AVH Productions is promoting the following artists and bands
 Los Van Van ( Up Coming Event, Vega Copenhagen, Sat, 27 Feb 2010)
Cuba's Greatest Dance Band. Grammy Winner and repeatedly nominated.
Cuba's most famed dance band of all time. From the beginning of their recording career, with Songo, los Van Van (the Go Go's) have made it their business to fuse styles and cross lines.
Los Van Van is a Cuban band led by bassist Juan Formell, and is considered to be one
of Cuba's major timba acts, while Juan Formell has arguably become the most important figure in contemporary Cuban music. Using a charanga line-up as its base, Van Van added trombones and vocals, and was the first Cuban group to use synthesizers and drum machines. Their sound was a fusion of changui and son montuno with various types of music, including Afro-Cuban rhythms, rock, funk, disco, and hip hop. Juan Formell contributed countless innovations to the Cuban bass and clave, which paved the way for a radical reconceptualisation of rhythmic arrangements in Cuban music. The Van Van sound came to be known as songo (based on the songo rhythm), which laid the base for the later development of timba.
Official website: Los Van Van
 Salif Keita
Salif Keita came into the world both cursed and blessed.
With each new ordeal, its salvation; with each new obstacle, some inspired ruse or unstinting strength to continue his path. And here lies the enigma. For example,
how could he accept being disowned by a father who refused the inevitability
of an albino son?
What reply could he give to face the hostility of his own caste when he, a Keita,
chose to become a musician? The domain he was entering was strictly forbidden to the Mandingo nobles to whom he belonged. If living means knowing how to solve paradoxes, then Salif Keita is more alive than any of us. Having black parents, but being born white; bearing both a king’s name and the burden of a beggar’s fate… those are extremely discordant experiences, capable of either destroying a soul or of making it invincible. Yet with Salif things didn’t stop there. This miraculous, wild and solitary survivor also became the most emblematic artist in a whole continent. And today, with the appearance of his new album M’Bemba, he’s established himself as the artisan of a renaissance in traditional African sounds, even though he’s spent the best part of his career elsewhere, in Europe and The United States, in search of his musical salvation. This is his destiny, and it is not a common one.
Visit official website: Salif Keita
 Cheb Khaled, King of Rai
Khaled Hadj Brahim (born 29 February 1960), better known as Khaled
(Arabic: خالد حاج ابراهيم), is a raï singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in
Sidi-El-Houri in Oran Province of Algeria. He began recording in his early teens
under the name Cheb Khaled (Arabic for "Young man Khaled") and has become probably the most internationally famous Algerian singer. His popularity has earned
him the unofficial title "King of Raï".
Cheb Khaled on Myspace
 Angelique Kidjo
Angelique Kidjo recently won a grammy award for her latest album Djin Djin. "Her spirit is irrepressible, and she brings life to everything she touches."
(Peter Gabriel)
West African singer and songwriter Angélique Kidjo, one of the most electrifying performers in the pop world today. With DJIN DJIN, her Grammy award winning release on Razor & Tie/Starbucks Entertainment, Angelique Kidjo comes home. The much-celebrated singer, composer, and performer began in the Beninese port village of Cotonou, where she launched her career at the age of six. The political turmoil in her country led her to relocate to Paris, the capital of world music, and then ultimately to New York City, where she now resides. Her striking voice, stage presence and her fluency in multiple cultures and languages won respect from her peers and expanded her following across national borders. It also earned her access to humanitarians who sensed the passion in the words of her songs, resulting in her long-term dedication to global charity work.
Official website: Angelique Kidjo
Dany Rai, The Soul of Raï 'n' B
Already at 15 years old, Dany Raï considered it as his mission to create awareness on the music style he developed a taste for and learned to love as a child. He started playing piano when he was just 8 years old and was influenced mainly by arabic classic and of course Raï music. Raï has its origin in North Africa, and with his background in Morocco, Dany Raï has a special love in his heart for this genre. When he was 15, he started the first and only raï band in Denmark, and is to this day aknowledged as the only raï artist on the danish musical scene. That has brought him to cooperate with various great danish artists like Outlandish, with whom he has performed live many times, as well as being musical composer and featuring on their album ”Closer Than Veins”, with the song ”Reggada” and as a musician on ”I've Seen” feat. Sami Yusuf. He is musical composer in Outlandish member Isam B´s soloalbum ”Institution” with the song ”Et godt måltid”. Danish folksingers like Lars Lilholt and Poul Krebs also had the pleasure of his special raï spicey on the songs ”Vi har ansvaret for en drøm” and the single ”Ildsjæl”, which was made in benefit of the danish charity organisation Dansk Flygtningehjælp. Due to his upbringing in Copenhagen, Dany Raï has been exposed to many different mainstream music genres like r'n'b, soul, hip hop and pop to mention some of them. He treats many different subjects in his texts like love both the sweet and sour side, family relations and society issues in all shapes, among many others, in a new and refreshing way. All this together influences his sound with a unique signature that is unknown of among raï singers around the world. Dany Raï serves a raï cocktail with original spiceys like raï, north african and arabic classic music, mixed with more known spiceys seen with mainstream eyes, r´n´b, hip hop, pop, jazz, spanish and more. Playing the instruments keys and percussion, composing and writing the songs himself, Dany Raï gives his music a very personal and unbelievably trustworthy touch that is further underlined with his warm and carismatic voice and his ear hanging melodies. Raï 'n' b is a good describtion of the album project ”Water In Sahara” from Dany Raï that is in the process of beeing produced with some of Denmarks best producers, some of them being Mintman, the producer behind the Outlandish hit song ”Aïcha” & Frederik TAO (Outlandish, Brandy, Burhan G & many more) and with Dany Raï´s own partner in the producer team Cous Cous Clan, Joakim Harder who is also the drummer in Dany Raï´s band.
Dany Rai on Myspace
Outlandish 
If you above all have a deep passion for the music, success is not always enough to keep the wheels turning. Outlandish realized that fact last summer, when the hit-making Danish hip-hop group was on the edge of a break-up. After three years of intensive tour-activity in USA, Middleeast and Europe, Isam Bachiri, Lenny Martinez and Waqas Ali Qadri had such a poor communication that they no longer found inspiration in each other, but was working separately, trying of solo projects and ran out of ideas and enthusiasm. “Fortunately we got a wakeup-call and talked things over before it was too late. On the new record we reconnected with each other and with the love for life that drove us forward to begin with,” tells Lenny Martinez from the bands rehearsingstudio in Copenhagen, where the trio is preparing for the summer concerts and the presentation of their fourth album, Sound of a Rebel.
Outlandish decided to start fresh and dumped one and a half years work including 25 tracks. It hurt, but the members all agreed that it was a necessary step to take. “In reality there was nothing wrong with the tracks, but something felt wrong inside of us and that reflected somehow in the music,” they all agree. To sacrifice such a major work effort and start all over takes self confidence, but the band with the biggest international hits of this decade and the most award winning
Danish music name, does not have any regrets.
In six months they wrote, rapped, sampled and co-produced Sound of a Rebel, which is the trios most energetic and united album to date. More mature and delicate in the sound than the group’s first two releases, Outland’s Official and Bread & Barrels of Water, and more out averted than the previous. “We are very satisfied with our previous releases that have
brought a lot of good things our way, and still make sure that we are much requested internationally.
 But this is without doubt our most homogenous record and it is deep felt,” Waqas declares. This time Outlandish teams up with super producers Frederik TAO (eight numbers), Bichi from Blue Foundation, Troo.L.S. and Louis Winding. That has created a collection of tight tracks full of life. The inspirations are hip hop, soul and world music, and the catching
chorus is lined up as it is their custom, so nothing new in that matter. In the first single Rock All Day, Outlandish puts the worries aside and gets the party started – or the title track which is about breaking the routines that the group found itself in, between hectically tour activity and professionalization of friendships. “In many ways that particular track says it all. It wouldn’t have been an honest album if we’d continued on as before. If we don’t feel the music then we are not doing well, and that is exactly where we would have ended up otherwise,” Isam determines. Waqas agrees and explains that the lyrics this time focuses on life seen through the sunglasses of the three Copenhageners, who have all started their own families now. There is less religion and politics, and more observations from the near world: “Our lyrics are always as taken straight out of a diary. Everything we tell is something we’ve experienced or can relate to.”Among the topics, there is also room for telling stories about being turned into a “price wog” in the media - or spokesmen for terror and other absurdities, they do not stand for. There are also stories about missing the lady at home, or seeing old friends from Brøndby Strand end up struggling in life.
In this way Someday deals with the ongoing gang war that takes place in the streets of Copenhagen: “It is the story about the fact that things can start of as innocent pranks, but then you meet the wrong people and maybe try to get some attention from home, because something isn’t as it should be in the family. We’ve seen it so many times,” says Lenny. It is certain, that Outlandish’ own little family has sorted things out. Actually the members are so eager to exploit their rediscovered joy of playing, that it beats everything else in the 12-year long career of the trio. As Waqas describes the time after the completion
of Sound of a Rebel: “After we’ve recorded an album I am usually so beat-up that I almost need a month’s vacation. This time I just feel like getting out there and show people what we are doing here.”
Outlandish on Myspace
Caetano Veloso 
Caetano Veloso is a composer, singer, guitarist, writer and political activist. He has been called "one of the greatest songwriters of the century" and is sometimes considered to be the Bob Dylan of Brazil. Veloso is most known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s, at the beginning of the Brazilian military dictatorship.
 Veloso was born in Bahia, a state in the northeastern area of Brazil, but moved to Rio de Janeiro as a college student in the mid-1960s.
Soon after the move, Veloso won a music contest and was signed to his first label.
He became one of the founders of Tropicalismo with a group of several other musicians and artists—including his sister Maria Bethania - in the same period. However the Brazilian government at the time viewed Veloso's music and political action as threatening, and he was arrested, along with fellow musician Gilberto Gil, in 1969. The two eventually were exiled from Brazil, and went to London, where they lived for two years. After he moved back to his home country, in 1972, Veloso once again began recording and performing, becoming popular outside of Brazil in the 1980s and 1990s. He has so far won five Latin Grammy Awards. He recorded his first all-English album,
A Foreign Sound in 2004. The album contains many American standards.
Youssou N’Dour and his reggae thing
After countless forays into the western world, Youssou N’Dour chose Dakar as a base from which to lead his geopolitical campaign in music.
His strategy is pan-African: "What all of us Africans share is much more important than what we don't share," says this elegant, fifty-year old youngster, who grew up in the Medina in Senegal's capital city, Dakar. Bringing unity to the African continent has been his priority for a long time; the key (along with love, opinions and a great festive sense) lay in the professional practise of music for some thirty-seven years. Yet his career was bound to lead to a form of musical expression that has become universal: Reggae, which was born in Jamaica in the Sixties.
As a man of the media and a fighter for citizens' rights – from wiping out the African debt to the battle against malaria – Youssou N’Dour is well aware of the political import of reggae, the music-genre directly linked to Rastafarianism, whose leading figure was the "Ras Tafari" Haile Selassie, the black Emperor of Ethiopia.
As a religion, intellectual movement and way of life, Rastafarianism was conceived some thirty years before the first sound-systems by two Jamaican renegades living in The United States, Marcus Garvey, the ideologist of beauty and black rebellion, and preacher Leonard Percival Howell, who left Jamaica on a ship to America but returned from Harlem to work the soil in the hills of the Caribbean.
"From Brazil to Australia and even in Bombay / Africans, Indians and the Portuguese / they love the one-drop in the roots of reggae…" sings Youssou N’Dour today. And in Marley Demna, a tribute to Bob Marley, he goes on, "In the market, his music played all day. Marley was a young man who floated away. He showed the world the route of reggae / One love, No woman no cry." Youssou N’Dour shows his allegiance to the genre without pretending to belong; his approach is different from that of African reggae's creators, Alpha Blondy from the Ivory Coast, the South African Lucky Dube, who was shot to death in 2007, or followers such as Tiken Jah Fakoli, who took refuge in Mali in 2003 to escape the violence of the civil war raging in the Ivory Coast. What they created, diving deep into their roots, was a radical political movement.
Youssou, on the other hand, brushed the wings of reggae with his fingertips. He did so notably in 2000, with the album Joko from Village to Town, which featured an appearance by the Fugee Wyclef Jean, an Afro-American of Haitian origin. But African unity wasn't the only thing in the mind of Youssou N’Dour: he also had the desire to untangle the threads of the black Diaspora. In 1992 he found an ally in filmmaker Spike Lee, who released the album Eyes Open on his label '40 Acres and A Mule' (named after the compensation awarded to freed slaves after the American Civil War). At the time Youssou wore a "wooy wooy", the woolly hat taken from a song dedicated to the children of Africa quickly branded with an 'X', as in Malcom X, (but also an 'X' as in Xippi, his recording-studio in Dakar.) In 2007, in Amazing Grace, the film made by British director Michael Apted, Youssou played out the tragedy of the Negro slave trade in his role as the slave-poet Olaudah Equiano.
When "You" gives a concert, everything jumps; he brings entire stadiums to their feet. This is Dakar by night, Dakar the capital of pulsating rhythms. Mbalax, the rhythm of the Wolofs, the ethnic majority, is an art-form like a whirling fan (with the dancer's fanny replacing the fan.) It's also an emotional dance, one of trance, and this is how the story of young Youssou, the kid with the golden voice, began. He was born one October in 1959, the son of a labourer named Elimane and his wife Ndèye Sokhna Mboup, a traditional "Griot" singer. After two years in street-theatre, Youssou's career really started when he was thirteen, and it was the result of a miracle: in 1972, Papa Semba Diop, known as Mba, passed away. He was the leader of the Star Band in Dakar, and Youssou sang a tribute to him, a song he composed onstage right there in Senegal's Saint-Louis Stadium. "Everyone was still in tears, and I brought a little joy. I was vibrating. Mba was like a star fading from the sky." At the end of his song, Youssou was given a standing ovation.
The kid used to go down to the beach at Soumbédioune in Dakar, collecting the little sucker-fish known as takgaal and roasting them on the spot. In the small hours of the morning, he could smell the ovens cooking pastries in the Medina, and in his mind he could already see himself onstage: his career was on the move. In 1990 came one of his most beautiful albums, Set, which included the song Medina, an elegy that was pure and filled with nostalgia, and it featured a clear trumpet whose sound was almost Middle-Eastern. Every day he heard the muezzin's calls to prayer, and some nights he could hear the voice of the Egyptian idol Oum Kalsoum.
In 2003 he celebrated his becoming a Murid, following the spiritual path of Sufism, with the album Egypt, recorded in Cairo with an Egyptian orchestra conducted by Fati Salama. Two years later in 2005, this hymn to a tolerant Islam received a Grammy Award in America despite the conflict in Iraq. The title Shukran Bamba gave fervent thanks to Sheik Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Murid brotherhood: "You taught me pardon and compassion, and the rejection of violence and arrogance." Reggae words, man.
In 1981, after leaving the Etoiles group in Dakar, Youssou founded the exemplary orchestra Super Etoile. The sound of the Middle East didn't corrupt the Super Etoile any more than the Jamaican musicians hired for the recording of XXXXX. With electric guitar, bass, balafon, teeming percussion, tama (armpit-drum) or djembe, nothing was left to risk. Super Etoile, with all its human variables, was uniquely solid: 1984 saw its Parisian debuts during Africa Fête, the African cultural festival set up by Mamadou Konté from Mali, and it featured in the great pan-African dances and events organised at the Bercy Omnisports stadium in Paris by its leader.
After meeting Peter Gabriel in 1984, Youssou N’Dour joined "Band Aid for Ethiopia"; in 1988 he sang at Wembley when Nelson Mandela was freed, and then alongside Sting, Tracy Chapman and Bruce Springsteen for Amnesty International. Himself an intensely loyal man, Youssou N’Dour also provoked fidelity: Sting joined Joko for one title, Don’t Walk Away, a nonchalant pop tune with lyrics written by Yussuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens). The star from Dakar chose its rhythms and worked on its one drop material for the present album.
There are new things here, and compositions written for the circumstance (a magnificent Black Woman, syncopated and swaying), not to mention new readings of past hits like the old Pitche Me, taken from Immigrés (1986), produced with the assistance of Tyron Downie. This huge figure started in music in 1969 at thirteen with Bob Marley, playing with The Wailers during the master's time, and then with Peter Tosh or Sly & Robbie before settling in France to keep watch over the sounds of Tonton David and Tiken Jah Fakoly.
Youssou N’Dour could have fallen into the trap of a flat tribute to the federating hero Bob Marley, but instead he chose to take a look at himself in the reggae mirror: when he founded his club, he called it the Thiossane, a word that means "Our history, reality, that of the lineage which the griots knew and told stories about. My mother and my grandmother were Griots, Toucouleurs people from West Africa. The Griots are there for circumcisions, christenings and wedding feats... they arrange the way the celebrations are organised... But in everyday life they invite themselves to people's houses, and spend the day telling stories, humming tales from the countryside about our ancestors, and they accompany themselves on the khalam, a four-string guitar. You can recognise the Griots because every part of their body talks: eyes, hands, even their behinds..."
By 1996 he was already famous worldwide thanks to 7 Seconds, his duet with Neneh Cherry (released in 1994 on the album Wommat, which also featured his cover of Bob Dylan's Chimes of Freedom), and he recorded Voices of the Heart of Africa with the great Yandé Codou Sène in the pure Senegalese Griot tradition. Still loyal, in 2007 he released Rokku Mi Rokka (the title is in the Pulaar language of the Toucouleurs) with musicians from the north, on the borders of Mauritania and the Sahel states of Mali. From that album's traditional return, the new convert to the rhythms of Kingston has chosen Bobolene here.
Nothing’s In Vain, another call for unity, dates from 2002, and it included both Joker, here picked up by vocalist Patrice, and Africa Dream Again, which features Nigerian singer Ayo. With brass, percussion, bass and guitar lines all from Jamaican sources – the album was recorded in the spring of 2009 at Kingston's Tuff Gong studios with Dean Fraser on saxophone, Michael Fletcher on "dancehall" bass and Earl “Chinna” Smith on guitar – the album's instrumental add-ons are all wedded to Africa's memory and modernity, and its leitmotif is Youssou N’Dour: from Bombay to Rio, and from Dakar to Melbourne, via New York and Bamako.
Share on  | Update your Status on  |
