WOMADelaide has announced the addition of four extraordinary artists – expanding the line-up to an impressive 71 groups appearing at the festival in Adelaide’s Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla from 8 – 11 March 2024.
Trailblazing Afrobeat luminary Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 (Nigeria); tropical pop-reggae artist Hollie Cook (UK); the intoxicating Mauskovic Dance Band (The Netherlands) and world-renowned DJ-producer Saliah (Lebanon/UK).
Performing only at WOMADelaide, Seun Kuti, Hollie Cook and The Mauskovic Dance Band join more than 20 other exclusive festival artists, including Ziggy Marley (Jamaica), Baaba Maal (Senegal), Corinne Bailey Rae (UK), Nitin Sawhney (UK) and Emel Mathlouthi (Tunisia).
Afrobeat sensation and Grammy-nominated singer and saxophonist Seun Kuti – the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti – now leads his father’s former band Egypt 80, after starting to perform with them at the age of nine, and taking the helm at 14 following Fela’s death in 1997.
He is preserving and extending his father’s legacy, while putting his own charismatic spin on the music and digging deep into African traditions to reflect the continent’s struggles and cultures.
Following Seun and Egypt 80’s Grammy nomination in 2019 he released the African Dreams EP, featuring The Roots’ frontman and MC extraordinaire Black Thought, and in 2023 collaborated on Janelle Monae’s Grammy-nominated album with two singles: Float and Knows Better.
English singer and keyboard player Hollie Cook is one of her generation’s most notable voices in ‘lovers rock’, an English/Caribbean sub-genre of reggae that emerged in London in the 1970s, celebrating erotic love.
Previously a member of all-female feminist punk/reggae band The Slits, Cook has released four albums since beginning her solo career in 2011.
The daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and Culture Club backing vocalist Jeni Cook – and the goddaughter of Boy George no less – Cook continues her family’s music legacy with a sound distinctly her own.
Amsterdam’s Mauskovic Dance Band knows how to fire up the dancefloor, with their arsenal of hazy rhythms and dubby percussion, fused with a love of Afro-Caribbean poly rhythms.
The five-piece band and musical family – with four of the five band members related – produces hypnotic grooves with airtight arrangements that have seen them perform across the world.
Renowned for her technical skill and remixes of Arabic classics paired with club sounds, Saliah’s curated selections and stage presence bring high energy to her genre-bending sets.
Saliah (pronounced ‘Saal-yah’) is an electronic music producer and DJ, who has played the Boiler Room and made her Glastonbury debut in 2022. She has supported Lady Leshurr and Miss Melody, and has opened for the likes of Omar Souleyman, Shkoon, Ammar 808, Lady Leshurr and Hello Psychaleppo.
WOMADelaide 2024 runs 8 – 11 March. For more information and full program, visit: www.womadelaide.com.au for details.
Image: Hollie Cook – photo by Jasmine Da Silva