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Orkestra del Sol

"The swagger of a Balkan wedding band with the riotous energy of a Latin carnival." Based in Scotland, but taking in musical influences from far and wide, Orkestra del Sol inflect their music with a raucous enthusiasm. Blending the best of brass with the swinging sounds of samba, New Orleans street music or the rolling rhythms of Turkey and the Middle East, they charge through it all with full-blooded rock and roll speed. They make mincemeat of musical categories.

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Te Vaka

Te Vaka is a unique group of ten musicians and dancers from Tokelau, Tuvalu, Samoa, Cook Islands, and New Zealand brought together under the inspired leadership of Opetaia Foa'i. They have been wowing international audiences since 1997, presenting a rich, luscious mix of Polynesia's ancient culture, to the modern world and in 2008 won the “Best Pacific Group” award. The language they sing in is usually Tokelau but more recently they have been singing in Samoan and Tuvaluan too.

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Kodo

<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/%E9%BC%93%E7%AB%A5" class="bbcode_artist">鼓童</a> (Kodō) is one of the elite taiko drumming groups today. Based in Sado Island, Japan, they have been a major force in the post-World War II revitalization of taiko drumming, both in Japan and abroad. They regularly tour Japan and the United States. Although the main focus of the performance is taiko drumming, other traditional Japanese musical instruments such as fue and shamisen make an appearance on stage as do traditional dance and vocal performance.

Faiz Ali Faiz

Faiz Ali Faiz (born 1962 in Sharaqpur, Pakistan) is one of the main singers of qawwali, a devotional musical expression of the Sufis, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Faiz Ali Faiz comes from a family of qawwals from seven generations in Pakistan. He started his professional career in 1978, at age 16, creating at the same time his own qawwali ensemble. Though Faiz is from Lahore, he practices the doaba style from eastern Pakistan. He stated in recent interviews he has been influenced by Sham-Chaurasi, a famous Khayal singing school where Ustad Salamat Ali Khan belongs to.

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King Kapisi

King Kapisi is a Hip-Hop artist prominant in the New Zealand/Australian Hip-Hop music scene. His real name is Bill Urale. He was the first Polynesian Hip-Hop artist who received the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll Award for Songwriter of the Year for his single 'Reverse Resistance' in 1999.
He released 3 albums: "Savage Thoughts", "2nd Round Testament" and "Dominant Species" and has his own clothing label "Overstayer Clothing".

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Nitin Sawhney

Nitin Sawhney (raised in Rochester, Kent, England) is a london-based composer and dj of various styles of music, including jazz, drum and bass, hip-hop, flamenco and modern orchestral compositions. His major works include Beyond Skin, Prophesy, Human, and Philtre. He is considered one of the pioneers of what is known as the Asian Underground music scene, defining a music genre that mixes south-asian musical influences with western electronica and breakbeat style. He does however dislike the tag of "world" music, describing it as musical apartheid.

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Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal (born c. 1980) is a Sudanese musician and former child soldier. Born in the village of Tonj in Southern Sudan, he was a little boy when the civil war broke out. Emmanuel’s father joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and when he was about seven years old his mother died. Emmanuel then decided to join the thousands of children travelling to Ethiopia who had been told that they could be educated there.

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Abaji

Abaji is a Lebanese-born multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer. "When I was ten or eleven, I got really involved with sounds. Not just the guitar, but the sounds themselves.” From a musical family—Abaji’s Armenian grandmother played the oud (lute), his great-grandmother the kanun (zither), and his six maternal aunts were all passionate and contentious musicians. Abaji started playing and experimenting on an inexpensive Chinese-built guitar alone in his Beirut bedroom...

Juzzie Smith

Juzzie Started playing the harmonica at 13. By 23 he had won the coveted Golden Harmonica at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the Byron Bay Blues Blowout twice. He has in the course of his musical journey embraced and mastered a range of instruments, and absorbed influence from some diverse musical styles. Juzzie has played in a lot of bands, some fantastic and some forgettable, and performed with some of Australia's best musicians, including John Butler, Damon Davies, Jodi Martin and Jeff Lang.

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