Michael Andindilile watched as two South Africans, visiting London recently, transported their audience to the warmth of Zululand to meet the endangered praise singer of traditional Africa. Africa is rich in oral traditions. Many African societies survived for centuries without written records, and...

Singer Al Green has undergone several personal and professional transformations. His new album, 'Your Heart's In Good Hands,' is the first non-gospel album he has completed since 1977, and his early songs are featured in recent movies. He became an ordained minister in 1976....

[The Praise Singer] is an honourable and painstaking account of the first half of the life of Simonides, a 6th-century BC Greek poet from the island of Keos. It is less romance than reconstruction and readers will not be swept along as by the powerful current of Robert Graves's Claudius books or Mary Renault's own Cretan works…. Alas, these alleged Greeks seem too bland and well-mannered. They smell more of English public-school refectories and college halls than of wine and garlic. The...