20 years of Jaminaround celebration event

The core mission of Jaminaround is to draw audience and performer together in a memorable, intimate, spellbound moment, harnessing the resonant energy of the circular space to honour and witness the magic of exceptional performing artistry.

Here is your line-up for the twenty-year anniversary special;

Saturday; Sam Amidon / Electric Jalaba / Jan Blake / Miryam Solomon

Sunday; Alostmen / Luzmira Zerpa / Clare Murphy / Dudu Kouyate

Sam Amidon is a singer and multi-instrumentalist (banjo, guitar, fiddle) from Vermont (USA), now based in London. He has released seven acclaimed solo albums of songs on Bedroom Community and Nonesuch Records, the most recent of which is 2020's "Sam Amidon.” He is currently working on a new album to be released this year. Amidon's material for these albums often consists of adventurous reworkings of traditional American ballads, hymns and work songs, with the New York Times writing that Amidon "transforms all of the songs, changing their colors and loading them with trapdoors."

Electric Jalaba return to Jaminaround for the first time since 2017. Formed as a band shortly after an appearance by lead singer Simo Lagnawi at Jaminaround 2011. Their music is a deep psychedelic, groove-heavy meeting between Moroccan Gnawa music and the pooled musical influences and contributions of Italian/English drummer Dave De Rose and four musical brothers; Henry, Oliver, Nathaniel and Barnaby Keen from Dorset - aka - your Jaminaround hosts! Traditional songs about colourful spirits, mysterious women, men that divide oceans and armies of conquerors weave themselves among enormous infectious riffs, analogue effects and warped guitars.

Jan Blake is a storyteller specialising in myths and folk tales from the Caribbean, West Africa, North Africa and beyond. She has a well-earned reputation internationally for her dynamic and generous storytelling style. She is an all-time Jaminaround favourite and has appeared numerous times over the years all the way back to the pre-Jaminaround days, performing in the original roundhouse at The Ancient Technology Centre in the early 1990's.

Miryam Solomon's is one of those voices that catches you and gets under your skin. A London-based artist, by way of Sweden and Eritrea, her music is underpinned by her love for rhythms, vocal interplay and storytelling. There’s a magic and honesty in its simplicity. Repeating rhythms and phrases take on new meaning with each listen, always guided by Solomon’s voice and its offer of intimacy and intricacy.

The amazing Alostmen will travel all the way from Ghana especially for this event! Their music is based around the Frafra traditions of the kologo, a stringed lute, using traditional instrumentation in entirely new ways. The band comprises Stevo (kologo, vocals), Jo Ajusiwine (goje fiddle, vocals), Aminu Amadu (talking drum) and Sowah (gome box, djembe and conga). “We are Alostmen because we were lost in the street, the forgotten people,” explains Stevo. Infectiously groovy and powerfully energetic traditional dance music.

Luzmira Zerpa is a versatile Venezuelan singer/songwriter based in UK who has performed internationally and toured extensively throughout Europe as a solo artist and with her band Family Atlantica. This will be Luzmira's fourth appearance at Jaminaround, performing first with Family Atlantica in 2014, returning in various different configurations over the years. This time she will be presenting her new project which celebrates Música Llanera of the epic plains of Venezuela and Colombia, in a trio featuring cuatro, harp and double bass.

Clare Murphy is another Jaminaround favourite. A performer who brings the ancient art of story firmly into the contemporary world. For this event she will be presenting a version of her new show The Spanking Goddess. Clare exhumes the Celtic canon to bring the wild women who never made the cut, back into the light. These are not your regular myths. Expect wicked tales of badass deities, feral fighters, unorthodox sex, hairy bodies, mastery, and goddess-on-goddess battles – not for the faint-hearted!

Dudu Kouyate

Born in Senegal in 1963 into a family of griots, known for being the conservators of the African cultural and musical tradition. After his humanistic studies in his country he left for Europe. Dudu currently lives in Bergamo, Italy where he has been teaching African percussion for many years. Since 2017 he has collaborated on a regular basis with the Art Ensemble of Chicago with Roscoe Mitchell and Don Moye. He holds seminars on the history of traditional African instruments trying to trace the territorial boundaries of the populations and disseminating the African cultural tradition through tales of musical fairy tales.