Feature: The London African Music festival runs from September 9-18 at The Jazz Café
Published: 1 September, 2011
by SIMON WROE
I’m probably the only African that can’t play percussion,” admits Biyi Adepegba. “The music teacher at school used to say I shouldn’t even attempt to touch a drum at all. My timing was wrong. ‘Just focus on your books,’ he said. But I love music.”
After his early frustrations, Mr Adepegba has found another way into music.
Today he is the organiser of the London African Music Festival and the co-founder of Joyful Noise productions, which he runs from his home in Priory Park Road, West Hampstead.
It’s a manic time of year for the company, which Mr Adepegba, 48, set up with Barbara Pukwana, wife of the acclaimed South African musician Dudu Pukwana, in 1990.
This week the last of the 75 visas for the festival’s musicians arrived – not a moment too soon.
The annual festival begins on September 9, running to September 18 at four venues across London: The Jazz Café, The Bloomsbury Theatre, The Stratford Circus and the Southbank Centre.
The acts on show span the length and breadth of Africa. To pick a few of the highlights: there’s Cameroon bassist Etienne Mbappe – who is “reversing African music, where the drum is king, and putting the bass on top” – and Ray Lema, a Congolese pianist who trained as a priest and a church organist before he decided to devote his life to music. Mr Lema has not done a London concert in 15 years.
The concerts are full two or three-hour affairs, not the usual festival time slot, and the focus is on “interesting music that is the style of tomorrow”.
Mr Adepegba started Joyful Noise after studying economics at King’s College.
“We were doing a lot of stuff with the London Jazz Festival when we started but after a while I decided I was going to do my own thing,” he says. “The kind of music that I want to present – creative music from the black diaspora – was not being represented. It’s been growing ever since. I always tell people that the name Joyful Noise was from the Bible but it’s not, to be honest. I picked the name randomly from a Sun-Ra record.”
• The London African Music festival runs from September 9-18 at The Jazz Café, The Bloomsbury Theatre, The Stratford Circus and the Southbank Centre. Listings and booking at: www.joyfulnoise.co.uk/lamf.html