Posts tagged “africaexpress”

last week i went on an amazing trip to Paris with Africa Express.. we held a 5 hour jam in front of about 30,000 people in the middle of the city, outside the town hall, with traffic going past!

i was in heaven jamming with Vieux Farka Touré (see video below), Roots Manuva, Damon Albarn, Corinne Bailey-Rae, Patrick Wolf, Amadou and Mariam and loads of others.. Insane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUprpRwfGM0

It all ended with a mass performance of Rock The Caspah with Damon and Rachid Taha singing the lead…see if you can recognise the dude on congas!!

http://www.youtube.com/v/yYOjX6RczdE

here’s a little headsup – there’s going to be a massive africa express gig happening next month! a huge free event in the centre of paris, part of the Festival FnacIndétendances.. will include 7 hours of jamming and improvised collaborations with some rather large names, both african and western. don’t miss out

http://www.myspace.com/fnacindetendances

Went to Bristol on Friday to perform at the after-show party for the private view of Banksy’s new show. We tried out a new performance style which is being called ‘Africa Express Soundsystem’.

VV Brown and Shlo

Africa Express is Damon Albarn’s project where he gets African musicians to collaborate with western artists in a non-patronising way. I first took part in their event at Glastonbury in 2007 when I got to play one of my all time favourite songs ‘A Message To You’ with 2 of The Specials (terry and lynval, the first time they’d played together in 20 years!).

VV Brown and Miss Dynamite

The idea behind Africa Express Soundsystem is to get African and western musicians and DJs to jam together in more of a club setting. We’re doing it at Glasto this year in the middle of the Saturday night in Shangri La.

In Bristol we had Shy FX, MoDJ, Sam Duckworth (getcape), Bashy, Miss Dynamite, VV Brown and some others all jamming together. YAY!