Long time in coming, Tracy Chapman’s 18-track Greatest Hits (Elektra/Rhino Records) is an unbeatable prospect for anyone who wants an overview of the singer-songwriter’s long career. ‘Fast Car’ still sounds as good as it did in 1988. Eliza Carthy and Karine Polwart are among the 10 English and Scottish folkies contributing to Songs of Separation (Navigator), a multi-artist project launched by musician Jenny Hill. Apart from an excuse to get some great singers together, the serious point of the album is a look at the common and disparate heritage shared by so many. And now a free gift for the New Year: the Trillionaires’ EP, ‘Working People’/’Strike Hate Out!’, is a punchy, guitar-driven two-tracker that takes aim at Britain’s vindictive anti-austerity policies. It’s available from Jumbo Records in Leeds, UK, or as a free MP3 at: b.r.ewart@leeds.ac.uk with ‘Trillionaires/NI’ in the subject line.
Aferim! superficially reflects the Soviet-era western (there was such a thing!) but has a more serious purpose – to connect the contemporary situation of Roma people in Romania to their pre-1856 status as chattels. There are glimmers of humanity. In Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, a brother of a murdered man confronts his killer. The focus is on the killers and the question: how were they capable of it? Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa strikingly documents what becomes the mountain guides’ strike for better conditions of employment, and compensation for death and injury, following an icefall with 16 fatalities during the 2014 commercial climbing season on Everest. Tour companies are casual with the facts, their wealthy clients hoodwinked (one American calls the strike ‘terrorism’), government officials indifferent. But the Sherpas win!
