In the UK and Ireland a new music phenomenon is growing - bands that are speaking over their songs instead of singing. Is a new guitar music movement being born?

Fontaines D.C., Dry Cleaning and Yard Act, as well as solo artists including Billy Nomates and Sinead O’Brien are just some of the acts using speech prominently in their music. It is not just vocal performance that has been commented on - many emerging bands have been described as having a ‘post-punk’ guitar music style and lyrics rich in social commentary.

Musician and broadcaster Gemma Bradley meets bands and vocalists to find out more about this exciting music trend and why.

James Smith, songwriter and vocalist of English band Yard Act explains why he was attracted to what he describes as ‘spoken word, politically forward’ guitar music. He reflects on the power of vocal performance and how the Covid pandemic affected his song writing.

Irish vocalist Sinead O’Brien performs on stage with a guitarist and drummer and works in poetry as well as music. She meets Gemma backstage before a gig to discuss how versatile and impactful speech in music can be.

Fionn Reilly from Belfast band Enola Gay explains to Gemma what inspires his energetic performance style, vocal delivery and the band’s song lyrics.

Gemma also visits the prolific and much sought-after producer Dan Carey at his London studio. He has worked with many guitar bands that use speech in their music including Fontaines D.C., Squid, Wet Leg and black midi, and describes the freedom available for artists unconstrained by the parameters of singing.

(Photo: Yard Act (James Smith: vocals, Ryan Needham: Bass, Sam Shipstone: Guitar, Jay Russell: Drums and Christopher Duffin: Keys/Sax) perform live on 6 Music's Steve Lamacq show in Maida Vale studio, Nov. 2022. Credit: Mark Allan/BBC)

As Brazil enters a challenging and uncertain era under the new president, British-Brazilian writer Yara Rodrigues Fowler talks to its artists about the small utopias they are creating.

Writer Natalia Borges Polesso centres the non-romantic relationships of queer characters to forge precious connections in a country that is increasingly polarised. In her short story collection, Amora, she wanted readers to feel understood, while her latest novel The Extinction of Bees, urges readers to see the collapse happening all around them, and reimagine their present in order to create a better future.

In 2018, the sacred Indigenous cave of Kamakuwaká was vandalised. Photographer Piratá Waujá is helping his community to create a virtual reality experience in order to preserve their culture for future generations, and challenge fake news about Indigenous people.

Keyna Eleison, the co-artistic director of the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, takes us around Nakoada, the centenary exhibition of the birth of Brazilian Modernism. She discusses how humour can slowly shift the Eurocentric definition of art, and the importance of diverse collaborations in leaving an ‘intelligent’ legacy.

Elisa Larkin Nascimento, activist and collaborator of the late polymath Abdias Nascimento, is thrilled to have a two-year exhibition of the Black Art Museum in rural Brazil. She opens it with an ancient Afro-Brazilian procession in order to strengthen links with the surrounding quilombos, or communities of runaway enslaved people.

As the new president, Lula, makes ambitious commitments to diverse communities and the arts, what do they hope might change for them and their work?

Producer: Eloise Stevens

Image: Dramatist Leda Maria Martins with Congado Mineiro at Inhotim (Credit: Zezzyinho Andraddy)

This week we hear from some of the women who’ve been making their mark in 2022.

(Photo: Milli)

This week, as people around the world gather with family, Chibundu Onuzo presents a series of conversations between artists across the generations exploring what unites and divides them.

Jewish American novelist Daniel Torday, 43, meets African American writer Monica Brashears, 25. Daniel is the author of Boomer1, a novel exploring intergenerational strife in the Baltimore suburbs and Monica is about to release her debut novel, House of Cotton, a gothic story set in the American South. They talk about their shared anxiety over climate change and the tensions between Gen Z and Baby Boomers.

Two musicians from India, Suhail Yusuf Khan, in his 30s, and Sarvar Sabri who’s in his 60s discuss the way their musical tradition is handed down and different approaches to the student teacher relationship.

Plus Australian Aboriginal artists, Mother and daughter Lauren Jarrett, 65, and Melissa Greenwood, 38, talk about their shared artistic practice and how making work helps them address intergenerational trauma within their community.

(Photo: Lauren Jarrett and Melissa Greenwood)

Soudade Kaadan’s speks to Sana Safi about her new film Nezouh, which tells the story of a young girl and her family caught in the centre of the Syrian conflict as they remain in their besieged hometown of Damascus. It is a story that has personal resonance for Soudade as Damascus was a place that she also once called home. Inspired by a photo of a bomb-damaged house, she began writing the script in 2013. It’s a allegorical tale told through the eyes of a young girl, with magical realism, female emancipation and finding hope in chaos at its heart.

Both Sana Safi and Atia Abawi’s lives were shaped by the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the 2001 invasion by the United States and NATO as part of what became known as the War on Terror. Both Sana and Atia have dedicated their careers to telling the story of Afghans. Afghanistan's story is not just one of conflict but also family, tradition, and a rich cultural history. The two writers discuss how they tell these stories in both journalism and in fiction.

Andrey Kurkov is an author of critically acclaimed and best-selling novels. He has become a de facto voice of Ukraine as he shares his diaries and despatches from Kyiv spread the news of daily life in a warzone. Meanwhile, fellow Ukrainian writer Artem Chapeye has left behind the writer’s desk after signing up to become a private in the Ukrainian army. Andrey and Artem explain to Sana Safi what it is like to be a writer in conflict, whether war is shaping their writing, and what impact they think the war will have on the future of Ukrainian storytelling.

(Photo: Still from Nezouh by Soudade Kaadan. Credit: Nezouh ltd/BFI/Film4)

This week we discuss how art can help reconnect us to those who are missing or have been disappeared.

It’s estimated that around 20,000 people go missing in Poland every year. Artist Zuzanna Pieczynska explores the impact of this in her work, with her paintings often focusing on the lives of the people left behind. She tells Tina Daheley more about her project ‘Each year in Poland a small town disappears.’

Thousands of people were disappeared during the dictatorships in countries across South America. A new play, called REWIND, by physical theatre company Ephemeral Ensemble, has been inspired by testimonies of South American political refugees who fled the dictatorships, as well as the more recent stories from young migrants caught up in violent repression following demonstrations in the region. Performers Andrés Velásquez and Eyglo Belafonte along with director Ramon Ayres talk to reporter Constanza Hola about the show.

In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by dominant Hutu forces in 100 days. For her piece, The Book of Life, Rwandan playwright and director Odile Gakire Katese, known as Kiki Katese, tells the story of that conflict and the remembrance of those who died, through the letters of ordinary Rwandans.

(Picture: Julia by Zuzanna Pieczyńska. Credit: Zuzanna Pieczyńska)

The film Joyland is set in Lahore and tells the story of Haider, a married man who falls in love with the transgender dancer Biba. It’s the first Pakistani film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and it won the Jury Prize as well as the Queer Palm prize. It has also been selected as the Pakistani entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. Despite having a standing ovation at Cannes, the film has had a more controversial reaction in Pakistan itself. Originally cleared for release, that decision was then overturned. However the film is now out in cinemas in Pakistan, although remains banned in the Punjab. Tina Daheley speaks to Joyland’s writer and director Saim Sadiq and film critic Kamran Jawaid.

Brazilian director and screenwriter Gabriel Martins took inspiration from his own childhood experience when he made his new film Mars One. It tells the story of a working-class Black Brazilian family adjusting to life after the election of President Jair Bolsanaro. Like Joyland, it has also been selected as its country’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the next Academy Awards.

Lone Scherfig is a Danish film-maker best known for her romantic comedies including An Education and One Day. She talks about the film that changed her - Austrian director Michael Haneke's 2009 German-language film The White Ribbon. It is a movie with a troubling message about the history of Europe and one that inspires her to ask big, important questions in her own work.

(Photo: A still from Joyland. Credit: Studio Soho)

Cultural restitution is an issue that creates fierce debate in response to the work of campaigners, curators and nation states, who argue that collections in some of the world’s great cultural institutions contain objects that may have been acquired illegitimately, often during the colonial period.

Over the last two years an unprecedented number of restitution claims have been approved by museums and governments. This week two former UK culture ministers teamed up to call for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures removed from Athens in Greece by Lord Elgin, currently on display in the British Museum and last month Benin Bronzes which had been displayed in the USA were returned to the Kingdom of Benin in modern day Nigeria. Some commentators argue that a new way of operating for museums is unfolding before our eyes. It is a global conversation that has huge implications for the future of these institutions.

Producer: Simon Richardson

(Photo: The Benin Bronzes on display in a museum. Credit: David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

Across Ukraine photographers who used to shoot landscapes, fashion shows and weddings are focusing instead on bomb damaged buildings, soldiers in trenches and civilians caught up in the war. Pictures that they hope in future, may provide crucial evidence in war crimes trials. Reporter Lucy Ash talks to Mykhaylo Palinchak, who was the official photographer of Ukraine’s former president and now captures the horrors of the Russian invasion. She also speaks to Olexiy Sai, a graphic designer and artist who’s created a new work using the images taken by Ukraine’s army of war photographers.

Despite having some of the world’s largest oil reserves, according to new UN data more than seven million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015, amid an ongoing economic and political crisis. Most have moved to neighbouring Colombia and one of them is Fabiola Ferrero. She’s now won the 12th Carmignac Photojournalism award, which is a grant of 50,000 euros to carry out a 6-month field report, the results of which have become her latest project, ‘Venezuela, the Wells Run Dry’. She tells Tina Daheley about her work which chronicles the disappearance of the Venezuelan middle class and capturing the country of today.

Photojournalist Nelly Ating has been documenting events across Nigeria since 2014, including the rise of Boko Haram and its impact on the young women and girls they captured in her series ‘This war has found a home.’ She’s currently studying for her PhD in Wales looking at the role of photography and human rights. Nelly told The Cultural Frontline’s Andrea Kidd about her work and the people whose stories she’s been telling.

Please be warned there are descriptions of images which some listeners may find distressing in this programme.

(Photo: A destroyed book. Credit: Fabiola Ferrero for Fondation Carmignac)

Some of the world’s most famous paintings have become the central focus of the global debate on climate action. Climate activists have thrown tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and mashed potatoes at Monet’s famous “Haystacks”. Tina Daheley speaks to Nigerian climate activist Gloria Kasang Bulus and British art critic Louisa Buck about the role that the art world can play addressing climate change.

Bolivian director, Alejandro Loayza Grisi talks to Beatriz de la Pava about his new film Utama. He explains how making the film, which reflects the real life experiences of Bolivian communities facing drought and crop failure caused by a changing climate, transformed the way he saw his country.

Indonesia is a nation made up of over seventeen thousand islands making it highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions. The musician Rara Sekar reflects on her relationship with nature in her country and her feelings of eco-grief in sound and in song.

(Photo: Climate activists staging a protest. Credit: Just Stop Oil/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)