When Gilles Peterson announced that he was launching a UK festival for his Worldwide FM Family, we were immediately interested. After years of eyeing up famous Worldwide Festival in France, We Out Here is now here to shake up the UK festival scene, and Sheffield’s favourite world-music aficionados La Rumba have been invited along. Here’s a little preview of what’s to come this August at the most exciting festival starting this year.
We Out Here Festival’s inaugural edition begins on Thursday August 15th, marking four days of UK jazz in the day across four stages, followed by a night-time lineup of forward thinking DJs, including Theo Parrish, Mr Scruff and Objekt.
Some of the biggest bands headlining in the day include KOKOROKO, Joe Armon Jones, Moses Boyd Exodus and Children of Zeus, all of which are spearheading the UK jazz revival which is reaching fever pitch. The so called ‘golden age’ of new jazz is now more than just a genre, with festivals like Field Day featuring jazz across all four of their stages, which is what initially made Gilles Peterson realise it was possible to dedicate an entire festival to it.
The night-time line up also sees a host of forward thinking UK promoters playing sets, including Manchester’s Better Days and So Flute and most importantly for the Steel City, Sheffield’s La Rumba. We spoke to founder Roman Rocha to find out more.
“We were invited to play at the festival by the WOH team who liked the look of our shows a while before announcing which was pretty hard to keep secret for so long as we’re pretty excited. It’s a real honour to be part of such a wicked lineup with some of our previous guests, Auntie Flo and Dele Sosimi, playing too, as well as several great UK promoters/club partners like Mango Disco who we’ve done a few parties with. La Rumba’s always aimed to offer a wide variety of genres whilst maintaining that feel-good party atmosphere and WOH does exactly that.
We’re playing the Near Mint tent at 22:30 – 00:00 on the Sunday night with the last set of the weekend there after Nottingham’s Soul Buggin’ so I suppose we’ll have to go out with a bang. Marcelo and I usually bounce between afro/Latin-oriented jazz and disco before moving towards more obscure afro-electronic tribal and percussion, we hope to see you there.”
We Out Here Festival runs from August 15th-19th. Tickets are available from £145 here.
