Utopia
FEATURING:
IONNALEE: IAMAMIWHOAMI
FATOUMATA DIAWARA
LE GATEAU CHOCOLAT
TALIA RANDALL
PLUS DJ ANDY VOTELL
Approx. Finish time 12:30am
Curated by Charlotte Church, Utopia brings together a contrasting line-up of voices from world music, cabaret, electronica, synth-pop and folk, all snuggled together as comfortable bedfellows.
ionnalee is the new solo project of audiovisual electronic pop phenomenon iamamiwhoami’s creator Jonna Lee. She explores themes of mortality and legacy building in her striking album and film EVERYONE AFRAID TO BE FORGOTTEN.
Fatoumata Diawara is a poet-chanteuse, huskily perfect-pitch. Diawara grew up hearing Wassoulou music, a style thought to be one of the main ancestors of blues. Her album coproduced by Mathieu Chedid (-M-) fuses traditional and modern African sounds.
The opera-occasional, lycra-loving, black-beard, drag-diva Le Gateau Chocolat brings RAW CACAO to Wales Millennium Centre as part of Festival of Voice. A cabaret legend, performing on major stages all over the world from Adelaide to Edinburgh, and Wroclaw to Sydney. This specially curated cycle of songs is the six-inch heeled, six and half foot tall, wig-clad wonder in equal parts, everything you expect and as you may never have seen before; intimate, incomparable, inspired, raw. La Gateau Chocolat does disco, opera, musicals and pop from one end of the spectrum, swinging wildly to the other, barely pausing for breath from his bewitching baritone.
Award-winning Talia Randall is funny, political and moving. A dyslexic raised in a house where puns, witticisms and double entendre were art forms of the highest rank, Talia developed her voice at the revered Roundhouse Poetry Collective.
Having spent over 20 years spearheading his own self-sufficient alternative music industry Mancunian born Andy Votel came from an era of record collecting and DJ'ing, spending his early teens making "music" with crudely modified old vinyl LPs, kitchen utensils and cassette tape loops, his continued search for discarded noise lead him to run one of the most respected vinyl re-issue labels in the world (Finders Keepers). As an international DJ, recording Artist, producer, writer his un-blinkered appreciation and promotion of musical lost-property crosses multiple genres and language barriers (Turkish, Iranian, Spanish, Welsh etc) and has resulted in a constantly mutating career transcending wide pop-cultural circles such as hip-hop, mod-culture, experimental, ambient, cinematic winning him unanimous respect in the process.
