The massive’s roar in Benicàssim sounds even more like afrobeat. This Saturday 20th August, we will feature a full-fledged musical immersion in the genre with Davido from Nigeria. The genre started off at the new Voodoo Club, which was added to this year’s programme to promote afrobeat, as well as African music and the continent’s avant-garde culture more generally. Afrobeat means more than just giving a pulse to a musical style, it encompasses and projects a whole cultural movement in full swing – from Nigeria and in this case with Davido, to the world – with millions of followers across five continents. Our fifth day grows, musically speaking, with the legendary Jamaican roots artist Horace Andy, accompanied on the Main Strage by the Dub Asante Band.

Horace Andy will also join the Reggae University programme hours before he takes to the stage. Without leaving the Caribbean island, Benicàssim also welcomes Hempress Sativa this Saturday, representative of the new reggae scene; and in a new transoceanic leap back to Europe, the Italo-Madrilenian tandem formed by Mellow Mood ft Emeterians.

Meanwhile, our cosmopolitan profile also be measured on the Lion Stage line-up, with Marcus Gad, whose soulful voice and extraordinary live performance has put the French-speaking island of New Caledonia on the reggae map; Scotland’s Soom T; Young Israelites from Israel; and the Americans Soul Rebel Project. The Social Forum, our debate space par excellence, will look at the challenge of peace this Saturday.

The session will take the war in Ukraine as its starting point, which has changed the world’s geopolitical situation and has normalised concepts that seemed impossible, such as the threat of nuclear war. The journalists Inna Afinogenova (former correspondent of Russia Today), Irene Zugasti (specialising in international relations) and Olga Rodríguez, co-founder of eldiario.es and expert in conflicts, together with the journalist and researcher Miquel Ramos, will contribute to providing a vision beyond from the current hegemonic view, focusing on peace and how to achieve it, through a critical analysis of current geopolitics.

dFollowing our daytime cultural itinerary that precedes each day’s musical agenda, the stop at the Reggae University will focus on the European dub scene with the screening of the film ‘Ina Vanguard Style’. This will be followed by a session with Rico, from the French production studio O.B.F., and Mark Iration, from the British sound system Iration Steppas, which is the subject of the aforementioned documentary.