Ffour artists who are playing Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown festival at the Southbank Centre in London - Sheila Maurice-Grey from Kokoroko Anja Plaschg (AKA Soap&Skin), Django Django’s Vinny Neff and Let's Eat Grandma’s Jenny Hollingworth - where to find inspiration outside of music, how to overcome creative blocks, and what they might be doing in a parallel universe. Sheila Maurice-Grey is a London-based trumpeter, vocalist and visual artist who leads eight-piece afrobeat, soul, funk and jazz collective Kokoroko. They released their self-titled debut EP in 2019 and their debut LP, Co ..read more

John Grant celebrates Music Life’s 200th episode with highlights from the shows to date. Nearly 800 singers, producers, DJs, visual artists, and performers have come to have a chat on the show so far, sharing their experiences and unique perspectives on their lives as musicians. To celebrate this milestone, this week we’re looking back at some of the best conversations from the series, featuring the likes of alt-pop artist Santigold, soul singer Gregory Porter, rock singer Skin from Skunk Anansie, rock legend Elvis Costello, video game composer Olivier Deriviere and Uruguayan legend Jorge Drex ..read more

Deena Abdelwahed, 3Phaz, Aïsha Devi and débruit discuss the effect of using computers when writing music, dealing with the press and their labelling, and converting studio music into a live set. Deena Abdelwahed is a producer and DJ from Tunisia. She arrived in France at the age of 26 after earning her stripes in the Tunis scene as part of the Arabstazy collective. She has played for Boiler Room, and at iconic Berlin club Berghain. 3Phaz is a Cairo-based DJ obsessed with bass, distortion, and the deconstruction of the Shaabi aesthetic. If you don’t know it, Shaabi is an Egyptian musical genre ..read more

Phil Selway, Hannah Peel, Valentina Magaletti, and Errollyn Wallen discuss how to progress from a blank page to a room full of musicians, navigating barriers to development, and balancing the various demands of being a musician. Phil Selway grew up in Oxfordshire and met his Radiohead bandmates at school. They formed the band in 1985 and released their debut album Pablo Honey in 1993. They’ve released nine studio albums to date. Phil’s debut solo album, Familial, came out in 2010, and he recently released his third solo album Strange Dance. Hannah Peel is a Mercury Prize and Emmy-nominated com ..read more

Sam Ryder, Mr. Lordi, Teya and Poli Genova discuss writing for Eurovision, how it impacts their creative process, and how they handle nerves on stage. Sam Ryder was inspired to get into music after seeing Sum 41 in concert when he was 11. He took up the guitar after seeing Lordi win Eurovision in 2006, and was also influenced by David Bowie and Queen. He co-founded a band called The Morning After, and during the first Covid lockdown he started posting cover songs on TikTok, which caught the attention of Elton John, Justin Bieber and Alicia Keys. One of the songs he wrote during the pandemic wa ..read more

Soweto Kinch, Eska, Esperanza Spalding and Tumi Mogorosi discuss responding artistically to lockdown, changing the ways they create and release music, and the latest idea they got excited about. Soweto Kinch was born in London to a Bajan father and British-Jamaican mother, and began learning saxophone at the age of nine. He discovered jazz in his teenage years and subsequently fell in love with it, with early influences including Wynton Marsalis and Frank Holder. He established the Soweto Kinch Trio in 2001, and has released albums on themes ranging from austerity and modern slavery, to mathem ..read more

Gaye Su Akyol, Dana Colley, Marc Ribot and Via Mardot discuss who they would most like to collaborate with, how they deal with the politics of the industry, and which musician or band has been a game changer in their lives. Gaye Su Akyol was born in Istanbul to an artistic family. Her father Muzaffer Akyol was a painter, and her mother loved Turkish classical music. She listened to a lot of Turkish jazz and psychedelia growing up, along with bands like Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, which influenced her own songwriting. Her latest album is called Anadolu Ejderi (Anatolian Dragon), and one of her bi ..read more

Francisco Carrasco and N. Hardem are joined by Graciela Zaera Moraña and Beto Robledo Zaragoza of the band Chapulines to discuss creativity and the songwriting process. These four Latin American artists, who are on the line-up of this year’s La Linea Festival in London, UK, talk about their most constant themes in song writing, writing songs in different languages, the spiritual nature of Spanish literature and playing to audiences from different cultures. Francisco Carrasco is a Chilean musician who leads the band Grupo Luma. Born in Santiago but based in the UK, he’s a dynamic musician who p ..read more

Mark de Clive-Lowe, Iman Europe, dot and Pat Junior talk about financial equity for independent artists, building community with your fans and the future possibilities of using blockchain tech. Mark de Clive-Lowe was born in Auckland and started piano lessons when he was 4. In high school in New Zealand and Japan, he fell in love with sample-heavy 90s hip-hop and early UK drum’n’bass. He lived in London for a decade, where he helped to evolve the broken beat genre, and then later moved to LA. If you see him play live, you might catch him remixing classic jazz records in real-time, or joined by ..read more