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This week, from Reich to Kendall and Celibidache, three musicians who prove there is no such thing as “pure music”, whether we’re talking about a technique, a mode of musical expression or a musician’s legacy.

Steve Reich turned 90 on Saturday, and I’ve been thinking about his early tape pieces from the mid-1960s, It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. They’re such vital works not only because they opened his imagination to what could happen if you made a micro-canon – playing the same material slightly faster or slower – which is what happened when one of his tape machines slipped out of sync with the other: it’s that these are human voices that Reich is setting. It’s Gonna Rain is made from the voice of Brother Walter, a Pentecostal street preacher in San Francisco, whose warning of apocalypse in 1965 Reich recorded and looped against itself, over and over, so that Brother Walter’s voice becomes a wall and wail of sound, a sonic realisation of the sublime inundation he’s announcing. Come Out was made in 1966 with the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six, six black men wrongly convicted of first-degree murder in New York. Reich’s piece was commissioned for a benefit event for their legal costs as “background music for passing the hat”.

These pieces don’t just set words, Reich says they “set human beings”, using the vocal recordings not only as musical material but political inspiration and emotional expression. Techniques that are seemingly all about narrowly musical processes – looping, canon-ing, fugue-ing – are embedded in the facts of where they were made and how, and whose voices are being represented by whom.

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‘This is Courtney doing her makeup on the ’95 Lollapalooza tour. I was documenting my generation being hijacked by corporate greed – and destroyed following the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain’

When I was going through the archives for my rock photo book, I came across my first ever self-portrait, at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, in front of Jim Morrison’s grave. I am a 13-year-old on an awkward trip with my cool father. He had no respect or interest in Jim Morrison, and that photo is like every photo I’ve taken from that moment on – I’m trying to take agency over what is happening. Photography was the absolute first thing that gave me a feeling of having my own say. It became a way of creating my own universe, one that I could trust. It was absolutely my first love.

I was sidetracked into music in a beautiful way by these radical women and a countercultural movement, so the subject of my photographs just changed. It was me within this environment, on stage with Hole, backstage with these luminary, wild people, travelling across the world. My photography followed and morphed with me, and my camera documented my generation being hijacked by corporate greed and destroyed in the wake of the sacrificial death of Kurt Cobain. It was a generational call to document the Lollapalooza ’95 tour, where this photo was taken, for us to understand later. It was also when the wild alternative freaks crossed into the mainstream.

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Black communities across the globe have large and complex vocabularies to describe race, shaped by their specific cultures and histories

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One thing you might not know about this newsletter is how much it is shaped by behind-the-scenes chat. The Long Wave team, and its broader family at the Guardian, is a mini-diaspora in and of itself – one that is constantly in conversation. Often, during our meetings, someone will mention what was assumed to be a quirk of their specific background, only to discover that it is replicated almost entirely across the board. This week, we spoke about the fact that in many of our cultures, there is not just one word for “Black”.

“Green”, “red”, “yellow”, “blue”, “wheat”. These are some of the words many tribes in parts of Sudan use to describe complexion. There is no “Black”. I tripped over my words trying to explain to colleagues what these colours denoted – each category is infused with so much cultural depth. In fact, in some cases, they are not even descriptions of complexion, but of features, of broad ethnic background, and even of attractiveness. “Green” means dark, but also implies a sort of uniformity of colour, an even hue, and therefore almost a comeliness. Yellow is lighter, and comes with an unstated connotation of beauty. Blue is the darkest, and is sometimes pejorative, but other times just a description. “Wheat” is the one most likely to be a compliment, a shade that does not diverge too sharply into light or dark.

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118 Things to Do Instead of Doomscrolling. Including “put together a puzzle”, “go for a bike ride”, “hold a plank for as long as you can — even if it’s only a second”, and “make your own limoncello”.

Een motorrijder uit Schiedam die in 2024 bij een straatrace in Lelystad een dodelijk ongeluk veroorzaakte, is veroordeeld tot een taakstraf van 240 uur. Het slachtoffer was een 18-jarige man die ook aan de driftrace meedeed.

Een motorrijder uit Schiedam die in 2024 bij een straatrace in Lelystad een dodelijk ongeluk veroorzaakte, is veroordeeld tot een taakstraf van 240 uur. Het slachtoffer was een 18-jarige man die ook aan de driftrace meedeed.

De Russische autoriteiten ontkennen dat er een uitbraak van de pest is, maar hun terughoudendheid met informatie voedt juist de geruchten. „Het onderstreept een fundamentele zwakte van een regime dat in toenemende mate op censuur en leugens is gebouwd.”