A discovery from Austria – indie rock duo Cari Cari – will be playing Pohoda 2019. Radio FM4 listed their track “Summer Sun” in Top 3 of the 2018 Best Tracks. Volume compares them to The xx or The Kills in their review. The Rolling Stone named them the biggest surprise of last year’s Primavera. The duo is singer and drummer Stephanie Widmer and guitarist Alexander Köck. They have lived in London, Hamburg and also Melbourne, from where the singer sneaked didgeridoo and jaw harp into their songs. Their debut was EP titled AMERIPPINDUNKLER. Songs from this EP appeared in TV series Shameless and The Magicians.  → read more

Pohoda 2019 will also feature the performance art duo Faka. It's comprised of the well-known South African queer artists Fela Gucci and Desire Mare. Except for music, their eclectic scope includes performance, literature, video or photography. They presented themselves at Berlin Biennale, FLOW, Melt! and Unsound festival, and also collaborated on the Versace fashion show. Musically, they primarily take inspiration from the gqom genre (minimalistic, highly percussive interpretation of the African house music). They pride themselves with the EP Bottoms Revenge (2016) and Amaqhawe (2017). They can deliver the record live extremely well, as confirmed by Resident Advisor, who included their performance at this year's Melt among the 5 most important concerts of the festival (along with Mount Kimbie or Modeselektor b2b Apparat). → read more

The indie-punk band LIFE will also play at Pohoda 2019. In June 2017, they self-released their debut Popular Music which BBC 1 included in the selection of the best albums of the year. According to Kerrang! magazine, the album "stokes the fires of change", and the German Musikexpress jokes in the review that "if there’s something good about Brexit, it's just a new punk wave in England." The review also includes IDLES, to whom LIFE probably feel the closest (next spring they’re going on a tour together). Anger and aggression can be felt in the engagement with which they criticize the situation in society, but at the same time, there is also a great deal of vitality in their music.  → read more

Noga Erez, the singer and producer of experimental electronic music from Tel Aviv, will play at Pohoda 2019. Her debut album Off The Radar, which she released only last year, has been praised in great reviews by the magazines such as Clash, The Skinny, The 405, Paste and The Guardian. It paved her way to Primavera, Pitchfork Paris, Roskilde, MELT!, SXSW and many other festivals. After these achievements, Israeli Forbes included her in the "30 under 30" list of the most influential people under 30 years old. → read more

The British soul singer, Michael Kiwanuka, is also going to play at Pohoda 2019. The winner of the BBC's Sound, nominated twice for the Mercury Prize, recorded a remarkable award-winning Love & Hate album in 2016. It reached the top of the UK sales, while the media such as The Telegraph, Chicago Tribune and Mojo gave it the best possible rating. He is an artist who is compared to stars such as Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, and Van Morrison. Michael Kiwanuka will bring the best of the current British soul to Trenčín. → read more

Pohoda 2019 will host also the British-Icelandic punk-rock band Dream Wife. Rolling Stone magazine included their performance at the American Lollapaloosa among the 13 best gigs of the festival. Billboard said that they are undoubtedly one of the most exciting rock bands of the past few years, and Paul Glynn called the band “a jaw-dropping live act and one of the most talked-about new bands of 2018”. → read more

Sudan Archives – amazing American singer and violinist – is coming to play Pohoda. Her extraordinary combination of R&B vocals, hip-hop beats and North-American violin motifs and figures has been praised by the likes of Pitchfork, The New York Times, The Guardian or NPR Music and she has already caught the attention of our local media, too. As Musicpress describes it, “Intense songs with a touch of exotic cultures can build a scenery of distant worlds even among skyscrapers, retail chains and business centers. Outstanding!” We couldn’t agree with them more.   → read more

Amadou et Mariam played one of the most memorable concerts in the history of our festival 11 years ago. A few talented musicians met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako in the 1970s. The definitive breakthrough in their career was the album Dimanche and Bamako, which was produced by Manu Chao. Subsequently, they recorded the hymn of the FIFA World Cup in Germany, "Celebrate the Day", along with Herbert Grönemeyer. Another album Welcome to Mali became the most successful album of the year on Metacritic and was nominated for Grammy. Shortly after, they played the main stage at Glastonbury and during the Nobel Prize ceremony in 2009. Amadou et Mariam collaborated in following years with artists such as Damon Albarn, U2, David Gilmour, Coldplay, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Scissor Sisters. Their concert at Pohoda 2019 will also be about exceptional collaboration.  Amadou et Miriam will perform with one of the most famous gospel bands of the world, Blind Boys of Alabama in project named BAMAKO TO BIRMINGHAM featuring Amadou & Miriam and Blind Boys of Alabama → read more

The legend of the Caribbean music and the queen of the Calypso genre – Calypso Rose, will also play at Pohoda 2019. Her first album was Cooperation (1964), which earned her victory in the Calypso King contest as the first woman in history. In the 1970s the award was even renamed to Calypso Monarch in her honour. At that time she also performed with Bob Marley & the Wailers. Over the course of five decades she has released up to 800 songs and 22 albums. Two years ago she recorded another great album, Far from Home, together with Manu Chao and Ivan Duran, for which she won the WOMEX Artist of the Year and the World Music Album of the Year awards at the "French Grammy" Victoires de la musique. In 2016 she released a compilation Calypso Rose, Queen of Calypso for 40 years! This year, she released the album So Calypso!, which features her most important songs, hits like Rom&Coca Cola, I Say A Little Prayer and other cover versions of artists that influenced her, such as Nat King Cole, The Melodians and Angélique Kidjo. The world-music.cz portal wrote the following about the album: “Together with the producers she put a great deal of modern vocal vitality to her older songs and cover hits, which is almost inappropriate for her age and stings like a bee.” → read more

Another name of Pohoda 2019 is an extremely innovative band from the Congolese metropolis – KOKOKO!. According to Pitchfork, they excel at turning chaos into euphoria. A group of musicians from a Kinshasa suburb puts listeners into a trance with their dance music played on "DIY instruments" made from electro (and other type of waste. The band around the French producer Débruit already caught the attention of media such as TIME, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, BBC6, and Afropunk, and performed at the Roskilde festival, Sonar, Dour, We Love Green or Down The Rabbit Hole. KOKOKO! will also bring the unusually processed everyday life sounds of the third largest African city to Slovakia in July 2019. → read more