IRENE SERRA and LUCA BOSCAGIN, UPSTAIRS AT RONNIE SCOTT's

The penultimate night upstairs in Ronnie's before the club closes for a month-long Lockdown on Thursday, the theme for singer Irene Serra and guitarist Luca Boscagin was rooted in Brazilian sounds. Introduced to the audience by Paul Pace, beginning …

Published: 4 Nov 2020. Updated: 3 years.

The penultimate night upstairs in Ronnie's before the club closes for a month-long Lockdown on Thursday, the theme for singer Irene Serra and guitarist Luca Boscagin was rooted in Brazilian sounds. Introduced to the audience by Paul Pace, beginning with 'Wave' we'll need to close our eyes if not our ears when Lockdown shuts jazz places in London once again. Serra has a very pure voice, light and nimble and she has great diction. Boscagin was low profile as an accompanist but elegant with it. The evening's highlights included a great arrangement of Miles Davis' 'Four'. Serra reminds me a little of Georgia Mancio. However, Serra's voice has its own individual character that leads listeners in interesting directions, perhaps inhabiting a slightly higher range. Like Georgia the singer has great ability and style in the Jobim domain and handled the classic Brazilian material with lightness, positivity, and considerable empathy.

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Malik Al Nasir signs book deal

The publisher Williams Collins has announced a two book deal with performance poet Malik Al Nasir of Malik and The O.G's. The deal is for Letters to Gil and Searching for my Slave Roots. Letters to Gil is a coming of age memoir by the Liverpool …

Published: 3 Nov 2020. Updated: 3 years.

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The publisher Williams Collins has announced a two book deal with performance poet Malik Al Nasir of Malik and The O.G's. The deal is for Letters to Gil and Searching for my Slave Roots.

Letters to Gil is a coming of age memoir by the Liverpool born poet who at 9 was taken into care and who later had his life turned around by a chance meeting with the great poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron. The book tells a story of empowerment and awakening in the highlighting of how institutional racism can debilitate and disadvantage a child.

In the second book searching for his roots Malik uncovers a lineage linking slave holdings to high sheriffs, mayors, a late Prime Minister and bankers whose companies formed major modern-day financial institutions.

Now researching for a PhD in history at Cambridge University Malik comments: ''These two titles are my way of giving voice to the voiceless, whilst unpicking some historical injustices that persist today, as a legacy of slavery and colonialism, rooted in racist ideologies.”