7 h. ago Scotsman Obituaries: Alan McMillan, musician and music teacher

Alan ‘John’ Rouen McMillan RGT LCM EGTA (UK), musician and teacher. Born: 3 February 1972. Died: 23 May 2025, aged 53

Politics

29 h. ago ‘I want to hear harmonica in the strip club!’: the bold ideas and bleak visions of British musician Klein

Drone albums, vampire plays, Charlotte Church duets the Londoner has an inspiringly odd CV. She explains how the disrupted experience of Black daily life fills her workThe ever-viral hip-hop video platform On the Radar has hosted freestyles from some of the biggest artists in the world. Drake, Central Cee and Ice Spice have each graced the channel with their presence, yet throughout its seven-year history, few acts have gone in quite like Klein. This time last year, the south London artist spiralled through a procession of evocative flexes, rasped through Auto-Tune over a mind-expanding loop of pitch-shifted wailing, then slung a black guitar over her shoulder to shred through a lacerating noise solo with a joyous smile.“People were trying to beat me up!” she says, giggling as she reflects on her appearance. “I was just being myself! Some people liked it, some people didn’t, some people hated it so much they would send me emails. For someone to feel that so viscerally as to send me ...

Politics

62 h. ago Street battles, invented languages and gigs in psychiatric hospitals: France’s lost rock revolution of 1968

Bands such as Magma and Art Zoyd provided a soundtrack for the student protests that shook the country. Little remembered now, a new book reveals their decisive influence on later successes such as Air and Daft PunkThe seismic shock that May 1968 had on the French way of life has been widely documented. The student protests, which erupted at the Sorbonne before spreading around the country, hastened the end of the Gaullist regime, politicised French philosophy, and spawned a wave of radical films such as Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore.Much less is known – outside France, at least – about how the revolutionary ideas of 1968 expressed themselves in music. Australian musician and journalist Ian Thompson, for one, knew little about French underground rock when he stumbled upon a box of old vinyl, labelled “French prog-rock” on a pre-Covid trip to Paris. He was blown away. Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago ‘We need anger to fight for our lives’: Mexican musician Silvana Estrada on grief, violence and the indignity of ‘el ghosting’

Estrada’s lovelorn debut album won her a Latin Grammy, but for its follow-up she wanted to leave sadness behind. Then, the very different losses of two friends brought out a newfound sense of furySilvana Estrada spent 25 years “not knowing how to get angry”, she says. “That cost me so much energy and dignity.” Sadness, though, she had always understood: “I live with her very close to me.” Now 28, the Mexican singer-songwriter grew up outside Veracruz, a city on the Gulf of Mexico, “witnessing violence from so many angles”: rampant femicide, narcoculture, environmental attacks on the coffee plantations and rivers of her home. As a lonely teenager, she discovered Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald. They helped guide the darkness she felt and introduced her to vocal improvisation. Estrada, born to a family of luthiers, started making her own music, played on a four-string Venezuelan cuatro and inspired by Mexican son jarocho (folk music). The title of her acclaimed 2022 deb...

Events

2 w. ago Scotsman Obituaries: James Hepburne Scott OBE, forester who pioneered carbon finance to support woodland creation

Soldier turned farmer and forester who pioneered carbon finance to support woodland creation

Events

3 w. ago Hermeto Pascoal, Brazilian music legend known as ‘The Sorcerer’, dies aged 89

Pascoal recorded with stars including Miles Davis, who called him ‘the most impressive musician in the world’John Fordham picks his favourite Hermeto Pascoal momentsBrazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal, who played – and even boxed – with Miles Davis and was known as “The Sorcerer” for coaxing tunes from everything from a live piglet to water-filled kettles, died on Saturday aged 89.According to a message shared on his social media pages, Pascoal “passed surrounded by family and fellow musicians”. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Scotsman Obituaries: Ian Jenkins, former MSP known for literary allusions and good humour

Archibald Ian Jenkins MBE MA. Born: 18 March 1941 in Rothesay. Died: 29 July 2025 in Melrose, Scottish Borders, aged 84

Politics