Artists

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

Artist, activist, singer-songwriter, scholar, survivor: Nneka Egbuna has always sought to consolidate all aspects of her identity within her compositions. Listen to any of her solo albums and you can hear this combination of conviction and courage in action, a bold creative approach that has attracted countless admirers.

Nneka's songs may read more

Three musicians/dancers of Mozambique's young generation are at the centre of MO'SOME BIG NOISE, the newest music project of the Austrian trombonist Werner Puntigam. He formed a band, which combines rural and urban elements based on highly dynamic grooves (hiphop, drum 'n' bass and more) with an unconventional line up.

The read more

Katapila Ngoma started in 1980, with 15 musicians playing traditional drum and dance music of the Pogoro tribe, from Morogoro region of mainland Tanzania.

Around 1986 they added more cultural traditions to their regular repertoire, including sindimba, lizombe and others. From 1990 their fanbase started to explode, when they developed a read more

The group was formed under the Department of Culture through Zanzibar’s Ministry of Information, Youth, Culture and Sports since 1995.

The group comprises many men and women drummers, singers and dancers who maintain, preserve and develop our traditional heritage. They play different kinds of ngoma traditional drumming and dancing from across read more

Mehdi Laifaoui is an Algerian artist, singer-songwriter and performer. His music mixes Bedouin and trab modes, a pentatonic music that gives Algerian rai music its uniquely African flavour. The majority of his repertoire are original compositions, with occasional revisited interpretations of rai standards from the 70s and 80s.

Mehdi Laifaoui read more