Africa Express

Africa Express is a UK-based non-profit organization that facilitates cross-cultural collaborations between musicians in African, Middle Eastern, and Western countries. It seeks to help African musicians break beyond the stigmas and prejudices of the term world music, while presenting a positive impression of Africa to counter against common media images of war, famine, and disease. Notable events that Africa Express has been involved in include performances at the 2012 Olympics, the Glastonbury Festival, the BBC Electric Proms, Denmark's Roskilde Festival, a tour of Syrian refugee musicians, and concerts in such places as Mali, the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, and France. The organization has also released a number of compilations and collaborative albums along with a documentary of the 2012 Africa Express UK train tour. Many of the established Western musicians who have participated in the organization's projects have spoken of their admiration for the musical skill levels of the African musicians involved and the influence their participation has had on them. Over 50,000 people are estimated to have attended Africa Express events, which have received substantial global media coverage. History Africa Express began out of a 2005 gathering in a Covent Garden bar where Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn along with other musicians and music industry friends were angered by the Live 8 charity concert for Africa's inclusion of only one African artist in its line up. Co-founding the organization with the journalist Ian Birrell, Africa Express's inaugural project featured Albarn and Birrell taking a number of Western musicians including Fatboy Slim, Martha Wainwright, and Jamie T, to perform at Festival au Désert in the Sahara outside of Timbuktu. In the early years of Africa Express, shows would be put on semi-spontaneously in locations such as Brixton pubs, with little to no advance announcement. The spirit of spontaneous collaborations between musicians of diverse cultures has carried on as the organization has grown to stage large scale events. In addition to Damon Albarn, frequent contributors to Africa Express's varied projects include Fela Kuti's drummer Tony Allen from Nigeria, Senegalese singer/guitarist Baaba Maal, the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, and The Magic Numbers' Romeo Stodart.