The Edinburgh Mela Festival has kicked off and well under way. Running from the 25th to the 31st of August the festival features a myriad of theatre, dance and music in Scotland’s capital city.
The Festival is Scotland’s leading celebration of cultural diversity through the arts, having been founded in 1995 by members of the city’s minority ethnic communities.
We do this through the form of a Mela, a South Asian festival and a Sanskrit word meaning gathering. In Edinburgh each year we gather some of the finest talent from across Scotland and the UK as well as international artists and present them in a vibrant and exciting environment with interactive opportunities for children and families and a food and craft market.
The event is held beside Ocean Terminal, Leith.
Stars of British Asian music Tariq Khan and Rishi Rich will make an appearance and there is an an outdoor screening of Indian Oscar-nominated Mother India with a new soundtrack performed live.[1]
For more information on performances check out the online programmes.
There’s no shortage of music and media players available to help manage and organise your masses of mp3s and other media files, but very few that actually stand out. Songbird is an open source piece of software that enables you to listen to, organise and discover new music. Features include Smart Playlists, Last.fm scrobbling (handy for stats geeks like myself) and the ability to search for concert tickets in your area. Another great feature is the fact that it’s multi-platform, so even Mac fanboys (controversial) can enjoy it. Read the rest of this entry »

A hair-raising taster in the form of Strange Fruit to the forthcoming album 144,000 due out on the 27th of October. Strange Fruit pays particular attention to the scourge of black on black violence. It’s a 4.42 minute hard hitting social documentary and it’s one of the best to tackle the subject. But don’t think for a minute that it’s filled with preaching and clichés. The story telling is powerful and M9’s vocals are overwhelming. Read the rest of this entry »
For a band that came to life during the nu-metal period, Slipknot have managed to avoid the downfalls bands like Korn and the like have suffered, and even branched out from their heavy sound with previous efforts such as Vermilion (Part 2). This is their fourth studio album and comes in a 12 tracks (beside the bonus tracks) and starts in a similar vein to their self titled effort with a spoken word mixed with harsh electronic noises bursting into a dramatic heavy opening riff backed by a cracking drum solo, the album doesn’t fall a million miles away from Slipknot’s other efforts and has some fantastic drumming throughout underpinning the tracks. Read the rest of this entry »

The DCA are relaunching Arts Action after the summer break. Starting today at 6pm.
Arts Action is a weekly, artist run session for young people, giving them opportunities to product and display their own art works, experience the exhibitions and watch films in a safe chilled-out environment.
Glasgow has been named a United Nations City of Music. The award has prompted the creation of a new group called Glasgow City of Music to help the city’s music community reach greater heights. Glasgow becomes only the 11th city to become part of the Creative Cities Network which was launched by the UN in 2004.
Seville and Bologna are the only two other European cities to share the title. Scotland now has two world cities, with Edinburgh being the other after being named as the first UNESCO City of Literature, in 2004.
Paul Mawhinney’s record collection, which stands at just over 3 million records and 600,000 compact discs is up for sale for $3million dollars, apparently worth over $50 million dollars. But he’s having problems selling it. Apparently no one cares for vinyl music these days. Either that or no one has a bedroom big enough.
Via Nah Right
You either love him or you hate. I’m in the latter group. Jeremy Paxman is at it again. Not only is he infuriatingly annoying on TV but he’s just as bad in print. This time having a sly dig [2] at Scotland’s most famous bard, Robert Burns.
Although I am afraid I find the Scottish national poet no more than a king of sentimental doggerel, one might as well have used his ramfeezled to describe our state.