- September 9th and 10th, from 4 pm to midnight
- Gardens of the Museum of Lisbon – Palácio Pimenta (Campo Grande)
- Free access: parties, debates, concerts
Recorded in Africa during the pandemic, Couleur celebrates local talent, women’s rights, creativity and positivity despite difficult times. Gnahoré’s sixth album was released in June 2021 by Cumbancha.
Dobet Gnahoré, an African star, and 2010 Grammy Award winner, is known for her jaw-dropping dance moves, powerful stage presence, and emotionally rich vocal style. With his new album Couleur, Gnahoré breaks with his past acoustic styles and dives into the modern sounds of his country’s Afropop. The album marks Gnahoré’s return to Cumbancha, which released her album Na Afriki in 2007.
Originally from the Ivory Coast, Gnahoré has lived in France for many years. In early 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak led to lockdowns across Europe and an abrupt end to touring and live performances, Gnahoré decided to tackle the pandemic in Africa.
Back in his homeland, Gnahoré quickly reconnected with the local music scene and began working with a host of talented but under-recognized producers, musicians, designers, and artists. Despite the difficult times, Gnahoré absorbed the inspiration and energy of Africa on the rise. This results in an album full of messages of empowerment for women hope for a positive future, and a lively, danceable spirit that marks a significant departure from Gnahoré’s previous, more acoustic and introspective recordings.
Growing up in the multidisciplinary artistic village KiYi Mbock, a world-renowned haven for African artistic expression, Dobet Gnahoré grew up surrounded by creativity. At the age of 12, she told her father, Boni Gnahoré, a well-known musician and performer in Côte d’Ivoire, that he would not go back to school, choosing instead to dedicate his life to music and dance. Throughout her childhood, she worked with the community to hone her acting skills, revealing formidable talents that wowed audiences around the world.
In 1999, Dobet moved to France, formed the band Ano Neko, and embarked on two decades of recording and touring across Europe, North America, and even far-flung stages in Haiti, India, Oman, and beyond. Gnahoré’s participation alongside the Malian guitarist, Habib Koité, the South African singer and composer Vusi Mahlasela, among others, in several Acoustic Africa tours, where he conquered audiences from all over the world. In 2010, Gnahoré gained even more fame when he collaborated with American singer India Arie on the song “Pearls”, which earned them a Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance.
The last few years have been more challenging for Dobet. The end of a long commercial partnership resulted in the simultaneous loss of his record label, his agent, and his manager. It followed the dissolution of his band and the collapse of the music industry due to COVID-19. Dobet retreated to Abidjan and did what any artist does in the face of difficulties: he began to create. The result is Couleur, which in French means “color”, an allusion to the wide range of cultures and diverse inspirations that led Dobet to this moment in his career.
The album’s first single and music video, “Lève-toi” (Get Up), features Ivory Coast star Yabongo Lova. The song has an upbeat sound and a danceable groove, which sends a positive message to those who are going through a difficult time. By chanting the phrase “Arise. Even if it is difficult, nothing comes without effort”, Gnahoré promotes perseverance.
In the following single, “Yakané”, Gnahoré sings: “The girls of today are the strong women of tomorrow. She knows she has her place in this male-dominated world. She armed herself with all her will to create a future for herself. She is not afraid of a challenge. She also wants to succeed, it is her right.”
The song “Ma Maison” (My House) has an undeniable touch of groove that makes the listener want to sing and dance. Gnahoré highlights the importance of strength and love within the family; in the chorus, she sings: “In my house, joy and love are sovereign.” The video, directed by Côte d’Ivoire producer Steven Awuku, gives a colorful representation of home, with scenes of Gnahoré dancing in brightly patterned outfits that reflect an electric, upbeat feel.
The album’s most introspective song, “Rédemption,” is a eulogy to her singer-songwriter background and is Gnahoré’s personal appeal to God to help her forgive her sins. Singing “I hurt myself and I hurt others. See come to you to redeem me,” she uses the song to appeal to her higher power, as she lets listeners know her inner dilemmas.
It’s the only quiet moment on an otherwise fiery album, full of groove, electronic beats, snappy guitar lines, and catchy melodies. Couleur, Gnahoré’s sixth album, reflects the urban energy of modern Africa and the powerful spirit of an independent woman looking for a positive and successful future. Couleur solidifies Gnahoré’s position as one of Africa’s most outstanding talents.
PROGRAM – LISBOA MISTURA
One organization: Associação Sons da Lusofonia | EGEAC Culture in Lisbon
September 9th, Saturday
16h00 – Debate: Lisbon people and Visibility – Museum
Talk about an inclusive Lisbon: how many people from Lisbon still don’t have the desired visibility in this city with so many cultures?
17h00 – Intercultural Party – Stage 2
Presentation of groups from different geoculturalities that often do not have access to the central stages: Nomadikanti (Italy), Coletivo Gira (Brazil), Beniko Tanaka – Lisbon Ondo (Japan), Litá Band (Ukraine), Mbalango (Mozambique), Toy and Emanuel Matos (Portugal) and As Tinas (Guinea)
7:30 pm – Percussion and Wind Orchestra (Projecto D´Improviso) – Portugal – Pátio das Tílias
How can improvisation contribute to influencing social creativity? Project was developed in 5 districts of Lisbon.
20h00 – DJ A Mãe Dela – Portugal – Stage 2
How can soundscapes create atmospheres that inspire us to share common space more? A Mãe Dela has a lot of music on the subject.
21h00 – Soweto Kinch Power Trio – England – Stage 1
The rare and excellent combination of Hip-Hop and Jazz in one of the most interesting voices on the world stage is revealed in this great black English musician.
22:30 – Dobet Gnahore – Ivory Coast – Stage 1
GRAMMY-winning African singer, dancer, songwriter, and artist Dobet comes to Lisbon to show her art inspired by the culture of Ivory Coast.
September 10th, Sunday
4:00 pm – Debate: Participatory Art – Museum
How can co-creation and participatory art create in artists an awareness of the urgency of bringing distant communities into Culture?
17h00 – OPA (Portable Arts Workshop) – Portugal – Stage 2
OPA is a project as old as Mistura and continues to give clues every year about how young people in Lisbon’s neighborhoods view their art and artistic intervention.
MC: Snails, Ró Lk, Golden Nora, John Do$
Producer: EVAWAVE
6:45 pm – JAZZOPA – Portugal – Stage 2
This new project, which was born 2 years ago, joins Spoken word with Jazz and Hip-Hop by mixing the styles of young people from different cultural and artistic backgrounds in the city and its peripheries.
Instrumentalists: Débora King, Samuel Dias, Kiko Sá, Francisco Nogueira, Jery Bidan, Ricardo Rosas
MC: Vileiro, YA SIN
Spoken Word: Vanessa Parish Crooks, Luis Perdigão
20h00 – DJ Tiago Pereira – Stage 2
The main protagonist of A Música Portuguesa a Gostor Dela Própria offers us to listen to voices and instruments that bring with them the ancestry and tradition of a Portugal made invisible by the speed of “progress”.
21h00 – Creature – Portugal – Stage 1
The Creature is an eclectic band of musicians, artists, and people who are dedicated to echoing the popular memory of the territory they inhabit and who then revisit the tradition
22:30 – Fogo Fogo – Portugal – Stage 1
Presentation of the new album Fladu Fla, a Funaná album in the Lusophone style. An end of Mistura to dance and leave ready for new mixtures and new encounters.
ABOUT LISBOA MISTURA
The first intercultural event of its kind in Lisbon, which brings great attractions, takes place on the 9th and 10th of September, in the gardens of the Museum of Lisbon – Palácio Pimenta, in Campo Grande, Lisbon. These are two intense days of music, meetings, conversations, workshops, parties, lots of sharing, and social, cultural, and artistic mixes…
Lisboa Mistura is a cultural event that celebrates the urban community and the diversity that integrates the DNA of the city of Lisbon.
The event promotes the meeting of people and communities through shows and artistic encounters with different rhythms and different cultural trends to feel the pulse of the city.
The Festival has established itself, since 2006, as an intercultural space for knowledge and the inscription of new languages and trends, having become a reflection of the enrichment, sharing, celebration, and healthy confrontation that was born from the urban encounters that mark creative contemporaneity. of the city of Lisbon in recent years.
Lisbon’s Multi-disciplinary mix supported by EGEAC integrates projects in the cultural and social areas. It thrives on intercultural crossings and functions as a place of observation and action in the city to better understand the possible paths that are created through the mixes, simple and complex, that come to fruition all the time.
In its innovative nature, Lisboa Mistura has brought to the city center several different projects from Lisbon’s neighborhoods, making the city a place of inclusion through meetings of arts, cultural people, and projects in which artistic quality causes a great social impact.
Urban musical culture is, as it should be, a bridge to the social and political dimensions that make up the cosmopolitanism of Lisbon undergoing accelerated changes, and not all of them as human as we would like. In a moment of great dynamism, the city breathes positive contradictions and challenges that, although global, are intensely intimate, particular. It is necessary to give visibility to the beauty of difference, to the heritage of curiosity. Lisboa Mistura has always questioned the humanism of metapolitical construction, about the cultural activity that precedes organizational thinking.
Lisboa Mistura is also a time for building the joy necessary for us to live side by side, resisting the annihilation of difference.
LISBOA MISTURA – BY CARLOS MARTINS
“In this 18th edition, Lisboa Mistura wants to LISTEN to the city and the world around it, thinking about its future and the future of the city and culture as an activation of citizenship in urban construction. We want to continue working to democratize culture and to slow down the vertigo of visual noise through listening processes. And we want above all to give a stage to traditions and innovation, sound and thought. It may seem like little, but if we were able to think of sonospheres as new models of governance and celebration of life, we would be contributing to a major change in the way we relate to each other and to the landscapes around us, even before we create them.
Only those who want to “Mixture” can, but we have to create conditions, space, and time for those who yearn for more connections and better conditions to express themselves creatively on the personal, collective, artistic, and spiritual levels.
Lisboa Mistura brings people and communities together; popular and erudite cultures; thinkers and creators of art and citizenship in the same space, in a professional, professionalizing environment, and open to all. Mistura is even more pertinent when the city of Lisbon becomes more and more festivals each year. Lisbon has not yet found the best way to harmonize cultural projects with the need for greater sustained social involvement.
The festivalization of culture, by promoting ephemerality and substituting culture for entertainment, does not build sustainability or help people find platforms that measure their interests and aspirations with private interests. That is why Lisboa Mistura is more than ever framed in the neighborhoods of Lisbon where it inscribes experimental artistic and community practices that, based on collective work, make us discover Lisbon people and the world and that look differently at the urgent issues that arise in communities. Lisbon has to be both tradition and risk, not just tourism and gentrification.”
Carlos Martins – Founder and programmer
ABOUT ASSOCIAÇÃO SONS DA LUSOFONIA – ASL
Associação Sons da Lusofonia promotes comprehensive interventions that combine social intervention and global education with music and interaction between communities, people and the arts.
ASL is a non-profit cultural association created in 1996. Since its foundation, one of the main objectives of ASL has been to contribute to cooperation between geo-culturally diverse countries, promoting the development of an identity based on traditions, common or no, future-oriented – creating a communication platform between generations and groups with different habits and cultural heritages.
It thus contributes to a social and artistic intervention attentive to changes and structured in social creativity. ASL has been doing work of unavoidable importance in favor of Portuguese culture and cultural and human diversity, over almost 27 years, and the importance of this work is recognized by cultural agents, the various publics and by national and international institutional agents.
Sons da Lusofonia is a structure supported by the Government of Portugal/Cultura-DGArtes. The D´Improviso project is co-financed by the Regional Operational Program Lisbon 2020/FSE.
Always confirm with the concert hall or promoter the conditions of access, confirmation of the date or time, tickets place of sale, price, and availability.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok and see the exclusive content for social networks.
