Natacha Atlas at Ethno Jazz Festival: Arabic tradition and contemporary European sounds

Natacha Atlas, the world music star who combines Arab and North African music with contemporary European sounds, will perform in Wrocław as part of Ethno Jazz Festival.

The concert will take place on 21 October in Stary Klasztor’s Gothic Hall at ul. Purkyniego 1.

Natacha Atlas combines Arabic and North African music with European influences such as ambient, electronica, hip-hop, R&B, reggae and bossa nova. She describes her songs as “modern cha’abi”, or updated Egyptian pop. Born in Belgium to an Egyptian father and an English mother, Natacha Atlas is a world-renowned artist blending Arabic and North African music with Western pop and electronics. She has spent much of her life moving from place to place.

She lived in Brussels, Egypt, Greece and England, and exposure to such different cultures inevitably influenced her music. After several short-lived projects, she encountered multicultural London group Transglobal Underground in the early 1990s. The meeting became a long, happy relationship. Initially guesting, she emerged within two years as a leading quartet member, giving unforgettable performances as a singer and belly dancer.

She began her solo career in 1999 and soon became known as one of the most original and innovative figures in the artistic world of our time. Her success in both the Middle East and the West demonstrates the appeal of bringing different worlds together. Exotic Arabic scales, rhythms and musical layers open up new horizons for Western pop, confined to 4/4 time, and offer the vast and diverse Middle Eastern music scene a chance to speak to other cultures.

She has performed on stages worldwide, both at international festivals — Montreal and Montreux Jazz Festival, Roskilde, Summer Stage Central Park NYC, Paleo Festival, Glastonbury, Olympic Arts Sydney 2000, Pirineos Sur, Sziget and many others — and in theatres and clubs.

Wrocław audiences had the opportunity to admire Natacha Atlas’s talent in 2008 during Ethno Jazz Festival.

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