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ISSA BAGAYOGO
Issa Bagayogo is from the country and his first and foremost a peasant. Born in 1961 in Korin, a small village 65 kilometres from Bougouni (home town of Nahawa Doumbia, the region’s best known singer). On the musical front, Issa first learned to play the daro, a sort of rustic iron bell that used to be rung noisilly behind farm workers to goad them into action. At the age of 12,  he began learning the kamele n’goni (the young Malian’s guitar) as well as singing (a bit like everybody there’s always a kamele n’goni lying around somwhere). As people liked his voice and as his playing improved, Issa Bagayogo began to make a name for himself and in 1991 moved to Bamako in search of recording work. He arrived a flourish in a studio set up by Philippe Berthier who’d settled in Mali and who were looking for a good kamele n’goni player ; as a result Issa Bagayogo’s first songs were recorded, for no reward other than the pride of being able to return to the village with his photo on a cassette.  He went back to the studio and met sound engineer Yves Wernert and ex Ali Farka Touré guitarist Moussa Koné, who suggested he work in a completely different way hitherto untried in Mali : mixing tradition with rhythmic samples.

NOVALIMA
Since its formation in 2001, Novalima has been breaking down boundaries, uniting seemingly irreconcilable genres, communities and generations to create an inspiring movement that has revolutionized the music scene in their native Peru. Founded by four friends from Lima with a shared passion for both traditional Afro-Peruvian music and modern DJ culture, Novalima searches for the common ground between past and future, between tradition and innovation. Their efforts have also helped bridge the divide between the Peruvian mainstream and the Afro-Peruvian community, a minority population that has struggled against discrimination and the threat of cultural dissolution for generations.

While their sound is futuristic and cutting-edge, the roots of Novalima’s music stretch back hundreds of years to the times of slavery and Spanish colonial rule. In a far-too-familiar tale, African slaves were brought to Peru as early as the 1500s until the middle of the 19th Century, establishing an outpost of African culture in South America. Over the years, the soul and rhythms of Africa blended with the melodies and instruments of Europe and the Andes. The result is rich musical repertoire that has existed for generations on the periphery of Peruvian popular culture.

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