Abel Selaocoe Presents Chesaba

The three musicians of Chesab, Abel Selaocoe, Alan Keary and Sidiki Dembélé, take cello, bass and percussion and add kora, n’goni and voices, singing languages including Bambara, Sotho, Tswana and Zulu. Add to this the whistles, tambourines, horns, bass guitar and vocals of the seven-piece BCUC – Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness – and you have a heady mix. Embracing hip-hop, Afrobeat, funk and indigenous music, BCUC specialises in the uniquely hypnotic sonorities of ‘ancestral trance’, combining big, psychedelic sounds with an empowering message of social justice.

‘BCUC represent the roots, trunk and branches of South African traditional music. This is cultural preservation in a way that isn’t frozen in time like a museum, but in a way that is living and breathing and growing and dancing.’ (WOMEX)