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Africa Oyé Festival returns to Sefton Park, Liverpool on 22nd & 23rd June 2024!

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The UK’s biggest celebration of African and Caribbean music and culture will take place at Sefton Park in Liverpool this June with a stellar line-up of live music, DJs, workshops and more.

On 22nd and 23rd June 2024, Africa Oyé will take over one of the region’s most picturesque green spaces in what has become a Liverpool institution since its humble beginnings as a series of city centre gigs in 1992.

Headlining the live music offering this year are Julian Marley – Grammy Award-winning son of Bob – with his band The Uprising, and the creative feminine force of Les Amazones d’Afrique.

Julian Marley is the son of reggae legend Bob Marley and Lucy Pounder. Growing up as a youth in a musical atmosphere, the singer-songwriter, producer and humanitarian quickly adopted a musical lifestyle and at an early age became a skillful, self-taught musician mastering bass, drums, guitar and keyboards. In 2024 Julian won the Grammy Award for the ‘Best Reggae Album’, with his 2023 record ‘Colors of Royal’, making it the14th Grammy win for the Marley family. 

Les Amazones d’Afrique is a creative force formed in Bamako, Mali, in 2014 by three Malian music stars and social change activists, Mamani Kéta, Mariam Doumbia and Oumou Sangaré [who headlined Africa Oyé in 2022]. The collective has since expanded to involve many female artists from across Africa and the diaspora, including Angélique Kidjo, Nneka and rising Malian star Rokia Koné. While their cause, campaigning for gender equality and eradicating ancestral violence, is worthy enough in itself, their musical creative expression is equally powerful.

Also featuring on the Main Stage are, Senegalese electronic duo, Def MaMa Def; Tanzanian folk-fusion pioneers, The Zawose Queens; eco-friendly punks, Fulu Miziki, Ghanaian frafra gospel star, Florence Adooni; Afro-Canadian hip hop outfit, Super Duty Tough Work; Congolese rumba royalty, Nyboma; Haitian multilingual poet and MC, Vox Sambou; and West African griot, Batch Gueye.

In addition, young artists from Liverpool will kick off the daily live entertainment as part of Oyé’s ‘Introduces’ and ‘Community’ programmes. Launched in 2015, ‘Oyé Introduces’ sees local artists open the musical programme on both days of the festival – following community performances by cultural organisations from across the city region – giving some of the area’s brightest young talent the chance to share the stage with international stars.

Angolan rapper and songwriter Yilly Ruel and his band Rax Vibes performs a unique fusion of Hip Hop/Rap and Angolan rhythms, captivating audiences with his exhilarating sound, whilst Fraya Ofoeme is an aspiring singer-songwriter who has been singing since she was 4 years old.

For full line up and full details visit- www.africaoye.com

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Acclaimed US singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd to tour the UK for the first time this summer.

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Shortly after releasing her sophomore album in 2007, US-based singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd walked away from music completely for more than 10 years, feeling burned out and unhappy with her career progression like so many other independent artists. After going through a divorce in 2019 and in the midst of a global pandemic, she found herself pulled back toward the siren call of songwriting and again making the leap to pursue it full time. Her latest album ‘Carnival’, released in 2024, is in many ways the culmination of those decisions, and the reintroduction of an artist who now has the wisdom of experience.

There’s an unmistakable urgency you can feel when a song is written and performed from a place of complete honesty. That feeling permeates ‘Carnival’. “I’ve always been envious of writers who say they write songs because they have to, because they had these things they just had to get out of themselves,” Juliet says. “I had never really felt that way until this album. I’ve become someone who writes because they have to.”

Stylistically, ‘Carnival’ draws on a range of influences from Laurel Canyon-era singer/songwriters, to Lilith Fair rockers, to confessional country/folk balladeers, to indie pop. The central theme of the record and that of its title track is not being too precious about any one experience or decision. Take them for what they are, live in the moment, and move on when they’re done. It acknowledges also that memory can be subjective, and ambiguous—was an experience ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? And whose memory can you rely on to determine the answer to that question?

‘Carnival’ doesn’t just deal with the complexities of ending relationships, it also deals with all the feelings that come with moving on. The album’snine songs feature evocative storytelling that reveals a simple truth: when the carnival inevitably leaves town, you’re left with an empty parking lot. And how you remember, it is a choice. As Juliet sings in the title track, “If only there was a way you could bottle up that feeling / and you’d drink it in / when the days are short and you long.”

Across her 20+ year career, Juliet has been admittedly stylistically non-monogamous. Her first full-length album, ‘All Dressed Up’, was released in 2005 and was heavily jazz-influenced- a label that she rejected at the time. “I am a piano player and a woman, so I was immediately compared to Norah Jones—and I bristled at that,” Juliet says. “Listening back now, I can totally see that it was true, and it of course wasn’t a bad thing.” Her follow-up release ‘Leave the Light On,’ came out two years later and featured a slick piano-pop production that led to five of its songs being placed on reality TV shows on MTV and VH1. Coming back after her 10-year break from writing and recording, Juliet released ‘High Road’, a collection of five Americana/soul-tinged songs produced by Jim Ebert (Meredith Brooks, Shai) that earned her widespread recognition and songwriting awards both in her home region of DC as well as nationally.

Now with her first ever UK tour scheduled for July 2025, Juliet has also dropped a completely brand-new single ‘Wild Again’, which like ‘Carnival’, was written with and produced by Todd Wright (Lucy Woodward, Butch Walker, Toby Lightman). ‘Wild Again’, however, charts yet another new step in Juliet’s journey.

Carnival’, is full of deeply personal songs that are drawn from my real-life experiences and relationships. Coming out of that album cycle, I was feeling a little exhausted by my own navel-gazing and I was craving inspiration elsewhere. So, a lot of the songs I’m writing now are an evolution of sorts – focused more on external stimuli and finding the personal stories and humanity in that. Wild Again is a perfect example of this,” she explains.

The idea for ‘Wild Again’ was born out of a NY Times podcast Juliet listened to about the real-life efforts to return the whale that played Willy in the iconic movie ‘Free Willy’ back into the wild.

“It’s an insane, heartbreaking story that asks all kinds of thorny questions about human responsibility and humility and what’s the “right” thing to do and is that the same as the “kind” thing to do. There was a line that one of the trainers said in the podcast, explaining that they were trying to “train him to be wild again.” The complete absurdity of that statement hit me in the moment, and I immediately started jotting down lyrical ideas”, Juliet says.

Catch Juliet Lloyd on her UK tour this July:

1st July: The Folklore Rooms / Brighton
2nd July: The Hyde Tavern / Winchester
3rd July: Hen and Chicken / Bristol (CRH Music promotions)
4th July: Artisan Tap Hartshill / Stoke-on-Trent

5th July: Waggon & Horses, Nottingham

6th July: Cafe#9 / Sheffield
7th July: Hyde Park Book Club / Leeds
10th July: FortyFive Vinyl Café / York
11th July: The Muddy Puddle / London
13th July: The Wrotham Arms / Broadstairs

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