The Africa Oyé Festival in Liverpool has announced its final wave of live acts for its 31st annual celebration of music and culture this June.
Acts representing Ghana, D.R Congo, Cuba, and Colombia are included in the reveal.
On 17th & 18th June 2023, thousands in Sefton Park will celebrate the music and culture of Africa and the Diaspora with two free days of fantastic music, workshops, DJs, dance, food stalls and a range of traders in the Oyé Village.
The announcement includes Alogte Oho – the number one Frafra gospel artist from within the explosive music scene of Bolgatanga in Northern Ghana. Accompanied by his powerful female choir, the group is driven by super-tight horns and vintage keyboards; Alogte Oho & his Sounds of Joy (pictured above) will ‘surprise, delight and inspire’.
Creating ‘a modern-day cocktail of two of the great world musics’, Grupo Lokito will be fusing blistering contemporary Congolese grooves with the fire of Cuban music on the festival Sunday afternoon. Audiences can expect glorious melodious vocals, soaring guitars and lilting keyboards from this exciting group.
Describing their music as “a combination of life experiences, dreams and joys that have fed off of our direct connection to Africa”, Soukustek are a group born under the gaze of the Caribbean Sea surrounding the Coastal city of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia. Also playing the Sunday afternoon of the festival, the band combines the rhythms and the sounds of guitars that arrived from Africa in the 70s and seamlessly blends them with the flavour of the Colombian Caribbean.
The full line-up announcement also features Liverpool’s own, Ni Maxine. The neo-jazz singer’s performance on Saturday afternoon will mark the first time an artist from the festival’s Oyé Introduces programme has been invited back to be part of the main stage line-up, such was the acclaim following her performance in 2022.
Launched in 2015, ‘Oyé Introduces’ sees local artists open the musical programme on both days of the festival – following community performances from Merseyside cultural organisations – giving some of the area’s brightest young talent the chance to share the stage with international stars. This year, the programme sees R&B vocal harmony group, AMBA and South Liverpool rap trio, Black Borough take the stage at Sefton Park.
Headlining this year’s festival are Afrobeat superstar, Seun Kuti and pioneering dancehall singer, Tanya Stephens. They are also joined on the line-up by British rapper and singer, ZieZie whose addition to the line-up will delight his 100,000+ followers on TikTok.
Africa Oyé’s Artistic Director, Paul Duhaney, said of the announcement:
“We’re really pleased with the line-up for this year ‘s festival and how it reflects our ongoing mission to showcase the music of Africa and the wider Diaspora. Artists from Liverpool to Accra and London to Havana will take over Sefton Park this summer for a truly international celebration.”
The festival’s commitment to being ‘free and open to all’ also means that the Access Tent, British Sign Language on-stage translators and Access Viewing Platform will also all return for this year’s extravaganza.
The 2023 Africa Oyé festival will take place on 17th and 18th June in Liverpool’s Sefton Park on the Review Field from 12:30pm til 9:30pm both days. Entrance is FREE and you do not need a ticket.
For more information on the Africa Oye festival and other events held across the country by Africa Oyé click here.
