Musician known for hit songs such as ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’ and ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ was credited with helping to bring Jamaican culture to the world with a starring role in 1972 film ‘The Harder They Come’

The two remaining members of the groundbreaking, politically revolutionary group talk about the state of hip-hop and the US government’s attacks on people of color

For the first time in 35 years, Billboard’s Hot 100 chart does not include a rap song among its top 40 hit records. Anyone who’s been listening to the music for at least that long can list myriad reasons why that’s now the case: all the beats sound the same, all the artists are industry plants, all the lyrics are barely intelligible etc. For hip-hop forefather Abiodun Oyewole, though, it boils down to this: “We embraced ‘party and bullshit’, my brother.”

Fifty-seven years ago, on what would have been Malcolm X’s 43rd birthday, Oyewole cliqued up with two young poets at a writers’ workshop in East Harlem’s Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) to form what would become the Last Poets, a collective of bard revolutionaries. They outfitted themselves in African prints, performed over the beat of a congo drum and advocated for populism in their verses. The group has had many configurations over the years, but Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan abide as the standout members. The trio is all over the band’s self-titled first album – which was released in 1970 and peaked at No 29 on the Billboard 200. Their follow-up album, This Is Madness, made them ripe targets for J Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro campaign against the emerging figures the then-FBI director deemed politically subversive. Notably, Oyewole could not contribute to that album because he had been incarcerated for an attempted robbery of a Ku Klux Klan headquarters, serving two and a half years of a three-year sentence. (He was trying to raise bail for activists who had been arrested for striking back at the Klan.)

Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now

Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81.

A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.

I can’t dance. Not even a little bit. But the terrible moves my friends mock are an antidote to the racing heart and quivering breath that arrive in my more anxious moments

The first time I started dancing at home was a happy accident. I’d just had a terse conversation with an ex, and my body was reacting in its usual way: racing heart, quivering breath and trembling fingers. I needed to calm down. Looking around for quick fixes in my flat – my bed, some stale chocolate digestives and a packet of cigarettes – I settled on the kitchen radio, which had been humming faintly in the background all morning.

Tuned to BBC Radio 6 Music, it was playing a disco track I didn’t recognise. But the beat was steady and intermingled with the sounds of tambourines, synths and drums. I turned up the volume, and then my body was moving: limbs swinging, feet tapping, hips wiggling. I continued into the next song, leaning into the feeling and becoming more animated to the sounds of another upbeat 70s track, imagining myself on a crowded, sweaty dancefloor. It was all very silly. But by the third song, my anxiety had melted away. I was smiling. And I felt more like myself again.

After getting dropped by a major label, the Leonard Cohen-influenced south Londoner kept going, and has now won fans in Rosalía, Sabrina Carpenter and more. But writing for the Bard is the best of all, he says

Three years back, Matt Maltese was in a casual co-writing session with some friends. Out of it came a song called Magnolias, a stripped back piano ballad about imagining his own funeral. “I didn’t think anything of it,” he says. “And then two years later, we heard some quite bizarre whispers that Rosalía had somehow heard it.” It was true: six months ago, Maltese was sent the Spanish pop star’s demo of the song. He tried not to get too excited, even when, a few weeks back, a blurred-out photo of a Rosalía album tracklisting appeared online. “On the WhatsApp group we were like: I think that says Magnolias!”

Magnolias ended up as the final track on Rosalía’s new operatic masterpiece, Lux: one of the most talked-about albums of the year, currently sitting in the UK Top 5. Maltese first heard the finished song the day the album came out, when he’d got back to London from a US tour. “I took a long jet-lagged walk and listened to the whole album to contextualise it. It’s extraordinary.” On Magnolias, Rosalía changed some words, he says, “and dramatised it incredibly. It’s exquisite. It’s a gift from someone, somewhere, that it fell into her lap.” It’s all anyone has wanted to talk to him about since. “I’ve had a lot of follow backs on Instagram,” he smiles.

Musicologist Peter Wollny chanced upon the manuscripts in 1992 and authenticating them took half of his lifetime

The best fictional detectives are famed for their intuition, an ability to spot some seemingly ineffable discrepancy. Peter Wollny, the musicologist behind last week’s “world sensational” revelation of two previously unknown works by Johann Sebastian Bach, had a funny feeling when he chanced upon two intriguing sheets of music in a dusty library in 1992.

His equivalent of the Columbo turn, from mere hunch to unravelling a secret, would take up half his life.

Musician and actor tells LA audience that doctors also found a hole in his heart requiring surgery

Donald Glover, who performs under the name Childish Gambino, has revealed he had a stroke last year which forced him to cancel world tour dates.

At the time the 42-year-old said he was dealing with an “ailment” after performing in New Orleans and had gone to a hospital in Houston, where he discovered he needed surgery. He subsequently postponed, then entirely cancelled the remainder of his US tour, as well as all of his UK, European and Australian dates, writing: “Unfortunately, my path to recovery is taking longer than expected.”

Rumours of a hologram show of the pop rock band have been circling for a while

Canadian singer joined the band in 2014

‘I’m doing okay, and they’re fixing me up,’ Logan Henderson said

The soul star and Prince collaborator could hardly reach the counter when she bought her first record, but which Busta Rhymes song gets her moving?

The first song I fell in love with
God Will Open Doors by Walter Hawkins. I grew up on the Hawkins gospel family. They were my teachers. I was raised by my grandparents, and my auntie fell in love with the gospel sound and imported records from America – although my grandparents thought it was a bit too secular, even though it was gospel.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to For some reason, out of all his songs, Adore by Prince always speaks to me.

The Oscar-nominated musician is back with her superb second album, ‘Woman of Faces’, but getting here hasn’t been easy. She talks to Roisin O’Connor about feeling compelled to speak up, the demands of the music industry, and ‘coming back to exist as herself, again’

‘It’s kind of extraordinary to be able to say that I was friends with Lou Reed’ says author who was obsessed with the musician as a student