Features
Songlines Music Awards 2025: Africa
Our favourite Africa albums of the year, featuring Amadou & Mariam, Cheikh Lô, Salif Keita, Trio Da Kali, and MC Yallah & Debmaster
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News
Hush: a new ‘calmer’ music festival is coming to London this summer
A new music festival is coming to East London this summer aiming to offer an alternative to the fast pace of modern life with an all-seated, slow movement-inspired event in Central Park.
News
Kidjo, Cleveland and I’m With Her among the Grammy winners
The 2020 Grammy Awards winners were announced on Sunday night with several Songlines-showcased artists collecting deserved gongs.
Features
What Next for Brazil?
Bolsonaro’s election win and incendiary rhetoric have brought uncertainty and division to the country. Alex Robinson reports from Salvador where its deeply rooted Afro-Brazilian culture is under fire
Essential 10
Afro-Brazilian Spirituals: Essential 10
Driven by axé (energy) in service to the orixás (gods), these top albums, selected by Russ Slater Johnson, draw on Brazil’s African diasporic religions and spirituality
Features
The Tsakirian workshop: a century of crafting rebetiko’s soul through generations of luthiers in Athens
Over a hundred years since rebetiko arrived in Athens, one family of luthiers continue to build the instruments which defined the style
Features
Xenia França: “Black Brazilian women can finally be seen and heard for who they are”
Remarkable rising star Xenia França is challenging perceptions of what it means to be a Black Brazilian woman, quickly becoming the voice of a new generation of artists. Alex Robinson reports…
News
WOMAD announces first names for 2024
Amadou & Mariam, Sampa The Great, Baaba Maal and Yungchen Lhamo amongst first names announced for this year's WOMAD festival
Features
Introducing... Balkan Taksim
A new Romanian duo are revisiting the Balkan sound with a fresher, more sophisticated approach. Robert Rigney finds out what inspires them
Features
The 4 Corners and Centre of Carlos Dafé’s Universe
A pivotal figure in the evolution of Black Brazilian music, the Rio-born soul singer talks through the works that have defined his sound
News
Songlines Encounters at Kings Place Reveals Second Wave of Artists for 15th Anniversary 2026 Series
Samba Touré, Martin Hayes & Kate Ellis, Minyo Crusaders, Hajda Banda and Suntou Susso & the Gambian Superstars join the 2026 line-up for Songlines Encounters
Features
João Rock celebrates 50 years of Black Rio: Brazil’s soul-funk movement lives on
The Black Rio movement gave voice to Black Brazilians in the 1970s. Its musical and political legacy continues to impact new generations
Features
Introducing: Seera
“It’s no longer scary to be ourselves,” say the Saudi psychonauts, in conversation with Bianca Carrera
Artists
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Gil is one of the founders of the tropicália movement, which mixed rock, R&B, reggae and Afro-pop mixed with samba and bossa nova and shook up Brazil's pop culture
Features
Essential 10 Maskandi Albums
Kwanele Sosibo picks ten albums showing how the Southern African style has evolved from working-class folk songs to expressing a fugitive urban masculinity
