BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness) is a seven-headed party machine from South Africa. The band was formed in Soweto, more specifically in a shipping container that was converted into a restaurant that was rebuilt into a practice space. With funky bass lines, whistles, plenty of drums as well as singing and rapping in Zulu, Sotho and English, they create a hedonistic dance party that is also a weapon in a political struggle for equality. They call it emo-indigenous Afro psychedelic fire from the hood. The songs are long, often up to twenty minutes. With an awesome sense of dynamics, they let the pressure build and then hold back and start over in another direction. Lead singer Jovi’s stage presence is about as intense as it gets. He shares the mike with several other members who all manifest together that BCUC is a collective where everyone plays the main role.

It’s unmistakable: Ariel Tintar’s falsetto voice with that slightly nervous vibrato. He sings in French and Creole, combining dreamy pop and soulful moods à la Moses Sumney with the musical legacy of Martinique. As a child he left his home in the Antilles and moved to Bordeaux, where at the age of 8 he began to study classical piano at the conservatory. A few years later, he was involved in most of the local bands worth mentioning. After some time as a touring musician, he started Ariel Ariel, the first project where he performed his own material. Meanwhile, poets like Aimé Césaire and Edouard Glissant made him search beyond his everyday horizons, and reconnect to the Martinique of his childhood. Ariel Ariels’s debut EP Mwen Menti is a product of that search. A personal universe to travel and explore.

Why settle for one when you can make two? Sibusile Xaba is the South African guitarist, singer and story-teller who came from nowhere and received critical acclaim from international music press for his debut albums – yep, there are two of them! He had just finished the malombo-jazzy album Unlearning, when they suddenly appeared: dreams, several nights in a row, about old African ladies, standing on green meadows, singing oddly beautiful songs. He woke up and immediately played the melodies on his guitar, and soon a new collection of songs was completed: Open Letter to Adoniah, that is the name of the second half of Sibusile’s double debut. It’s a collection of dreamlike arrangements for acoustic guitar and scarce but captivating action on hand drums and wooden blocks. And Sibusile’s singing: his lyrics consist of simple fables and metaphors, repeated in an infinite variety. His vocal chords embark on jazzy adventures reminiscent of role model and mentor Philip Tabane: constantly looking for new timbres, new voices

The members of this powerful gospel trio had been singing together for ages without thinking much about ever taking their show outside their small hometown of Como, Mississippi. But one day, a man from a New York-based record company came to town and was completely blown away by the way their voices merged into an utmost soulful trinity: the deep voice of Angela Taylor, her energetic sister Della Daniels, and right up front, Ester Mae Smith’s raspy voice. The meeting led to the company Daptone releasing the trio’s debut album Get an Understanding. In the church at home in Como, they had long lacked musicians to back up their singing, and hence it came quite natural to The Como Mamas to record a capella. Raving reviews led to tours in the US and Europe, and soon the trio recorded their second album, Move Upstairs. This time backed by the The Glorifiers, known for collaborations with Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones.