Artists from 27 countries will perform in the 43 concerts of the 24th edition of the Music of the World Festival, which takes place in Sines and Porto Covo, in the Alentejo, from July 20 to 27, and whose program was released today.
Among the artists invited to Porto Covo (20 to 22) and Sines (23 to 27), the festival’s organizers highlight, in a press release, Brazil’s current Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes.
The politician-singer, star of the carnivals in Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, is just the standard-bearer of the usual contingent of Portuguese speakers that FMM usually highlights.
Accompanying her from the same country are accordionist Lívia Mattos, Rio de Janeiro singer-songwriter Ana Frango Elétrico and MOMO, the stage name of Marcelo Frota, who currently lives in London and represents the Brazilian diaspora in Europe.
Portugal will be represented by the recently created Cara de Espelho, by JP Simões (singing José Mário Branco), Prétu (a project by rapper Xullaji), José Manuel David (making his solo debut, as he was at the festival with Gaiteiros de Lisboa) and Orquestra Locomotiva, which includes Mozambican Joni Schwalbach and Cape Verdean Vasco Martins.
Also appearing at FMM for the first time will be Três Tristes Tigres (two of whose members have already performed at the festival, but as Osso Vaidoso), Salvador Sobral and Duarte.
From Portuguese-speaking Africa, artists from Cape Verde (Ferro Gaita), Guinea-Bissau (Fattú Djakité) and Mozambique (Moticoma) make their debuts, joined by Cape Verdean Mayra Andrade, a repeat visitor to FMM, where she was at the start of her career in 2006.
The artists who will perform the 43 concerts that make up the eight days of the next edition of the FMM, organized by the Sines City Council, come from many other places, “from Argentina to Zanzibar”.
The organization highlights the Cuban Eliades Ochoa, founding member of Buena Vista Social Club, the rock-tango of the Argentinian Melingo, the guitar of the Malian Samba Touré, the Californian-Jamaican reggae of Groundation and the Ghanaian jazz of Gyedu-Blay Ambolley.
La Muchacha (Colombia), iLe (Puerto Rico), Adédèjì (Nigeria) and Son Rompe Pera (Mexico) are identified as representatives of the “new generation” of world music, which sees itself as the “sonic portrait of a multicolored planet on the move”.
Artists from Algeria, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Spain (Galicia), France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania (Zanzibar) and Vietnam make up the rest of the geographical menu.
As in previous editions, the FMM organization is taking on certain international causes, with artists from Syria (Rizan Said) and Palestine (DAM and Haya Zaatry).
The FMM will also have a program of parallel initiatives, but this is not yet known.
Between 2016 and 2024, FMM received 13 Iberian Festival Awards, seven Iberian and six national prizes.
It recently received the award for Best Cultural Program at the Iberian Festival Award 2024.
In 2017, he won the EFFE Award 2017, awarded by the European Festivals Association.
