For three days and nights there will be a wave of eclectic live music, DJ’s and Q&A sessions across Camden. Ranging from spoken word to dancehall, math-rock to afrobeat – all with an experimental and original flare. The main headliners include Michael Kiwanuka, Róisín Murphy, Kate Tempest, and Mike Skinner,…

Friday The site was nicely spread out, but unlike mega festivals, walking from one side to another did not diminish too much energy or take too long. Unfortunately, the festival’s app didn’t want to show me the 2018 line-up – it instead rubbed in the fact that A Tribe Called…

From the first Jamaican rude-boy sound systems of Duke Reid and Prince Buster to Trojan Records of London 1968, ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub sound system culture has thrived in Britain’s black culture and has defined generations and popular trends. A sunny May Bank Holiday saw hundreds take to Peckham Rye…

Gilles Peterson has become synonymous with the continued revelation of the latest talents that fuse non-traditional jazz with musical influences from across the world.  This explains why his twelfth annual worldwide awards sold out quickly and why many consider him an ambassador for world music, bringing new global concepts back…

[chimpy_form forms=”5″] They invited their fans singing “come see us play”. So we did it and enjoyed every single minute of it. Sidestepper brought their Afro-Colombian groove to WOMAD Festival and it was simply “chevere!”   A few minutes later, we witnessed the brilliant 30-year reunion of Songhai – kora king Toumani Diabate with…

Back in 2009 there was a big music conference like Womex in Bogotà. There I met a guy called Bernard Batzen, who was also Mano Negra and Manu Chao’s manager – an experienced statesman in the world music sphere. He had travelled to Bogotà, participated in the conference, and then…

WOMAD UK 2016 edition will also be the 10th on the grounds of Charlton Park, that’ why the organisers are already going all out to celebrate the anniversary… You just have to take a glance at the first name announced for the upcoming 34th edition of the event, which will take…

It’s not every day that you witness one of the most famous libraries in the UK (and one of the most important cultural centres in London) being transformed into the Shrine, the mythical Lagos club from which the legendary figure of Fela Kuti emerged in the late 1970s – yet…