Cuban music will invade the new edition of the Music Meeting Festival in the Netherlands

The city of Nijmegen will host this year a new edition of the Music Meeting Festival, an event that is committed to bringing music rarely heard in the Netherlands to Dutch lands. 

In the green facilities of Park Brakkenstein, which can accommodate nearly 12,500 visitors, this 2022 edition will take place, agreed between June 4 and 6, with more than 30 concerts. There, Cuban music will have a special role, although other world music will also play.

“Cuba Upside Down” is the main theme of the Music Meeting Festival on this occasion, an umbrella under which both established artists and new promises of the influential Cuban music scene will converge.

Osain del Monte, Alain Pérez y La Orquesta, Brenda Navarrete and Ana Carla Maza, are some of the names that stand out on the island's sound lineup. Added to them is Ping Pong Piano, a project that brings together all stars of the Cuban pianist: Rolando Luna, Marialy Pacheco, Ramón Valle and Ivan Cantaloupe Lewis, the latter recent winner of the Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album for his album Voyager. 

“I would like to have been born in Havana, to have grown up with the son, the mambo and even the beginning of modern Cuban salsa, the timba. But I grew up in Haaften, in an idyllic dike house on the banks of the Waal river, although almost every day I listened to Cuban music on cassettes, and I played it with my trumpet”, says the artistic director of the Festival, the Dutch trumpeter Maite Hontelé, in his attempt to explain the reason for the strong Antillean presence in this edition. 

However, other sounds will also arrive at the Music Meeting Festival, ranging from African electronics, Brazilian percussion to afrobeat from New York. 

Among the artists that complete the bill —until now, as other confirmations are expected— is the very young trombonist Rita Payés (Spain), one of the most promising artists on the Catalan scene; the duo Oleg Fateev & Simone Sou (Moldova/Brazil), with extremely powerful compositions inspired by the mixture of Balkan and Brazilian traditions; and Bulletproof, a multicultural musical ensemble based in Brooklyn, but with their ears set on Nigerian music and its influences; among others. 

As part of the actions of the program and during this edition, Magazine AM:PM will be co-producing together with Music Meeting the section All Ears, a virtual space to discover the artists and music that will visit the festival. To do this, they will produce and curate exclusive content that can be enjoyed on the digital platforms of both projects.