The World Music Expo (WOMEX) revealed today the artists set
to perform as part of the offWOMEX 2019 programing.
offWOMEX provides an additional integrated platform for bands and artists to present themselves and their music to the world music professionals attending WOMEX from around the globe. WOMEX will take place October 23-27, 2019 in Tampere, Finland.
This year’s offWOMEX stage includes a wide range of artists from Spain, Latvia, Canada, Hungary, Cuba and Russia, and are presented and funded by ICEX/Sounds from Spain, Sierra, Basque Music, Eesti Kultuurkapital, Mundial Montréal, Folquébec, Musicaction, FACTOR, Canada Council for the Arts, SODEC, National Cultural Fund of Hungary and the Halmos Bela Program.
Komal Rizvi, winner of the 2018 world music category
The US-based International Songwriting Competition (ISC) has announced the judges for the 2019 competition. The competition includes a world music category.
The judging panel will be tasked with listening to and selecting the winners in the competition. In 2018, ISC received nearly 19,000 entries from more than 140 countries worldwide.
ISC, established in 2002, is designed to nurture the musical talent of songwriters of all levels and promote excellence in the art of songwriting. It is open to both professional and amateur songwriters and artists in 23 genre categories. The competition gives away more than $150,000 in cash and merchandise split among 71 winners, with the Grand Prize comprised of $25,000 in cash plus additional prizes. Past winners have included Vance Joy, Illenium, R.LUM.R., Gotye, Bastille, The Band Perry, Kehlani, Kimbra, and Lindsey Stirling, among others.
“We are extremely honored and appreciative to have so many renowned artists and industry executives included as judges this year,” said Candace Avery, the competition’s Founder and Director. “The participation of these judges is what sets ISC apart from other music competitions and is what makes ISC so special.”
The list of 2019 judges includes:
Amadou & Mariam, one of the judges of the 2019 ISC edition
Recording Artists:
Coldplay; Dua Lipa; Tom Waits; Danilo Perez; James McNally (Afro Celt Sound System); Mandolin Orange; Amadou & Mariam; Kaskade; Fleet Foxes; American Authors; The Script; Nancy Wilson (Heart); Tanya Tucker; Kevin Gates; Cam; Kristian Bush (Sugarland); Sara Evans; Bastille; Keane; Gloria Trevi; Walker Hayes; Jeremih; Sidewalk Prophets; Lukas Nelson; Krewella; Kari Jobe; Rakim (Eric B. & Rakim); Camila; Peter Erskine; Matthew West; Robert Randolph (Robert Randolph & The Family Band); DJ Shadow; Nervo; Easton Corbin; John Mayall; Ted Nash; Joe Louis Walker; Gordon Goodwin; Nicholas Gunn; Ashwin Batish; Lonnie Liston Smith; Walter Trout; Micah Tyler; Aparna Nancheris; Jimmy Pardo; John Tibbs; and more to be announced.
Industry Executives:
Avery Lipman (Founder/President, Republic Records); Sylvia Rhone (Chairman/CEO, Epic Records); Daniel Glass (President, Glassnote Records); Jo Charrington (Co-President, Capitol Music Group UK); Nick Burgess (Co-President, Parlophone Records); Mark Mitchell (Co-President, Parlophone Records); Mike Easterlin (Co-President, Elektra Music Group); John Burk (President, Concord Label Group); Ed Vetri (President, Wind-Up Records); Bruce Iglauer (Founder/President, Alligator Records); Kate Craig (VP of A&R, Warner Records); Nate Albert (EVP of A&R, Capitol Records); Jacob Edgar (Founder, Cumbancha); Josh Bailey (Senior VP of A&R, Word Entertainment); Gordon Kerr (CEO, Black River Entertainment); Richard Stumpf (CEO, Atlas Publishing); Kim Buie (VP of A&R, New West Records); AJ Tobey (Head of A&R, Rough Trade Publishing); Cory Robbins (Founder/President, Robbins Entertainment); Julie Kertes (Editor/Manager, Hot Diggity Media); Carletta Higginson (Global Head of Music Publishing, YouTube); Laura Margolin (Publishing, Glassnote Records); Leib Ostrow (Founder/CEO, Music For Little People); Katherine Dines (Co-President, The Children’s Music Network); Claire S. Green (President, Parent’s Choice Foundation); Benjamin Groff (Founder, The Brill Building); Golnar Khosrowshahi (President, Reservoir Media Management); Tamara Conniff (EVP, Roc Nation); Carl Caprioglio (Founder/CEO, Oglio Entertainment); and more to be announced.
ISC is sponsored by Celebrity Access, Eventric, Lurssen Mastering, Merch Cat, Musicians Institute, PreSonus, SongU, Sweetwater, and TuneCore.
Rainforest World Music Festival 2009 – Photo by Angel Romero
The Rainforest World Music Festival 2019 intends to further enhance its environmental sustainability, contributing not only to the safeguarding of culture and art but also nature and the environment at the festival grounds. The Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) will take place July 12-14, 2019 at the Sarawak Cultural Village.
Sarawak Cultural Village – – Photo by Angel Romero
In a determined effort to make the festival even more eco-friendly, Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) has been working with various companies and organizations, start-ups and social enterprises to tackle waste and reduce the carbon footprint on the environment in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Some of the combined efforts include the recently announced #Urbins project as well as the annual tradition of tree planting.
This year, STB will be working with Cuckoo International who will install 20 water stations throughout the Sarawak Cultural Village. The water stations will provide free, clean drinking water. STB recommends festival-goers to bring their own reusable water bottles. RWMF will not be selling bottled water in the RWMF venue to reduce the single-use plastic waste. This will be considered possibly the biggest effect this year at RWMF, as it will greatly reduce the amount of single-use plastic collected at the festival. Festival-goers can purchase limited edition collapsible cups at designated stands, but are still advised to bring their own bottles.
Additionally, the RWMF is cooperating closely with food and drinks vendors to select biodegradable tableware and avoid disposable plates or cutlery made from Styrofoam. STB is working with Canard Media Sdn Bhd to implement a biodegradable solution to waste generation at the Food Mart.
Urbins presentation – Angelina Bateman (Director of Events and Corporate Relations STB), Seph Haini, founder of Spativate; Sharzede Salleh Askor (CEO, Sarawak Tourism Board).
Trienekens will return to RWMF as an indispensable sponsor, providing the festival with bins and bin liners, providing creative signage and posters to help festivalgoers separate out their waste accordingly between recyclables and food waste. Trienekens will also handle the treatment of recyclables and supplies provisions of recycling facilities on-site.
This will be the third year STB will employ the social enterprise Biji-Biji Initiative in the important task of synchronizing waste management across multiple waste stations, enlisting the help of local university students & mobilizing volunteers to carry on this task. The resulting collection of non-biodegradable recyclable materials will be sent to be recycled, while the food waste is used by Worming Up, a local initiative that converts food waste into bio-protein for fertilizer and animal feed for local farmers. The volunteers spread messages on topics related to recycling and food waste composting, raising public awareness among festival-goers.
Another initiative is “Green Warriors” where volunteers will help to leave the festival site exactly how it was before the festival. Here, festival-goers and volunteers work together clear up the festival site.
As it has been implemented in the past few years, shuttle buses will ferry festivalgoers from the city of Kuching and from a nearby location to the festival grounds to alleviate carbon emissions as well as prevent congestion at the site. Other recycling efforts include transforming STB promotional banners from previous years into tote bags to be used as gifts and souvenirs of the festival.
The jury- designated WOMEX 2019 Official Selection concert program, is nearly complete with only two more Club Summit artists to be announced.
The second round of artists includes trumpeter Itamar Borochov who fuses jazz with classical maqam scales, Sephardic and Middle Eastern influences; Mission Songs Project, an important heritage project recovering the secular songs written and sung by indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islanders; Asmâa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou, a rare all-female Gnawa ensemble; two Tanzanian top names from the vanguard of singeli, the electronic dance music from the streets of Dar-es-Salaam – DJ Duke & MCZo; the Grammy-winning progressive mariachi conjunto from New York City, Flor de Toloache; along with other artists.
The Jury-selected Showcase artists announced today:
Ahlberg, Ek & Roswall (Sweden)
Ak Dan Gwang Chil (ADG7) (South Korea)
Asmâa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou (Morocco)
Carmelo Torres y su Cumbia Sabanera (Colombia)
DJ Duke & MCZo (Tanzania)
Elida Almeida (Cabo Verde)
Faraj Suleiman (Palestine)
Flor de Toloache (USA)
Itamar Borochov (Israel//USA)
Lalala Napoli (France/Italy)
Los Wembler’s De Iquitos (Peru)
Mission Songs Project (Australia)
Monsieur Doumani (Cyprus)
Omiri (Portugal)
Ryan Young & Jenn Butterworth (UK)
Santrofi (Ghana)
Yossi Fine & Ben Aylon (Israel)
Club Summit artists:
Dat Garcia (Argentina) Lorenzo BITW (Italy) Otim Alpha (Uganda)
The World Music Expo (WOMEX) has unveiled the first set of official jury-selected showcase artists scheduled to perform in Tampere, Finland, October 23 – 27, 2019.
Marina Satti – Photo by Penelopi Gerasimou
The 2019 selection thus far represents a wide-range of world music genres and styles: new tango, urban-edged Senegambian sabar drums, polyphonic vocal tradition of Georgia; the fiddles of Finland, Brazil’s ‘Queen of Carimbó’; an Iranian orchestra, Sindhi sarangi fiddle from Rajasthan deser, Korean pansori singing , reggae, sacred steel guitar gospel blues and more.
Lakha Khan (India) – Photo by Shiv Ahuja
The first set of jury-selected WOMEX 19 Showcase artists are:
3MA: Ballaké
Sissoko, Driss El Maloumi, Rajery (Mali/Morocco/Madagascar)
Arat Kilo w/
Mamani Keita & Mike Ladd (Mali/USA/France)
Bani Hill Band (Georgia)
Bongeziwe Mabandla (South Africa)
Dona Onete
(Brazil)
Duo Emilia
Lajunen & Suvi Oskala (Finland)
El Cachivache
Quinteto (Argentina)
Fofoulah
(Gambia/Senegal/UK)
Khonyagaran
(Iran)
Lakha Khan
(India)
Lemma
(Algeria/France)
Marina Satti
(Greece/Sudan)
Maya Kamaty (La
Réunion)
NST & The Soul Sauce meets Kim Yulhee (South Korea)
Manu Chao and Calypso Rose have released an updated version of “Clandestino”, Chao’s cult song from 1998. “Clandestino” talks about illegal immigrants, dots at sea, ghosts in the city, lost and without papers. Calypso Rose now sings about the shipwrecked on the way to “the land in front don’t want me, the land behind me burns”. Calypso Rose says: “Everything I see on TV makes me want to cry. These things should not happen in the 21st century. “
An animated music video made by Wise Bird studio accompanies this new single. The vibrant video shows the need to “value everything that ‘the clandestine’ can contribute. It is not a simple shadow that society does not want to see.”
Manu Chao met Calypso Rose at the Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago in 2015. “He came to my hotel in sneakers, shorts and with a small old guitar,” says Rose. Manu captivated her and they spent hours playing and singing. “If Manu did not have a partner, I would be happy to be Mrs. Chao.”
Manu Chao and Calypso Rose
Both artists understood each other so well from the first moment that they decided to work together on “Far From Home“, Calypso Rose’s album released in 2016 on Because Music. This irresistible mix of traditional and modern calypso, soca, reggae tints and the characteristic guitar of Manu Chao, is the biggest international sales success in Rose’s 60-year career. Her subsequent album “So Calypso” (2018), also released by Because Music, has served to consolidate Calypso Rose’s international audience. As proof of this, at 78, Calypso Rose became the most elderly artist to perform at the latest edition of the Coachella festival.
Unsigned Only will continue to receive submissions until April 30, 2019. Unsigned Only includes a world music category and is looking for talented, unsigned artists who deserve to be heard.
Submit your entry now before the April 30th deadline for your chance at $20,000 US in cash, plus one-on-one mentoring by an elite group of record company executives. Enter your songs at http://bit.ly/2VU61Qo
The “Andrea Parodi Award”, the only Italian world music competition, organized by the Andrea Parodi Foundation, is seeking international submissions for its twelfth edition. Registration is free. Submissions must be sent no later than May 31, 2019, using the format on www.fondazioneandreaparodi.it
Submissions must contain:
2 tracks (2 mp3 files, specimens or live recordings or final realizations; indicate with which of the two tracks you intend to compete);
lyrics and any translations into Italian of the two passages;
artist biography of the competitor (solo or group)
There are many prizes for the winner, including a series of concerts and participations in some of the most important Italian festivals in 2020, such as “European jazz expo” in Sardinia, Folkest in Friuli, Negro Festival in Pertosa (SA), Mei of Faenza, the Parodi Prize ceremony, and other events that will be announced. In addition to this, the winner will receive a grant of 2,500 euros. The winner of the Critics Award will receive a professional-quality music video of the competing piece, funded the Andrea Parodi Foundation.
The finals will take place in Cagliari October 10-12, 2019.
The Award intends to enhance the new trends in world music, artists who mix the so-called folk or ethnic music with sounds and stylistic models of different origins.
From all the entries, the Artistic Commission established by the Foundation will select, anonymously, eight to twelve finalists. The finalists will perform in Cagliari at the “Premio Andrea Parodi” 2018 festival, before a Technical Jury (experts, authors, musicians, poets, writers and songwriters) and a Critical Jury (journalists). Both juries, as in previous years, will be composed of authoritative exponents of the sector.
The event was born to pay tribute to the late Andrea Parodi, an acclaimed Italian musician in the field of world music.
Unsigned Only Music Competition has announced the addition of World Music to its line-up of eligible categories. Unsigned Only Music Competition is designed for all independent artists (including solo artists, groups, and vocalists) who are unsigned to a major label record deal. Unsigned Only’s goal is to give artists exposure, recognition, and validation for their artistry and is the premier music competition in the world for indie and unsigned artists.
”We are very pleased that World Music artists will now be able to enter the competition and have their music heard by such an esteemed panel of judges,” said Candace Avery and Jim Morgan, Co-Founders of Unsigned Only. “We are strongly committed to providing exposure to the different music traditions of the world, and we look forward to providing World Music artists the opportunity to showcase their music on a global platform.”
Unsigned Only awards more than $150,000 in cash and prizes split among 38 winners, including a $20,000 cash prize to the overall Grand Prize winner. The Grand Prize winner is also awarded one-on-one mentoring by an elite group of record company executives. This is a unique opportunity for an artist to directly network with the highest level of record company professionals and get guidance, advice, and feedback. First Place and Second Place winners will also be selected in each category and awarded prizes.
Since its inception in 2002, Unsigned Only has become an important source for discovering new talent, with five Grand Prize winners having been signed to record deals. Additionally, winners have seen major benefits including securing licensing and publishing deals, getting better gigs, increasing their media coverage, and expanding their fan base.
Categories include: AAA (Adult Album Alternative), AC (Adult Contemporary), Americana, Blues, Christian, Country, EDM, Folk/Singer-Songwriter, Instrumental, Jazz, Latin, Pop/Top 40, R&B/Hip-Hop, Rock, Screen Shot (songs suitable for placement in film/TV/advertising/gaming), Teen (artists 18 years old or younger), Vocal Performance, and World Music.
Unsigned Only is sponsored by Berklee College of Music; Eventric; Hybrid Studios; Lurssen Mastering; Merch Cat; Musicians Institute; Musician Wellness; Pro Tour Nutrition; Radio Airplay; Shubb Capos; Symphonic Distribution; The Music Business Registry; and Vocal Eze.
Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s USArtists International (USAI) has grants available that support performances by U.S. dance, music, and theater ensembles and solo artists invited to perform at important cultural festivals and performing arts marketplaces anywhere in the world, outside the United States and its territories.
Grants of up to $15,000 are available. The next deadline is April 3, 2019 for engagements between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020.
Since the program’s creation, USArtists International grantees have showcased the vibrant diversity of U.S. artists and creative expression in the performing arts.
Rivers of Sound Orchestra performed at the November Music Festival in The Netherlands with support from the 2019 USAI program. Credit: Tom Beetz.
USAI is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding and is the only program of its size and scope in the United States.
headline photo: 2019 USAI grantee Ledoh & Salt Farm in HEARTLAND at the International Butoh Festival Thailand. Credit: Terry Hatfield.
Your Connection to traditional and contemporary World Music including folk, roots and various types of global fusion
