Festival Guide: The Legends
Five veterans: Jeel, reggae, psychedelic cumbia, post punk and film music.
In a few weeks, Oslo World will fill the city with concerts and club events on the best venues the city has to offer. Our program is packed with different kinds of experiences – whether you're looking to hear something you've never heard before, see a true legend, or throw yourself on the dance floor.
What should you choose? Leading up to the festival, we're going to share some guides that might be able to guide you through this year's many highlights.
In this edition: The Legends. In addition to booking fresh big talents and new musical influences from around the world, we put a lot of pride and effort into creating meetings with some of the greatest artists in their genres every year.
Here are five big ones: This year, the audience can meet, among other things, the King of Jeel, one of the greatest, original reggae bands, an Argentine film score maverick, Polish-Norwegian post-punk and the siblings who created Amazonian psychedelia – and are still driving the genre forward.
Hakim is known as the Lion of Egypt and the King of Jeel, the modern offshoot of Egyptian sha'bi street-pop. He is an innovator who added urban beats to a foundation of traditional melodies. His relatable, often lighthearted lyrics chronicle daily life through the rhythm of street slang.
Hakim has sold more than six million records at home in Egypt, and he was the first of the young Egyptian singers to become a major figure on the international music scene, playing to sell-out crowds in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, North America, and Africa. He is a popular hero, a musical trailblazer and the life of every party – this is one regal visit you don’t want to miss.
Los Wembler’s de Iquitos are pioneers of cumbia amazónica—a groundbreaking fusion of psychedelic rock, surf, Afro-Latin rhythms, and indigenous melodies. Now revered as elder statesmen of Latin alternative music, they've inspired a new generation of artists across the Americas and Europe.
The band was formed in 1968 by shoemaker Solomon Sánchez and his five sons. They were the first band in the Amazon to play popular local rhythms on electric guitars. Their early hits like “Sonido Amazónico” and “Danza del Petrolero” became iconic anthems of the psychedelic cumbia movement, a genre rediscovered globally through the acclaimed Roots of Chicha compilations released by Brooklyn’s Barbès Records in the 2000s. Though they mostly remained local legends in Iquitos, Los Wembler’s became an unexpected cornerstone of a worldwide cumbia revival.
Goldie - 28 October - 21:30
Gustavo Santaolalla has become one of the greas in modern film music, with two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Original Score for Brokeback Mountain (2006) and Babel (2007), as well as the soundtrack for the video game and TV series The Last of Us.
The lush, tingling sound of the ronroco, a modern version of the Andean lute instrument charango, has been his signature since his classic breakthrough album Ronroco. Santaolalla is a veteran of the Argentine psychedelic rock scene, blending traditional Argentine music, Japanese, African and Eastern European influences, as well as minimalist classical music and pastoral prog rock.
Sentrum Scene - 2 November - 19:30
The Polish-Norwegian band De Press spearheaded the Norwegian new wave scene of the eighties, and with Block to Block (1982) they released one of the greatest Norwegian classics – an album that still feels immediate and fresh.
Since then, vocalist and frontman Andrej Nebb has taken the De Press name through a number of different constellations – constantly searching, experimenting, still as expressive and powerful as ever. In Nebb's universe, fifty years of experimental rock, Slavic folk tunes, an anarchistic worldview and humor meld together.
