Ruth Mahogany, Ara Queen of Drums Win The Vis-à-Vis Festival Nigeria

Singer, Ruth Mahogany and the ARB Band, in Abuja, and Ara Queen of Drums from Lagos are winners of the first ever Vis-à-Vis music festival Nigeria held March 23 to 24th at the Balmoral Hall, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The two groups will be performing at several local and international summer festivals in Spain later this way as part of providing the artistes international audience and performance platform, as well as open up Spaniards to varied genres of African music.

Winners of the festival were selected via an initial video performance submission process from which twelve artistes were sieved from 125 candidates to perform at the festival before a dozen Spanish music producers and festival directors. Post the twelves performance on March 23 and 24, the winners were announced by the delegates on Saturday, March 25, in Lagos.

Meantime, Ruth Mahogany is scheduled to perform at the H.E.R Festival today, April 1, 2023, at Lifecamp, Jabi, Abuja, alongside artistes as Havfy, Bukunmi, Tara X Bella, Odenose, Mannie Tseayo,  Coco and Nanyah.

A programme of Casa Africa, Spain’s diplomatic institution, Vis-à-Vis Music Festival is designed to showcase upcoming music artistes in Africa, and connect African musicians with Spanish cultural promoters, as a means of ensuring a greater presence of African music in Spain, and opening African artistes to new and international audiences.

For the past twelve years the festival has held in Senegal, South Africa, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire and Tanzania. In this first of its kind in Nigeria, it is targeted at scouting the next big sound or thing in Afromusic.