Calima

A bold new collaboration creates a powerful encounter between UK Mandé jazz and Afro-Colombian marimba - 15 musicians exploring shared African roots through rhythm and improvisation.

Balimaya Project and Colombia's Discos Pacifico All Stars together present a cross-continental performance of West African jazz and Afro-Colombian tradition in a boundary-pushing exchange of rhythm, heritage, and sound.

The two bands bring together a connection between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, exploring experimental Afro-diasporic soundscapes, blending Mandé jazz with Afro-Colombian folkloric music in a collaboration which fuses the deep rhythmic and cultural ties between African and Latin American traditions.

Balimaya Project, known for their powerful fusion of Mandé rhythms and contemporary jazz, brings a strong foundation in West African musical heritage, incorporating instruments like the djembe and balafon to craft complex, emotive compositions rooted in community and storytelling.

Joining them from Colombia's Pacific coast, the Discos Pacifico All Stars - featuring members of Bejuco, Semblanzas del Rio Guapi, and former members of Agrupación Changó - focus on marimba music and Afro-Colombian rhythms, channelling the energy of their ancestral sound into something fresh and globally resonant.

The album 'Calima' centres on an international exchange, shaping a new musical narrative in real time.

Calima is a natural phenomenon where Sahara Desert dust travels across the Atlantic, bringing nutrients that fertilise the Amazon and tropical rainforests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Like this dust, the African diaspora crossed oceans by force, but through cultural resistance kept their heritage alive - recognising each other, sharing traditions, rooting themselves, and creating new forms of expression that transform dispersal into fertile encounters of memory, beauty, and renewal.