Africa Oyé Announces Headliners for 2019 festival

The Garifuna Collective from Belize and celebrated reggae artist Horace Andy will headline the 27th annual Africa Oyé festival this summer in the UK.

Africa Oyé will take place June 22 and 23, 2019 in Liverpool’s Sefton Park.  The festival celebrates the music and culture of Africa and the Diaspora with two free days of live music, DJ sets and multi-arts workshops.

Jamaican singer-songwriter Horace Andy is well-known as the sweetest voice in reggae and for his long association with British trip-hop forerunners, Massive Attack. Andy has become an persevering voice on the Jamaican music scene. His early 1970s hit, ‘Skylarking’ expressed his ability to deliver songs of Black determination and social commentary that topped the Jamaican charts.

Horace Andy has steadily recorded and performed around the world in his own right with his band Dub Asante, and has remained famous in roots reggae, rocksteady, lovers rock and dancehall.

Also announced for the 2019 festival is The Garifuna Collective. The group has pushed the boundaries of Garifuna musical traditions. The group went back to the studio last year ro record its new album Hamala (Let Them Fly). It will The Garifuna Collective’s first record since the highly-praised tribute album to fallen bandleader and cultural icon Andy Palacio. The new album experiments with new Garifuna rhythms, recording concepts and even some “organic electronic” music and dub techniques.

The two festival headliners join a line-up that already includes BCUC, Moonlight Benjamin, Sofiane Saidi & Mazalda, Carlou D and OSHUN, as well as Liverpool emerging stars Tabitha Jade and Satin Beige who make up the ‘Oyé Introduces’ program.

Africa Oyé’s Artistic Director said: “It’ll be a real honor to welcome back The Garifuna Collective to headline Oyé in their own right after their amazing performance with the late, great Andy Palacio twelve years ago; their sound and energy is incredible. And Horace Andy is a reggae headliner we’ve always wanted to see on our stage and I just know he’ll close out the Saturday in perfect style.”

For more information on the festival visit africaoye.com.

headline photo Trenchtown by Mark McNulty