Review by Mathew Carr
Sept. 13-18, 2025 — One of the cool things that artificial intelligence can do is help flip genes on and off, potentially protecting a human body from cancer by “silencing” a tumor.
As I found out last night, music can do things like this, too.
Playing in the St Giles church across the water from the Barbican centre in London was a fusion outfit of musicians that combined elements from native Australia and cultures across the globe.
Listen while reading
The gutteral chants and melodic almost-screams from “Hand to Earth & Shabaka” were doing something strange to my body. I was near the back of the audience.
A lady nearby put her head in her hands.
I needed to stand up, so I squeezed around the side of the pews and stood in the middle at the back, blocking no one’s view as the sound rebounded around the sky-high ceilings of the huge building.
Other members of the audience periodically stood up or craned their necks in a bid to see how that intrusive, expansive music was being magicked.
There was a didgeridoo, a large wooden pipe used by Aboriginal men, instruments rebuilt (and probably reimagined) from fossils discovered in ancient Mexico, as well as slightly more traditional ones, including a harmonic flute.
The music seemed to infiltrate the space between the top of my brain and my scalp.
The skin on the top of my back crawled slightly, goose bumps formed.
The genes in my DNA were being amplified or turned down, like changing the recipes in a cook book midway through the resulting 400-guest dinner party.
Afterwards, participants mulled around, wide-eyed in enthusiasm.
The world needs this, said one participant, marvelling how the music connected with people on a most basic…probably atomistic …. level.
As egomaniac US President Mr Donald Trump adopts additional conflicting roles including judge, jury and executioner….America goes apeshit as one white guy allegedly snipers another to death… at a university campus.
And they wonder why ….after funding almost-daily deadly snipering of brown-skinned people in Gaza the past two years (plus well before that).
The system is clearly racist, with one life valued much higher than others.
The music played and sung last night told of a much better way—- unity and oneness.
*“World needs a new vibe” idea in headline via Australian artist Vincent Namatjira, who has an exhibition in London through Oct. 4. See above. He was at the Barbican event and I met him, afterwards.