Artists

The Kiumbizi group has been performing together since 1996. Featuring up to 20 men and women, they perform styles of traditional music and dance, which are unique and special to Pemba island.

Kiumbizi is a kind of stick dance-meets-martial arts and Boso, a rhythmic circle dance. These ngoma styles read more

Sphiwe Ngwenya, aka Mamillion, hails from Soweto. He is inspired by township life, changes challenges. He aims to take kwaito back to the TKZee era with his beats, whilst fused with a modern sensibility.

Mamillion's main objective is to entertain while dominating the kwaito scene.

Mamillion's recent debut CD, Phakama is filled read more

Mohamed Ilyas embodies the culture and history of the Zanzibar islands like no other. He comes from a great tradition of taarab singers who took the Arabic origin of the art form and transformed it to a uniquely Zanzibar experience. He is firmly grounded in this tradition, with a read more

This is Tanzania's equivalent of Congo's TPOK Jazz or Zaiko Langa Langa. As OTTU Jazz, and in various other guises, Msondo Ngoma Music Band has been around since 1964, with the current leader Maalim Gurumo, being the only original member left.

Being the oldest surviving band in East and Central Africa, read more

Mutinda's music is a journey through time and space.

Marrying African traditional instrumentation such as nyatiti, maboom-boom drums, djembe, African flute with global elements as guitar, bass, keyboard, sax, violin and drums, he has created a unique style of soul-searching melodies and contagious rhythms.

Although Mutinda's music is unique, he still has read more

Musically and geographically, Natacha Atlas has always been an itinerant. The Anglo-Egyptian singer has spent more than a decade fusing electronic beats with North African and Arabic music, finding links between seemingly disparate musical genres, exploring new and different sonic settings and working with a wealth of like-minded collaborators from read more