UK-Based BEATING HEART LIVE Makes US Debut at SXSW

The UK-based Beating Heart Project will be making its North American debut with four showcases at this year's SXSW. Beating Heart is a collective of artists and enthusiasts who believe in the power of music to create a world without borders. Born in the heart of Sub-Saharan Africa in 2016, the project sprung from a vision to bring the world's largest archive of African field recordings to today's hottest producers to build new compositions using the original field recordings.

Onstage, the collective features Lulu James (Tanzania/UK) on vocals and dance, singing in Swahili and English, channeling her Maasai heritage into a performance of visceral power. Project founders Chris Pedley and Ollywood provide the unique musical mix, blending a fusion of ancient tribal rhythms and contemporary dance music. These new creations have resulted in jumping dance floors all over the world from Glastonbury Festival UK to Cape Town's Rocking The Daisies.?

Beating Heart has privileged access to the International Library of African Music - the world's largest archive of traditional African music - which contains 35,000 recordings compiled by Hugh Tracey between the 1920s and 1970s across 16 Sub-Saharan countries. Today, Beating Heart works with producers to sample and remix these field recordings, which the collective then uses to raise money for the communities that created the original music.

BEATING HEART LIVE

Official SXSW 2018 Showcases

Mar 14 - 11:00pm - World Music Night, Russian House
Mar 15 - 7:00pm - Second Play Stage, Hotel Van Zandt
Mar 16 - 4:00pm - International Day Stage, Convention Centre
Mar 17 - 5:30pm - British Music Embassy, Latitude 30