storyteller Cyndi Freeman Comes Home in “And I Am Not Lying Live”
“Why has it taken so long for me to come back home? I don’t know. I have been thinking about it for years and it just never quite seemed like the right time until now.”
Theater Feature: Enter Israeli Stage
Exciting things are happening in Israeli writing, and it is garnering considerable attention in Europe. But what about theater in Israel? Israeli Stage offers the curious a chance to see what is happening.
Film Review: Incendies — A Global Tale of Family, Fate, Conflict, and Tragedy
Luckily, there’s plenty to this film besides it’s Middle Eastern setting. INCENDIES focuses primarily on relationships and human drama, while politics form the film’s periphery.
Visual Arts Review: Gaza in Photographs — Up Close and Personal
Though unquestionably didactic, Skip Schiel’s images are also haunting glimpses of the perilous nature of life in Gaza. The photographs never feel invasive or forced; they simply capture moments of intimate truth between photographer and subject.
Coming Attractions: Popular Music in August 2010
Ambient indie-pop and summery surf sounds take over Boston in the second half of August. By Thomas Samph August 13, Deerhunter at Royale At a Deerhunter show, the sight of frontman Bradford Cox’s skeleton-like figure striding on to the stage through a thick mist (sometimes wearing a dress) is as ethereal and spooky as his […]
Coming Attractions in Jazz: June 2010
By J. R. Carroll June brings a cupful of world jazz. [Updated: See Mose Allison item below] Photo by Daniel Sheehan While the eyes of the sporting world may be on the stadiums of South Africa, there will be plenty of international flavor here in New England this month. Brazilian born but now Seattle-based, pianist/composer/arranger […]
Coming Attractions: Popular Music in April 2010
By Thomas Samph Vampire movies, dirty whigs, Wilco beer, peace bombs, Russian retrograde, tappin’ khakis, and sweaty Soviet soirees are just a few reasons why April is a great month for music listeners in Boston. The month starts off with a performance by the illegitimate love child of two musical genres, heavy metal and opera […]
World Books: In Search of a Saudi Tolstoy
By Bill Marx Saudi Arabian author Abdo Khal won the $60,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arab Booker) for his novel Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles, which is also known as She Throws Sparks. Taleb Alrefai, who served as chair for this year’s panel of judges, said, “The winning novel is a brilliant […]