Shows from the iconic Caribbean roots reggae band Twinkle Brothers and the stage show with the only date in Spain by OBF x Iration Steppas along with Naomi Cowan complete the last musical day of the festival.

The last evening of Rototom Sunsplash 2024 is once again brimming with big names. These artists, who shine in their spaces and genres, will share all their musical talent before the reggae festival’s international audience, bringing down the curtain tomorrow, Wednesday, in Benicàssim after six intense days.

Jamaican Beenie Man is considered the king of dancehall His appearance this 21st August on the Main Stage will close the line-up of this stage in this utopia themed edition of the reggae city. He began his career as a child in the early 1980s and became a true master of the genre. In addition to his technical mastery, another of his hallmarks is the energy he exudes at his concerts. The Benicàssim concert will be his only date in Spain.

Beenie Man is not the only name that will shine on the final night of Rototom Sunsplash 2024: the Nigerian singer, instrumentalist and producer Flavour will also perform, whose album ‘Flavour of Africa’ includes the Jamaican dancehall star as one of its guests.

With 5 million followers on Instagram and more than 3 million on YouTube, Flavour will showcase the global impact of Afrobeats in a show with a band and dancers. When he debuted in 2005, the modern concept of ‘afrobeats’ did not exist, but the charismatic artist, who combines both English and Igbo in his songs, the language of his region, perfectly embodies the evocative new African musical style that has taken the world by storm.

The Reggae University closing ceremony on 21st August will feature the spirit of Afrobeats with Flavour himself, podcaster and Nigerian media institution Shopsydoo (from Jamkunda Stage) and Anglo-Nigerian film director Ayo Shonaiya. Together they will explore the international projection of Afrobeats and its connection to Jamaican dancehall in ‘Game changer: a look at contemporary Afrobeats’. Before and after the session, two episodes of the documentary ‘Afrobeats: the backstory’ will be screened, which will round off a whole afternoon dedicated to this genre.

Turning back to the music, the Jamaican band Twinkle Brothers, champions of roots reggae, will be joining the artistic line-up on the Main Stage. Formed in Falmouth in 1962, with more than six decades of career behind them, they are one of the iconic bands of the golden age of reggae in the 70s. The anthems of the Ashton brothers, Ralston and Norman Grant have transcended generations and taken reggae as ambassadors to countries where Jamaican music had not yet reached, such as Eastern Europe.

Completing the line-up on the Main Stage are Green Valley from Catalonia. The band, founded by Ander Valverde in 2004, is celebrating its 20th anniversary on stage Their special show at Rototom Sunsplash will be a journey through their entire career, from the origin of ‘En Tu Manos’ to the biggest hit from their latest album ‘Bajo La Piel’, one of the most outstanding records in the history of Spanish reggae.

The national scene will also jump to the neighbouring Lion Stage with the Valencian hip hop of Los Chikos Del Maíz, a band that’s highly critical of local and global political and social situations, their lively lyrics being full of sarcasm and frequent literary, cinematographic, political and popular cultural references. Their latest album ‘Yes Future’ was released in 2022. They arrive at Rototom knee-deep in their farewell tour: ‘The Indefinite Truce’.

Tomorrow the Lion Stage will also welcome Naomi Cowan, a highlight of the current Jamaican scene. Her refined and exciting style influenced her to be chosen to play Marcia Griffiths in the biopic dedicated to Bob Marley and released this year 2024, ‘Bob Marley: One Love’.

Brazilian Bia Ferreira joins the Lion Stage line-up. She herself has defined her style as ‘Musica De Mulher Preta’ (music of the black woman), from which she sculpts her feminist themes and against racism and homophobia.

The finishing touch for this stage will come with the dub of the French duo O.B.F. and the British sound system Iration Steppas in a stage show with only one date in Spain. This 2024 they released ‘Tiempo de Apocalipsis’, a collaboration between the two crews. The atmosphere of this work will be the soundtrack of this live show for Rototom.

Closing the Jamkunda Stage line-up, there will be a special edition of AfroBrunch with Dj Enny, Dj PapperCuts, Dj Kgs, Dj Javs and Dj AfriK, and special guests such as Alu, young promise of Afrobeats in Spain.

Walshy Fire, who has built his fame as part of the Major Lazer collective and Jamaican sound system Black Chiney, comes to DanceHall on the closing day. UK dub producer Kibir La Amlak will do the same at Dub Academy.

On Wednesday, we will take part in the last parade to the Main Stage, after the closing of the different cultural areas. For the first time, the parade will be led by a reggae and ska brass band, Zebrass Marching Band, which has taken over from the usual batucadas on the last two days of this 29th edition.

In this way, the extra-musical spaces will be bringing the curtain down after six days of daytime activities.

The closing day of the new Discovery Lab space will share a new workshop on self-made solar chargers and the talk ‘The frontier of space and time photographed with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)’, with astronomer Iván Martí-Vidal, who will talk about black holes, those “fascinating places, where time and space behave in an extraordinary way”, and will share, for discussion, the images of black holes obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) “with the aim of seeing what we can learn from them”.

Ataya, the collective reflection corner of the African Jamkunda, will present ‘Community self-realisation: Hahatay, an active utopia’, with the founder of the organisation Hahatay Sonrisas de Gandiol and social entrepreneur Mamadou Dia.

The closing of the Pachamama agenda on Wednesday 21st August will feature, ‘Global Harvest: Collecting the Essence of Rototom’, a dynamic by the EspiraLab collective to investigate proposals and ideas for improvement with respect to this edition of the festival and to analyse how, from the collective and community movements, it is possible to work on global transformation.

‘21st century: value or price? The utopia of a single humanity’. This is the suggestive title for the final session of the Social Forum 2024, which will focus on another emergency that is sweeping the world; migration, this Wednesday (Teatre Municipal de Benicàssim, 5.30 pm – free admission). The round table will feature the voices of Adela Cortina, Emeritus Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy, Director of the ETNOR Foundation for the Ethics of Business and Organisations and Doctor Honoris Causa from various national and international universities, and the Professor of Biochemistry and former Director General of UNESCO Federico Mayor Zaragoza, who will speak by videoconference.