From Cairo to Kampala, L’île Maurice to Paris the official lineup for the Parisian edition of the Nyege Nyege Festival is finally here. Come early, there will be goodies for the first ones to show up. Dive into the sounds, and get your tickets!
The full lineup for Nyege Nyege Paris is officially here. For the first Parisian edition of the iconic Ugandan festival an eclectic pan-African lineup is set to light up Le Point Fort d’Aubervilliers this July 16th for an unforgettable session of great music and club culture. From Cairo to Kampala, L’île Maurice to Paris, these established and emerging artists, DJs, rappers and performers is an extraordinary selection of the most exciting electronic sounds coming from the continent and its diaspora today.
A full day of music, performances, workshops (makeup, fashion and wellbeing) and collectives that will present their clothing, accessories and jewellery. A curation in collaboration with Art’Press Yourself and Violaine le Fur Du Yoke collective. Rdv this July 14th starting at 14h to get a taste of a wide variety of sounds all unified by an uncontrollable urge to dance!
Performances, workshops et designers stalls
Art’Press Yourself
Art’Press Yourself is an organisation that has been promoting the values and diversity of Afro urban culture since 2015. It is involved in events which highlight the movements and personalities of artists from this new artistic and creative scene. The association also supports young people from working class neighbourhoods by introducing them to cultural professions.
Today, Art’Press Yourself invites us to discover three brands involved in the promotion of Afro-urban culture: Original x Creation, KWABŌ and MLKréations.
Original x Creation
Original x Creation is a clothing and accessories brand created in 2014. Through the use of wax prints, the brand wishes to promote its vision of a world without borders, which they call “the Afropolitan Way of Life”. The brand offers functional and modern accessories inspired by Afro-descendant cultures.
KWABŌ
KWABŌ, which means “welcome” in Fon, is a clothing brand based in Lomé, Togo where noble fabrics from West Africa are sewed together, by hand. The brand thus aims to be an invitation to discover different African ethnic groups. It sells various streetwear and workwear pieces with Asian-inspired cuts.
MLKréations
ML Kréations is a brand of handmade urban jewellery and accessories in France. Through the production of unique pieces, the brand highlights the skills of Togolese craftsmen. The collections are inspired by the African continent: Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Togo, Senegal, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Working mainly with fabric scraps, the brand also endeavours to develop an eco-conscious model.
Yoke collectif
The Yoke collective runs film workshops, cultural events, dance exhibitions and performances. This team, made up exclusively of women, is behind works that question the relationship to territories, individuals and identities. The organisation is especially committed to artistic projects focused on individual and collective therapeutic healing. It connects together collectives working directly on the African continent
Violaine le Fur
Violaine Le Fur is a mesmerist and practises non-contact energy treatments that allows people to reach a state of trance. She makes healing objects from plants and minerals that she uses on patients during treatments. She has made an autobiographical documentary in West Cameroon in which she shares her introduction to communing with the ancestors.
Natty Kongo Creation
Natty Kongo Creation is the brand of the Franco-Congolese designer Natty Kongo, a project whose inspiration comes from a trip to Kinshasa. Through his urban-inspired collections, the designer pays tribute to his African heritage. In his creations, he uses raffia fabrics and mixes ancestral motifs, kemetic symbols and neo-impressionist images.
Roxane Leblais
Roxane Leblais is a French-Iranian artist based in Paris. Through painting, photography, collage, video, sculpture and her taste for poetry, she draws on Persian culture to create a unique work that takes us on a sensory and mythological journey. Across different ages, she unveils characters, icons, settings and landscapes which allow us to sense a world, real or fictional, made of figures and poems.
DJs et live performances
Flo
Florence Lugemwa, aka Flo, is a DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Uganda. She lends her skills as a trumpet player to HHY & the Kampala unit, a futuristic electro trio, signed with Nyege Nyege. In 2020, they released Lithium Blast, the sound of which is drenched in dub and techno and blended with traditional percussion and ghostly trance elements. As the album ponders on Uganda’s desire to modernise itself by any means necessary, it also reflects the member’s commitment to environmental causes. Deeply involved with ghetto youth as well, Flo teaches children of her hometown, where she formed a brass band. She is currently working on her debut album that will be released on Hakuna Kulala.
Popaul Amisi
Popaul Amisi is a dancer, singer and choreographer from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He joined Art Con, a dance collective and began practising dance at a professional level. At only 17, he won the Vodacom Kata dance competition and started publishing videos of himself dancing on Youtube. He later caught the attention of Ula Sickle, a Polish-Canadian choreographer based in Belgium. He has since been working with several artists, including Diamond Platnumz, Poison Mobotu and Fally Ipupa, and has appeared in music videos. Popaul Amisi has also released several singles where he mixes ndombolo with afrobeats. Recently invited by producer and DJ Lazy Flow, a resident of La Créole in Paris, they released together “Awa Toko”, a UK funky track sung in Lingala and in French.
Kampire
DJ Kampire ignites the underground East African electro scene, drawing on her multicultural background being born in Kenya and raised in Zambia, having studied in the US and now based in Uganda. She mixes her dad’s favourite Congolese dance music with electro sounds from all four corners of Africa. Through her unapologetic music and rebellious spirit, she remains a core member of the Nyege Nyege collective.
Hibotep
Born in Somalia, raised in Ethiopia and based in Uganda, Hibotep is a hyperactive and multi-faceted DJ mixing baile funk, gqom, techno, reggaeton for a rebellious set you can’t miss. A creator of the augmented reality Extra Soul Perception project and co-composer of the EP Hold on to Your Love Hibotep is spearheading a young African creative revolution alongside other high-octane female artists emerging from the East African scene.
DJ Diaki
Malian DJ Diaki is a progenitor of the supercharged Balani sound that echoes Tanzanian singeli, a trademark of Nyege Nyege Tapes. Diaki incarnates the quintessential African rave sound, sampling soukous and coupé décalé popularised in the 90s when DJs began to replace expensive balafon groups for marriages and other ceremonies. A veteran DJ marathon mixer, Diaki is known for his 8 hour sets of non-stop party music.
Otim Alpha
Otim Alpha is the father of acholitronix, an Acholi cultural music from Northern Uganda, East Africa, aggressively mixed with electronics and local instruments for a throbbing and frenetic rhythm. Listen and watch “Tong Gweno” shot in the streets of Gulu, Uganda for a taste of the psychedelic and contagious energy of this tradition revisited.
R3ign drops
R3ign drops is the delicate and groovy protegé of the immutable Catu Diosis, meditating on afro house and smooth cuts as much as techno and rave music. Journalist, poet and model this hyper talented young DJ is also a participant in Dope Gal African, an initiative promoting young female African artists. Listen to her debut track “ENDLESS TRIP” that combines the trippy club aesthetic with her deep cut groove.
Turkana
Born in 1997, Anita Kevin is a South Sudanese DJ who grew up in a refugee camp in Kakuma, in the Turkana region of Kenya, hence her name. It’s a story she recounts in one of our recent PAM Meets that gives a full introduction to the hardcore elegance of the young DJ’s sound, style and mission. A fashionista and participant in the Femme Electronic workshops as well as the ANTI-MASS collective, Turkana prefers a hard dance style in which visceral techno and experimental African sounds collide.
Aunty Rayzor
Bisola Olugbenga aka Aunty Rayzor, is a Nigerian Afro Hip- Hop singer and songwriter from Lagos. One of Nigeria’s hottest emerging talents that breaks from the mold with a versatility and aggressiveness singing in both English and Yoruba that’s unmatched. Her latest single “Kuku Corona” slaps hard, earning the remix treatment from Limbololo Sound System and Dom Peter. Aunty Razor will be rapping live and dropping the mic for the first time in Paris.
Menzi
A gqom pioneer and Durban native, Menzi is empowering the dance music cultural underground with his dark and energetic mixes. Signed to Nyege Nyege, the DJ and producer is also known for his innovations in 3 step, and heavy club music. Embracing his home culture, he samples the traditional drums of his father, recorded unbeknownst to him. Through his performances and his menacing post-gqom tracks, Menzi is bringing a brand new flavor to the dancefloor and a kinetic energy for all those ready to experience wildness.
Faizal Mostrixx
Faizal Mostrixx is the versatile artist behind the most innovative electro sounds and experimental rhythms to come out of the East African counterculture in the last five years. It was his first album, Tribal Match, where traditional instruments and organic rhythms mixed with hard club music, that propelled him to the forefront of this alternative scene. “I want to preserve and nourish the memory of Africa through my work,” he explained at the time.
Singeli Movement (Jay Mitta & Friends)
Tanzanian producer Jay Mitta, hailing from the famed Sisso Studios in Dar Es Salaam, combines frenetic Tanzanian singeli – a style we can compared to kuduro and shangaan electro – and Swahili rap styles for 180bpm dancefloor madness. For this edition, Jay Mitta will be inviting his entourage to turn up the heat for some serious cardio, pushing a style of music ready to explode for any and all fit and frantic club scenes.
Ibrahim X
Egyptian rapper Ibrahim X will be MCing on top of electro-shaabi beats as a representative of the emerging Cairo rap scene that has been taking the youth by storm. Previously featured in a wildly successful PAM party in Paris, Ibrahim X is a natural performer that uses his whole body to gesticulate to the catch tunes of electronic flutes and neo-shaabi anthems. Somewhere between rapping and crooning, Ibrahim X is a stage talent you can’t take your eyes off of.
GЯEG
Mauritian DJ GЯEG based in Paris, GЯEG is a resident of the parisian collective La Créole where he contributes to the promotion of Mascarene culture through his frantic club music and ingenious use of the shatta with baily funk, house, UK garage or house. His first EP Eau Coulée Smart City is a testament to his involvement in Creole culture. GЯEG is also part of the label Boukan Records, the name of which (a wordplay with the French word for loud) suits the artist’s style to a tee.
Jako Maron
Reunionese musician Jako Maron is pioneering a new kind of maloya as he began experimenting via modular synthesis and drum machines with the tertiary and binary beats of this music inherited from slaves who worked on sugarcane fields on the Réunion Islands in the 17th century. His latest album Kabar Jako offers a catchy, melodious, danceable sound mixed with electronica, acid and trance atmospheres.
Judgitzu
Julian Hairon, aka Judgitsu, French singeli enthusiast, now based in Tanzania, has spent many years travelling across Asia, Oceania and Africa, recording sounds he released on his own label Les Cartes Postales. Since the release of his debut EP Umeme/Kelele in 2019, the globe-trotter has been part of the Nyege Nyege team.
Shobra El General
Egyptian rapper Shobra El General is a pionneer of the mahragan, which litteraly means festival in Egyptian and refers to an electro sub-genre born in the Cairene ghetto. Through frantic beats and clever lyrics,Shobra El General carries the voice of a generation who has been feeling neglected. Not unlike Molotof, with whom he recorded “Fawda”, he is a credit to this ever evolving genre.
Kabeaushé
Young Kenyan up-and-comer Kabeaushé is a brand new artist on the Nyege Nyege roster that breaks the mold of the typical club centric Nyege brand. Instead Kabeaushé is using experimental pop and washed out indie-rock to form a new type of East African alté reminiscent of Yves Tumor or Dean Blunt. For Kabeaushé’s first concert in Paris, it will be a huge reveal for the young talent.
Kass Kass Rizer
An exclusive premier of the yet to be announced mystery duo who have previously been featured on PAM under different monikers. Expect fast transcendent music that combines the ceremonial with the robotic. It’s a fruitful collaboration between two artists that are as comfortable in the studio as behind the decks for a worldwide take on African club music.
PAM Sound System
PAM’s in-house rotating DJ team made up of PAM writers, editors, videographers and more. It’s a sound system constantly morphing to the style and taste of our extended family of voices and talents that make PAM what it is. Dancehall or gqom, Afro house or French hip-hop, everything is possible when PAM Sound System takes the stage.
Quest?onmarq
Quest?onmarq is coming through to drop some hard booty bass.
Rama
Cairo based DJ, Rama, who favors hip-hop, club music and ambient, has been a a resident of the independent Bristol-based Noods Radio. She’s also the cofounder of the irsh series with fellow Cairene producer Zuli with whom she established her reputation as an expert tastemaker in the Egyptian electro avant-guard scene.
Yeewu
Yeewu is the meeting of the Senegalese MC Gaston Bandimic and drummer and electronic musician Uriel Barthélémi. Together they build a completely hybrid music, an electronic and instrumental hiphop, rapped in Wolof with a furious energy. Yeewu will make their first crash test appearance on this date, in preparation for the release of their first album in early 2023 on Nyege Nyege Tapes.
Get your tickets!
