Barbican, London

When I was about 14 my brother's girlfriend bought me a couple of second-hand books for my birthday. One was a picture-book of Victorian sheet music covers and the other was the The Lost Stradivarius by J Meade Falkner. She had bought them for me because she knew that I loved music. Indeed, I loved music so much back then that I often neglected to read.

A story of family life amid conflict extends the range of one of Africa's most admired writers

Album of the week: Good-time grooves that will electrify the dancefloor

History, hokum, heartache, and strong women at the helm

Richard Lester DVD/Blu-ray (101mins)

Misattribution of verse started by students on internet is finally corrected by blogger

The Holy Grail? Yeezus? Why are rap’s power players obsessed with religious allusions? Gillian Orr takes a pew

Tricycle Theatre, London

In 1973, the Jamaican saxophonist and composer Cedric “Im” Brooks issued a wonderful album entitled From Mento to Reggae to Third World Music.

Spring Gardens, London

There comes a moment in practically every Robert Edric novel when the setting (Victorian Cumberland, African jungle, dystopian future) melts away and some elemental human dilemmas begin to declare themselves.

On page 334 of Inferno, Dan Brown's tweedy Harvard iconographer Robert Langdon reveals to Sienna Brooks - a British-born misfit genius who gallops around three favourite tourist destinations with him in this latest adventure - that "We're in the wrong country". Cue a flight out of Venice, where a plot rammed to bursting-point with guide-book factoids and the vintage formulae of apocalyptic science-fiction has shifted from its opening location in Florence.

Verdi or Wagner? Posing the musical question of the year, tenor Jonas Kaufmann answers it by saying that he has vacillated between them, unable to decide whose music he prefers. He finally declares that they are mutually beneficial: "After singing Wagner you have an extra dose of power for the drama in Verdi, and after singing Verdi, it is much easier to sing Wagner, as the composer intended, with Italian legato." It was this latter course that he adopted at the Royal Festival Hall, backed by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Jochen Rieder.