Artists

Sylent Nqo is a self-taught and award-winning guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter from Zimbabwe.

Life’s experiences were his primary source of inspiration, and he uses his guitar to express his deepest emotions.

Nqo has collaborated and shared the stage with many of Africa’s finest, including the late Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi, Chiwoniso Maraire, Mokoomba, read more

The intoxicating Taffetas sound is built around the kora (West African harp-like instrument) and the Swiss duo of Marc Liebeskind (guitar) and Christophe Erard (double bass), who also take the compositional credits. Their shows in Zanzibar will feature Cheikh "Nana" Sisokko (Guinea Bissau) on kora and Fatoumata Dembele (Burkina Faso) read more

Tcheka was born Manuel Lopes Andrade in 1973 in Ribeira da Barca, a small rural town on the coast of Santiago island, Cape Verde, whose modest economy is based on farming and fishing. He was the second-to-last child in a large musical family. His father, Nho Raul Andrade, was a read more

Thaïs Diarra is a nu-soul singer with roots in Mali and Senegal. She was born in Switzerland, to a music-loving mother and a bass-playing father. Since Thaïs’ early years, music was a refuge, a moral recourse to the racial prejudgement and questions about her mixed race identity. In her read more

“The Brother’s sound is a tradition-trouncing trans-Atlantic Afro-centric futuristically ancient fusion that jack knifes between off-world spectral dub-metal, hyper rhythmic rock psychedelia, indie-township, and astro-afro-free-jazz. Taking a cue from that other “Brother From Another Planet” Sun Ra, they embrace a multi-genre, multimedia aesthetic, re-challenging hip-hop’s five pillars (MCing, DJing, B-boying, read more

For millennia the Nile has sowed lands of human, ecological, and cultural beauty. Weaving together Egyptian and Ethiopian modal systems, the polyrhythmic styles of Lake Victoria with the influence of the Mediterranean, patient melodies of the deserts and pointed melodies of the highlands, the river's 4,200 miles yield a wide read more