Ammar Kalia

Ammar Kalia is a global music critic whose work connects jazz, diasporic sounds and the politics of listening across borders at the Guardian. He specialises in arts and culture with a particular focus on jazz and global music, and also writes on television. His criticism treats albums, scenes and screen culture as ways into questions of colonial history, migration, taste and representation.

Jazz and global music

Kalia’s core beat is contemporary and historical jazz and the wider field of global music, where he writes as both an attentive listener and a cultural historian. His coverage of figures such as Abdullah Ibrahim uses the music itself as a route into broader narratives, tracing how sound emerges from experiences of apartheid, exile and resilience rather than treating recordings in isolation.

He extends that approach to new work from artists across different geographies, highlighting how local idioms and hybrid styles speak to changing identities and social pressures.

In his music writing he consistently centres the perspectives of artists whose work sits at the intersection of tradition and experiment, foregrounding how they navigate questions of heritage, language and audience. His focus on jazz and global music allows him to link small-scene stories to larger structures of the industry, showing how niche genres circulate through festivals, independent labels and digital platforms.

The tone is analytical but accessible, aimed at readers who want both close listening and clear context.

Streaming, colonialism and the music industry

Alongside artist-focused criticism, Kalia writes essays on how the global music industry is shaped by streaming platforms and long histories of colonialism.

In his work on Spotify’s most-streamed genres, he uses data about listening habits to interrogate how platforms categorise “world” and “global” music, and how those labels can reinforce older hierarchies of taste and value. He connects contemporary market patterns to the legacy of empire and to the ways certain sounds are marketed, exoticised or marginalised in the Anglophone mainstream.

These industry pieces distinguish him from a generic entertainment reporter because they sit between criticism and cultural theory: he moves from playlists and charts to questions of power, geography and language without losing sight of specific artists and scenes. He is particularly attuned to how infrastructure - labels, streaming services, festivals and funding bodies - shapes which global voices are heard and how they are framed for audiences.

The result is coverage that is useful both to readers following music trends and to organisations thinking about equity and representation in the arts.

Television and screen culture

Kalia’s remit extends beyond music into television, where he works on the Guardian’s TV operation while continuing his role in global music criticism. His television writing draws on the same concern with culture and power, treating series and formats as reflections of broader social dynamics rather than pure entertainment. He brings an arts critic’s attention to tone, pacing and sound design, but places equal weight on questions of casting, narrative perspective and how programmes engage with race, class and place.

This crossover between music and television gives his work a distinctive vantage point on screen culture: he can read a show through its soundtrack and visual language, and situate it within current conversations about representation across the arts. For communications teams working around TV and music, that combination means he is likely to respond to stories that touch both creative craft and the structures behind what reaches audiences.

Across magazines, institutions and events

Beyond the Guardian, Kalia writes widely across magazines and cultural outlets, contributing music and arts coverage to publications such as the Observer, Downbeat, Jazzwise and Crack. His portfolio also includes work for platforms and titles including Apple Music, Resident Advisor, Mixmag, The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, The Quietus, Clash, Huck, TANK and Hyphen, reflecting a range that runs from specialist music press to general-interest commentary. He has produced essays and features for institutions including the British Library and BBC Proms, further underlining his role in conversations about global music and culture.

His writing on diaspora and marginalised experience is visible in pieces that champion artists articulating Black and migrant perspectives, such as his coverage of a Greek rapper whose album explores the experience of being Black in contemporary Greece and creates a distinct local sound. Outside print, he regularly appears on podcasts and radio shows, and speaks at festivals and panel events including Today in Focus, Monocle, NTS, Worldwide FM, Jazzkaar Festival and the EFG London Jazz Festival.

His wider practice includes publishing a jazz poetry collection with an accompanying album and a debut novel, extending his engagement with music and culture into creative work as a writer and musician.

Taken together, Kalia’s body of work marks him out as a critic who treats entertainment as a serious cultural field: he is interested in how music and television are made, how they circulate through global industries, and how they encode stories about identity, power and place.