Music

On his new album, Washington Square Serenade, Steve Earle may have swapped crashing guitars for mandolins and banjos, and the harder edge of his work may also be punctuated with beautiful, melodic love songs such as "Sparkle and Shine" and "Days Aren't Long Enough". But the fact remains that anyone who signs off his introductory notes with the epithet "Fuck Lou Dobbs" - the CNN anchorman famous for racist, anti-immigration diatribes - has nailed his political colours firmly to the mast.

The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela has burst onto the classical music scene over the last couple of years. Formed in 1975 it struggled for most of its existence until the rise of Hugo Chavez's government and the popular movements. It now has permanent public funding which has allowed it to grow and travel the world with its performances.

Made up of young people from the barrios, who are given instruments and tuition for free, it has been credited with giving hundreds of thousands of poor kids a chance to escape poverty, drugs and crime.

Readers of Socialist Review may know jazz musician Gilad Atzmon due to his Coltrane tour with Martin Smith and the Cultures of Resistance gig at this year's Marxism. An Israeli living in self imposed exile in London, he is an outspoken anti-Zionist and opponent of the war in Iraq.

Max was one of the founders of modern jazz, a man who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940s and spent the rest of his life breaking musical barriers.

Your sound is very different from the mainstream hip-hop or rap music around at the moment. In particular you use a lot of African rhythms and instruments on your backing tracks.

It's a sound that just came naturally. You could have asked me how come I speak Somali half the time. Music is a direct and honest expression and extension of who you are. Having spent half my life in Africa and the other half in North America what could I do that is honest? That's my sound. It's a fusion of the two worlds. And I couldn't help but create it just like that.

Woody Guthrie in the 1940s, for example, performed with a guitar emblazoned with the words, "This Machine Kills Fascists". In the late 1960s Marvin Gaye and a host of others picked up the anti-racist baton.

Last summer the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Academy announced that it was going to drop its best jazz artist award. When the awards ceremony took place in September ten musicians held a musical protest outside the venue. One of them was 28 year old Soweto Kinch.

Born in London to parents from Barbados and Jamaica, Soweto is creating a unique sound, one which blends his two musical loves - jazz and hip-hop.

The year 1965 was a tumultuous one for the civil rights movement. In Selma, Alabama, marchers were brutally attacked by police with clubs, whips and tear gas on a day that was dubbed "Bloody Sunday". In Watts - the overwhelmingly black suburb of Los Angeles - anger at racism, poverty and police harassment exploded into one of the biggest riots the US had ever seen. The movement also lost one of its most radical leaders when Malcolm X was assassinated as he addressed a public meeting.

The failure of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to live up to the hope it promised was the greatest tragedy of the last century. Its effects were felt not just in the politics and subsequent history of the 20th century but also in the art and culture that surrounded it. Dimitri Shostakovich occupied a central position in these events, and more than any other composer his music explores the hopes and tragedy of this period of history.

A few years ago I compiled a record called England's Dreaming to accompany a book I had written about punk. I enjoyed doing that so much that I approached the record company with an idea of releasing a compilation of weird old gay records.