ALIA Prod has been busy working on tours for this spring and summer, on into the 2024 season. We have a month-long tour in April for Bassekou Kouyate and N'Goni Ba (Mali), with more dates coming in mid-June for a very quick hit, and then they'll be back in February 2024. Also coming back to the States in June are the award-winning Garifuna Collective (Belize/Honduras), whose performances always warm the hearts and lift the spirits, with dates centered mostly in New England and the mid-Atlantic region. Joining us later in July will be Lakou Mizik whose Haitian roots music brought a whole new slew of passionate fans from their 5 months of touring last year.... they're coming back for more! And then also late July the dynamic visionaries, Novalima, return with a new CD celebrating their twentieth anniversary! The album will be released on one of our favorite labels, Six Degrees, in March of this year. And finally this fall we eagerly await the almost year-long postponement of Madalitso's debut tour in the US. We are so excited to welcome them to these shores after several false starts. They just had their visas approved today at the Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi... and I have to give thanks to the staff there for their very timely responses and support to make this tour closer to reality! Finally a heads-up for spring 2024 when we are planning on bringing Mokoomba back to these shores since pre-pandemic.... we can't wait to see our friends from Zimbabwe again! Looking ahead to summer 2024 we also are working to bring Tartit back to this country after a long break of many years....Fadimata Walett Oumar (aka Disco), the leader of Tartit, has recently had a book published telling her story as a female leader and cultural force on behalf of her Amazirgh community. We'll post the link as soon as we can!
Putting these tours together takes multiple efforts by a number of people, many of whom are working 'behind the scenes' but deserve a shout-out for the work they are doing on behalf of these artists - thank you Norbert Hausen, Hamidou Barry, Ivan Duran, Al Ovando, Matt Strong, Zach Niles, Grimaldo del Solar, Ramon Perez-Prieto, Neil Nayar, Chloe Powell, Theresa Teague - we see and appreciate you!
And speaking of Chloe, she is now officially full-time as Executive Director at The Chandler Center, and thus no longer representing ALIA Prod artists. We are enthusiastically in support of this significant career move and know that she will do great work at the Chandler. Thanks for all you have done for our artists, Chloe, it was a pleasure to have you on our team!
And finally a big thank you to all of the presenters and hosts who invite these artists into their venues and communities - I know you are enriching the lives of so many Americans with the deep cultural work that these artists bring....like we say in our About page, 'We believe that each culture has something valuable to share with others, and in that process of connecting, we find the universality of the human experience, and ourselves reflected in the other.' Thank you for collaborating with us on this mission.
