Afrikän Protoköl

Afrikän Protoköl is the Afro Jazz Sextet of Belgian saxophonist Guillaume Van Parys. Following his meeting with the Burkinabè drummer Moïse Ouattara, he has composed a music based on traditional rhythms from Burkina Faso and West Africa. Jazzy riffs, grooves and improvisations merge together into what we could call a « warm and conscious transcultural fusion ». Established in Burkina Faso in 2013, the band was on tour in Europe and Africa this summer 2014 to release its first album called Freedom From The Known. Although we could hear in this album clear influences from Afro Beat master Fela Kuti, Steve Coleman, Manu Dibango and Aka Moon, a very original identity has come out of this mix of emerging European and African jazz musicians. With a rhythmic section 100% from Burkina Faso and horns from Belgium and Ivory Cost, Afrikän Protoköl proposes a colourful and dynamic show.

With this highly positive energy, this project is trying to respond to an urgent need in today's global context of self-withdrawal, fear and the growth of extremism and nationalism. The need to stand up for difference, open-mindedness, diversity and people's free circulation, against the patriarchal logic which brings with it all manner of domination: the individualism over the collective, capital over labour, the material over the spiritual, religion over spirituality, man over the environment, external male logic over internal female logic, Having over Being.