Looking at the poster of this year’s edition you don’t see “big” names – a warning – but the possibility of discovering new things is one of the characteristics that makes the festival different. Conceived as a meeting place between cultures, the festival will begin on July 20 with a conversation focused on personality, transmission and creation, and on that first day one of the local musicians will appear in public, closely related to the festival: Assisted by Beñat Achiary. The singer from Donapaleu has a direct surprise, as anyone who has seen him on stage with Joseba Irfari will know, this time he will perform with the accordionist Jesus Aured accompanied by a dance show by Mizel Théret.

From there, a travel ticket: Distribución Bartok will take listeners from Basque songs to Hungary, the Balkans and Turkish music and, on the same day, Benjamin Moussay and Keyvan Chemiranik will bring Iranian jazz.

Ablaye Cissoko and Ensemble Constantinople together on July 21

Next Friday seems, at least in the first blow, the most complete day of the festival. One of the main names of this year’s Robi festival will appear well into the evening: Senegalese Ablaye Cisso. He belongs to a family of griots, bards or storytellers known in West African traditions; and he plays the kora, a traditional Senegalese string instrument. He has a long career combining jazz with music that he drinks from his African roots. He will be accompanied on stage by the Montreal Constantinople Ensemble, which has released numerous albums since 1988, reinterpreting in his own way medieval and renaissance music, traditional Quebec songs and songs of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, among others. It has been presented as an “inedito and poetic meeting” by the festival’s leaders.

It will be preceded by an improvisation session by two groups: Eléonore Fourniau and Bastien Fontanille, on the one hand, and Bijan Etemad-Moghadam, Christine Martineau and Jordi Cassagne, on the other. The Forró de Fòra, which will follow, will unveil the style of Forró that is often used for dance in Brazil, while five dancers will be staging Mizel Théret’s show The Escape of the Xori.

Women of Rojava as protagonists

The festival will pay tribute to the fighting women of Kurdistan on Saturday 22nd. The musicians Julie Lobato, Christine Zayed and Eléonore Fourniau and the poet Yohann Villanua will think of the “Roses of Rojava”. Other highlights of the day include Congolese percussions and dances, as well as an experimental session by Mehdi Chaïb, Léo Rathier and Fawzi Berger, combining gnawa music from Morocco and Algeria with one of Brazil’s maracatu rituals – obviously improvisation and experimentation are the festival’s home brand.

Saturday night’s concerts seem to begin quietly as Beyond brings the wild relatives of the Zubero Mountains. Songs of this type are usually made with pure voice, but in this case, retaining the spirit of traditional songs, the group will add percussions, clarinet and string instruments.

To end the day, the gypsy music of the Koçani Orchestra. The organizers are confident that the Macedonian team will lead to a “brilliant drive” that “would also encourage an army of the depressed.” The 22nd edition of the Robi Festival ends with the poetic hike of the following day.