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The first authorised biography of Jamaican sound engineer Osbourne Ruddock aka King Tubby has been translated to English. Penned by Thibault Ehrengardt, it follows a life of soundsystems, dub and electronics, from his origins in Waterhouse, Kingston, and his life's work at the Waterhouse Studio, up until his murder in February 1989.

"Writing King Tubby's world's first biography wasn't easy!” explains the official Facebook page. “Despite the agreement with his daughter Arleen Ruddock, things didn't go exactly as planned. [...] workers' withdrawals, requests for remuneration for interviews, refusal to cooperate from police departments.” They did it though, and it's now available alongside a host of rare photographs offered by Ruddock's family.

Described as “Very well written with a lot of reggae gossip!”, It was originally published in 2019 in French.

Buy from Sounds Of The Universe for a copy signed by the author, or direct from its publisher Dread Editions, who are offering to send an exclusive photo of King Tubby to the first 70 customers.

We previously reported that On The Wire, the show that has been hosted since 1984 by The Wire’s dub and reggae columnist Steve Baker on BBC Radio Lancashire, was to be axed by the BBC, as part of a major cost-cutting restructuring of local radio in England.

It now transpires that the show has not been axed, but is being ‘rested’.

In an email correspondence with a supporter of the show seen by The Wire, BBC Radio Lancashire editor John Clayton stated:

“Like other parts of the BBC, BBC England has to make savings to address the financial challenges the organisation faces. We have set out proposals to transform what we do across the country including on local radio, but we remain fully committed to providing local content including community and specialist music programming and are talking to our stations about what their schedules could look like.

“It is now proposed that the emergency schedule [that was implemented in response to the Covid-19 crises] will become a permanent arrangement as BBC England looks to play its part in achieving the huge savings required. If the plan is implemented there will be an England-wide Late Show each night between 10pm–1am which means that we will no longer be able to broadcast On The Wire at midnight on Saturday, the timeslot it has occupied for many, many years.

“But as things stand, On The Wire remains ‘rested’ not ‘axed’. It is true that Steve’s contract has been ended for the time being but that was simply a matter of practicality and he has been treated in exactly the same way as countless other freelance presenters across the BBC who have seen their programmes taken off the air because of our response to the pandemic.

“I appreciate that this will not fully allay your concerns about the future of On The Wire, but I hope that it reassures you that the so-called axe has not fallen yet and that we will continue to look for practical solutions.”

Asked to comment on this development, Steve Barker stated: “I don’t know what ‘rested’ means. What do you think it might mean? No one has called me to tell me this. Strange eh?”

Meanwhile, a change.org petition to save the show has now reached more than 1000 signatories.

The Walker Art Center has published the fourth volume in its Living Collections Catalogue, the Minneapolis gallery's digital publishing platform dedicated to the scholarship of its collections.

“We hope the publication, offered at this heightened moment in the fight for racial justice, may provide added insights into, and appreciation for, the critical role that radical Black innovation has played in the world of contemporary American artistic expression,” says Mary Ceruti, Executive Director of the Walker Art Center.

Focusing on a select group of Black artists who were prominent in the 1960s and 70s and who featured at the Walker, Creative Black Music At The Walker: Selections From The Archives includes rare audio and video recordings, photographs, posters and correspondence, as well as commissioned essays and interviews. Artists and writers include The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Amiri Baraka (including three previously unpublished recordings of Baraka reading his jazz-related poems), Anthony Braxton, Betty Carter, Ornette Coleman (including responses to his work by Dave King and Greg Tate), Julius Eastman (with two previously unreleased videos of him performing and being interviewed at the Walker in the 80s, and an appreciation from Jace Clayton), Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor and Henry Threadgill. The full digital archive can be found on their website.

Edited by Walker Interdisciplinary Fellows Danielle A Jackson and Simone Austin, the Living Collections Catalogue was conceived three years ago as part of the Walker’s multiyear Interdisciplinary Initiative (2016–2020) to explore the intersection of the performing and visual arts.

In response to the pandemic, Nyege Nyege festival have announced they are “going all-in this year” by presenting a a hybrid event to showcase music and art both in the form of their usual in-person Ugandan party and via a new digital platform developed by African Digital Art (ADA). They also emphasise this year their desire to create a pan-African co-curated event, in which the festival, originally founded in 2015 by record labels Hakuna Kulala and Nyege Nyege Tapes, will collaborate with labels, collectives and curators across the continent.

Running from 3–6 September online, and at its physical venue TBC, the line-up promises to feature a dizzying range of musical styles: singeli, mchiriku and sebene music from Tanzania, dennery segment from Santa Lucia, gqom and house from South Africa, balani from Mali, coupe decale from Ivory Coast, kuduro and Afrohouse from Angola, gengetone and metal from Kenya, elone from Gabon, hiphop from Kigali to Ouagadougou and Abidjan, and maloya from Réunion Island. There will also be special showcases curated by Sahel Sounds in Niger and Mauritania, Nadah El Shazly in Egypt, LaSunday in Ivory Coast, Sun-El World and Pussy Party in South Africa, Jakaranda Festival in Zimbabwe, and Jowaa Asokpor Corner in Ghana.

The digital events and African performance art program will be orchestrated by Violaine Le Fur and will include Cameroonian performance and dance collectives Modaperf, Zora Snake Compagnie and others. Also on the bill is Principé from Lisbon, Moonshine from Quebec, Jookoo from Barcelona, AS A SS and Al Hara from Palestine and a special footwork showcase with EQ Why presenting the GHB/HAVOC Picnic from Chicago. Meanwhile local artists include Afrigo Band, Jose Chameleon, Cindy, Kampire, Slikback, MC Yallah, Fulu Miziki, Nilotika and many more TBC.

Ticket information and online event details will be available from 15 July via their website, while full details of in-person events will be released in August.

Poet Linton Kwesi Johnson has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2020, seven years after receiving the Golden PEN award from charity English PEN in 2013. Formed in 2009, the annual Pinter Prize, also an English PEN award, defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature in memory of Nobel Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. On this year's panel were Claire Armitstead, Sharmaine Lovegrove and Max Porter.

Johnson said, “Awards are the nourishment of every artist’s ego. It is always nice to be acknowledged. It is especially gratifying to receive an award that honours the memory of esteemed dramatist, Harold Pinter, free thinker, anti-imperialist and human rights champion. I would like to thank English PEN and the judges for their kind consideration in honouring me again.”

He will receive the award in an online ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on 12 October. At the event Johnson will announce his co-winner, the International Writer of Courage 2020.

As previously reported, the show, which has been broadcasting a mix of dub, reggae and other roots and underground musics since 1984, went off air in March, for the first time in its history, as a part of the BBC’s stripping back of its local radio programming in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

That was intended to be a temporary measure. But now it appears the show is to be cut from the schedules permanently, as part of a further major restructuring of local radio programming by BBC England, which is required to make savings of £25 million by March 2022 as part of the BBC’s wider cost cutting measures.

Since going off air in March, Steve and the show’s team have carried on broadcasting On The Wire weekly via Mixcloud. He now says they intend to “keep on putting out shows every week at Saturday midnight with no changes to our modus operandi other than we could run over time”.

He adds: “For me personally and the On The Wire team, no BBC representative has taken the trouble to formally inform us that On The Wire is not required, or discuss any possible future for the programme, or even thanked us for running the show without break since 1984, or even said anything at all, save the local manager telling me by a quick phone call that I would not be getting another contract and he was really sorry. Although we will be on Mixcloud it will never be quite the same. We did not leave the BBC, the BBC left us.

“If you feel moved to voice your opinion,” Steve concludes, “then I know the BBC is always open to feedback. Write to the station manager at BBC Radio Lancashire john.clayton@bbc.co.uk and copy in the Head of BBC Local Radio chris.burns@bbc.co.uk.”

A petition has also been launched via Change.org.

Ennio Morricone, the legendary Italian film composer cited as the “father of the modern arrangement”, has died, aged 91. Morricone worked on more than 400 scores for film and television, as well as a number of compositions for concert halls. He featured numerous times in the pages of The Wire, and here we've selected a few articles that give some insight into his avant garde genius.

In The Wire 110, April 1993, Ben Watson feasted on the anti-pasti art music of Ennio Morricone's Gestazhe/Totem Secundo. Read on Exact Editions

In The Wire 159, May 1997, Russell Lack’s Primer gets to grips with the iconoclastic film music of Morricone. Read on Exact Editions.

In The Wire 259, September 2005, a new compilation of Ennio Morricone’s less familiar soundtracks – culled from his most prolific and twisted period in the early 1970s – is murderously brilliant, said Ken Hollings. Read on Exact Editions.

Michelle Williams Gamaker, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Jenn Nkiru, Project Art Works, Larissa Sansour and Andrea Luka Zimmerman have been shortlisted for the 2020 Jarman Award, a prize inspired by visionary film maker Derek Jarman.

The winner will be announced on 24 November, before which a special weekend of online screenings, discussions and performances featuring the work of all six shortlisted artists will take place on 14 and 15 November. London’s Whitechapel Gallery will also be showcasing relevant materials on their website in the run up to November.

Adrian Wootton OBE, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said: “With the impact of Covid-19 being felt so deeply by artists and exhibitors, we are more proud than ever to present this year’s Jarman Award shortlist and help raise the profile of this important body of original work that questions and articulates the world around us. We would like to congratulate all six shortlisted artists and thank our funders, Arts Council England, as well as returning partners Whitechapel Gallery and Genesis Cinema for all their vital support.”

You can find out more about the submissions – including Jenn Nkiru, the artist and film maker whose practice is grounded in the Afro-surrealist lens and the history of Black music, drawing on the Black arts movement and Black diasporic cinematic traditions – via Film London Artists' Moving Image Network.

Watch Nkiru’s Black To Techno teaser, 2019

Beverly Glenn-Copeland has released his first new piece of music in over 15 years. Called “River Dreams”, it’s s the lead single for his forthcoming album Transmissions: The Music Of Beverly Glenn-Copeland. It will be released on 25 September by Transgressive, the label now also home to Glenn-Copeland's back catalogue.

“I feel that music originates from the Universe itself, and it comes to me via something I call the UBS – ie The Universal Broadcasting System,” says Glenn-Copeland. “This song “River Dreams” came to me through the UBS. The song has a feeling to it. It is both calming and interesting because of the unusual time signature which is 17 eighth notes to every bar. Musically that is expressed as 17/8 instead of time signatures with which we are more familiar like 4/4 or 3/4. I recorded it in my home studio sometime in 2019.”

The new album includes music composed throughout his career to date and features both new and unreleased tracks and live versions. Leaving the US in 1970 to study music in Canada, Glenn-Copeland recently embarked on his first world tour at the age of 74, an experience documented in a three-part film Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story directed by Posy Dixon.

Glenn-Copeland regularly guests as Beverly on Canadian TV’s kids show Mr Dressup. He has also composed music for Sesame Street.

Listen to “River Dreams” and preorder Transmission on vinyl and CD via Boomkat and digitally on Bandcamp.