Taking place next month in Stone Town, Zanzibar, the Sauti za Busara music festival has unveiled a line-up of African musicians who have been banned from performing their music in their own countries.
Musicians taking part in the upcoming event include singer Khaira Arby, nicknamed the ‘Nightingale of the North.’ Known for her powerful vocals, Arby incorporates the traditional and spiritual into her music, and has been widely praised for developing a bluesy homage to the prophet Mohammed. But after extremists imposed the law of Sharia upon the singer’s home country of Mali, all music except for Koranic verses has been banned, silencing all Malian musicians indefinitely.
