OLUZAYO - African Music Futures /w Mark Stone plays Bernard Woma | Aurelie Nyirabikali Lierman | Victor Gama w/ Salomé Pais Matos

An audiovisual, narrative concert evening: composer and instrument inventor Victor Gama processes his research into a visionary anthropologist. Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman stages her field recording collage "Maria, Mariza, and maybe Marianna" as an audio cinema. Mark Stone interprets the music of his late teacher Bernard Woma on the Ghanaian xylophone Gyil.

OLUZAYO - Zulu for "What Lies Ahead." An extraordinary music festival taking place in Cologne and in Johannesburg in 2023. The focus: musical creativity, innovation and experimentation from Africa. In experimental songs and transcultural mixtures, in contemporary orchestral and ensemble music or the further development of indigenous traditions, in audiovisual narratives or conceptual sound art.
For Senegalese economist and musician Felwine Sarr, one of Africa's leading intellectuals, music, art and literature are the most important resources for developing visions for Africa's future and overcoming the foreign domination of Africa's (post-)colonial past and present. "Oluzayo" explores music and sound as a field that reflects these dissonances and possibilities - as well as the complex interconnections between Africa and Europe. Great and very different music and unfamiliar sounds, new ideas and surprising emotions.

Line-Up
Ensemble Modern & Vimbayi Kaziboni, Sibusile Xaba, Ancient Voices, Ocen James & Rian Treanor, Satch Hoyt, Catu Diosis, Hibotep, Jay Mitta & Kadilida, Victor Gama w/ Salomé Pais Matos, Aurelie Nyirabikali Lierman, Gürzenich Orchestra & Bard Lubman, Burkina Electric & more tba.

Organizer: Center for Contemporary Music ZAM e.V. in cooperation with NewMusicSA (New Music South Africa)
Media partner: WDR 3, Stadtrevue, WDR Cosmo, WIRE Magazine
OLUZAYO is supported by the TURN2 Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Further supported by the City of Cologne, the Kunststiftung NRW and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.