this weekend a special double concert of Baba Commandant & the Mandingo Band in Belgium; Gent & Brussels! Rebel Up! helps to organise these nights, and will DJ before/after both shows. fun!

On friday 6 Nov @ De Vooruit in Gent, a sweet lineup with Baba Commandant and also Alsarah & The Nubatones

Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band
are a contemporary group from Burkina Faso. Coming from Bobo-Dioulasso, the group is steeped in the Mandingue musical traditions of their ancestral legacy. The enigmatic lead singer Baba Commandant (Mamadou Sanou) is an original and eccentric character who is well respected in the Burkinabé musical community. A sort of punk Faso Dan Fani activist for traditional Mandingo music, Baba continues to redefine the boundaries between traditional and modern. In 1981, he joined the Koule Dafourou troupe as a dancer. Later, he embarked on his current musical direction as a singer first in Dounia and then in the Afromandingo Band. His current band — when he’s not playing with the now-famous Burkinabé musician Victor Démé — is the Mandingo Band. At present, he is a practitioner of the Afrobeat style, drawing inspiration from the golden era of Nigerian music. Fela Kuti/Africa 70 and King Sunny Adé are big influences, as is the legendary Malian growler Moussa Doumbia. Baba plays the ngoni, the instrument of the Donso (the traditional hunters in this region of Burkina Faso and Mali). His audience comprises multiple generations and strata of Burkinabé society; he accordingly adapts his repertoire to his surroundings, which range from cabaret Sundays in Bobo-Dioulasso to the sound systems of Ouagadougou and are a formidable force steeped in Ouagadougou’s DIY underground musical culture. Juguya is their sound.

Listen to Baba here! >


Alsarah & The Nubatones
Born in Sudan, Alsarah is a singer, songwriter and ethnomusicologist. She grew up in the capital Khartoum and Taez (Yemen) but since 1994 has called New York her home. The Guardian lauded her as“the new star of Nubian pop”. Together with her band the Nubatones she explores her love for Northern-African and Arabic music from the 60 ‘s & 70’s. Get ready for a heavy taste of eastern instruments, profound melancholic vocals and pentatonic arrangements.

Full info + presale tickets > FB event or Vooruit website.

Then the day after, saturday 7 Nov in Brussels @ Les Ateliers Claus, Baba Commandant will play after Moroccan band Lahcen Akil & the Chaabi Brothers (we saw them in Amsterdam a few weeks back, in one word > mesmerizing!)

Lahcen Akil and the Chaabi Brothers
Lahcen was born in 1969 in the village of Tamlalte in the Moroccan High Atlas. Influenced by acoustic music and traditional songs, he started music very young. As songwriter, he performed his songs about the beauty of the region. He interprets his songs on a lothar that he made himself, with a wooden handle, a palm soundboard and goatskin. He is regularly accompanied by his brother on percussion.

dj’s Rebel Up! & Hisham Mayet (Sublime Frequencies)
dj & filmmaker Hisham Mayet joins us for a ping pong dj set afterparty, expect african beauties, rough folklore, guitar rock and global pop tunes from this true collector of musical gems!

Full info + presale tickets > FB event here or LAC website