Combining assorted flavours from all around the Mediterranean with solid rock+reggae foundations, this New York-based band are one of the electro/world sensations of the last three years.

Although the media have associated them with the so-called Gypsy Rock movement, their roots are reaching way beyond that: they blends Greek guitars, Arab & Bulgarian guest singers, Balkanoid horns and elements of ragga and hip hop. Balkan Beat Box are an awesome live band, they've been making crowds go wild on all major festivals they appeared at, around Europe and North America. Balkan Beat Box is centered around saxophone player Ori Kaplan, drummer/ programmer/ producer Tamir Muskat and charismatic vocalist/MC Tomer Yosef.

The band’s founding members had been active for over a decade in some of NYC’s premier underground bands (including Gogol Bordello, Firewater, Big Lazy, Shotnez), before joining forces and bringing together their combined experiences and ideas to create the powerhouse called Balkan Beat Box.

Balkan Beat Box was nominated several times for BBC World Music Awards.

The press calls them: ’A global peacekeeping mission that you can dance to’ (Spin, USA)

’Festive, powerful, volcanic’ (Trax, France), “Totally indispensable and strongly recommended!’ (Mondomix), ’A dizzying array of musical hybrids’ (The New Yorker).

One of the most explosive bands of the Balkans, with over 100 annual gigs all over Europe, Dubioza Kolektive falls out of all patterns. With a strong message and explicit political lyrics, DK made itself heard in the last 7 years on the biggest European festivals scenes. Sziget Festival, Exit Festival, Eurosonic Festival , Balkan Trafik Festival, Socha Reggae Riversplash Festival , Real Beat Festival, Dirty Old Festival, Fusion Festival, Topvar Rock Festival are just a few of the locations in which the Dubioza Kolektiv phenomenon gathered masses. Their sound, a successful fusion of dub, reggae, hard core and Bosnian ethno as well as their fiery live performances, made DK be one of the most successful and most wanted bands in the region.
Their newest album, "5 do 12", was released openly to the public, as download on the official website dubioza.org. At only 2 months from the release, the album was already downloaded over 50 000 times.

The Antwerp Gipsy­Ska Orkestra reflects the openness to different cultures in an intriguing way; seven musicians from all over the world ­ each with a very diverse musical background ­ have teamed up to combine the pure, raw energy of authentic Roma Gipsy melodies with the ultra­danceable ska groove.

This band has it all! A charismatic front man, street credibility, incredible energy on stage, a vast variety of styles and rhythms that stretch the boundaries of what we know as ska music, striking melodies that soar with joy and dive with melancholy, improvisational skills to match a jazz combo and best of all their own sound that is so rich and natural that one can’t help but wonder why nobody came up with this idea before.

If you see them at work you soon realize that this is not just another ska band. Based solely on their live reputation they played the Melkweg (Amsterdam) with Balkan Beat Box and left the audience screaming for more. A few months later they performed at the prestigious Eurosonic festival which confirmed their popularity status and has them headlining many festivals in Europe.

The debut CD which was released in June 2007, was unanimously applauded by the Belgian Press as a masterpiece, terms like all hits, no misses and brilliant got the band many interviews and frequent airplay on Belgium’s Radio 1. Since the last of the band’s illegal immigrants received his permit to stay just before the release, "Tuttilegal" seemed an appropriate title.

Mitsoura is a unique musical project which combines Hungarian­Roma music with the Oriental roots having as a result an amazing mixture that they call "progressive electro world beat project". The unique approach of style and the preoccupation for the complexity of art are the characteristics that transform Mitsoura in one of the most illustrious musical groups from East­Europe of a "world" class. The characteristic print of the band is the group’s lead singer Monika (Mitsou) Miczura, who is among the best Gypsy performers due to her unmistakable voice and unique talent.

Approaching music on its both modern and authentic sides, Mitsoura proposes through their shows the recreation of sacred space by its projections, themes and effects and the introduction in this space of sound of the 21st century. The combination of exotic songs and instruments, modern electronic sound effect and the spectacular animations create a whirling audio­visual atmosphere in which the audience is being brought closer to the true meaning of the music

NADARA gypsy Band brings on stage all the strength and beauty of Roma, Hungarian and Romanian songs, gathered in an impressive repertoire of 9 musicians that still guard in their performances the secrets of the old but at the same time don’t forget to develop their own personal style. Having its roots in a small Transylvanian village, with the Roma dance exception of the vocal and harmonist Alexandra (of French origin), the group gets together during their performance within the renowned movie production « Transylvania », under the signature of director Tony Gatlif.

Unique through the virtuosity of the artists, the richness of the repertoire (containing songs as old as 200 years) and the instrumental set­up, Nadara imposes itself as an interesting example of reinterpreting tradition. The musical performance is scattered with hectic moments of traditional Roma dance, completing thus the artistic act and transporting the audience into a “sound train” with a scent of orient and occident.

Formed in 2005 in Budapest, the band is one of the few groups in Hungary who represent the early European branch of jazz known as “manouche swing” or “gypsy jazz”, a style current mainly among Sinto gypsy musicians.

Their repertoire includes, apart from compositions by Django Reinhardt, a wide number of jazz standards, together with pieces by contemporary manouche musicians and several of their own compositions.

The group intends to recreate the auditory experience characteristic of the most famous representatives of the genre, with the characteristic guitar technique and the use of the special, so­called Selmer­Maccaferi type guitars, but their musical style also displays the influence of Hungarian and Hungarian­gypsy musical traditions.

The members of the group are partly professionally trained, partly self­educated musicians, but manouche jazz has been a self­taught experience for all of them, as this style cannot be found in organised education in Hungary.

After winning several prizes at some jazz music competitions, they’ve toured in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary to great popular acclaim. The group is a permanent guest of the Salgótarján festival and they also participate in other significant festivals in Hungary: Sziget, Athe Sam, Budapest Gypsy Festival, Louis Armstrong Festival in Bánk, Bohém Festival. h

A very cosmopolite group, from both sides of the Atlantic, with musicians from Canada, Mexico, Germany, France and Ukraine, gathered under the name of Wordly Savages. As the name predicts, their music want to be a global revolution. Militating for the apparently lost authenticity, Wordly Savages bring a critique to the materialistic values of the capitalist, “robotized” culture.

The sound of the band expresses the same state of alert and riot, combining punk and hip­hop with the passion of the south­eastern­European folklore. However, beyond this almost aggressive sound lies a pacifist message.

The message behind the music is an appeal for life to be lived with authenticity and sincerity and a tale of the benefits of stepping outside ones own cultural climate and examining different ways of approaching life, making way in escaping the ideological prisons that exist in each and every one of the world’s cultures. Shortly, the Wordly Savages provoke us to a “transatlantic wisdom” with open minds. The concert within IRAF places itself of the European tour map of the band, where they will also rock the stages of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Polonia, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium.

Ludy Dobri (Good Folk; Good People) is a Lviv­based band that collects and interprets folk music from across Ukraine. The band’s geographic roots (Xhmelnitskyj, Poltava, Lviv, Toronto) are as diverse as the musical backgrounds it draws upon (classical, punk, balkan, ukrainian folk, etc.). And rightly so; Ludy Dobri seeks to re­envision traditional Ukrainian folk music, unearthing fading forms and reformating well­known classics, infusing them with a youthful energy that takes listeners through contained­chaotic­bliss to the heart of the band’s instinct­driven ukrainian­ness.

Kanizsa Csillagai ia an atipical project that takes its roots from the beás gypsy tribe in Hungary. Their music and dances popularizes this tribe’s heritage thus setting itself apart from the majority of hungarian gypsy musicians, bringing that „something else” in the middle of traditional arrangements. Formed in 1993, the group keep until today its original structure, this consistence being owed primarly to the family bounds between the members, bounds that are visible on stage also, where they succeed to deliver the audience a soulfulness that reminds you of the family steadiness.

The authenticity of the repertoire is seconded by a novel instrumental array, the artists using various unconventional instruments ( spoons, pots, buzuki) in order to obtain a deeper sound. Apart from the numerous concerts in Hungary, the ensemble makes itself known on the stages in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy. Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and Taiwan.

Their work began in September 2008, as they created their first song – Mental Holiday. The, song, produced in a “fast-food” style, somehow set as objective the providing of joyful and dynamic sound, instead of promoting angry, destructive, anti-system-attitudes. “We focus more on the mental constraints that we carry, than on the economical and political barriers that we face.

The message we want to provide is cooked in a alternative rock “recipient” holding a soup with ingredients like “funky carrots”, “reggae beans” and pieces of “hip hop beef”.

We do not want to preoccupy our listeners only acoustically, so we, sort of, “pimped up” our appearances also visually, wearing different costumes according to pre-established thematic”.

He started flirting with music far back in 1995, as the lead singer in a hardcore group. His passion for music arouses his curiosity in the art of mixing, determining him in 2004 to acquisition his first set of turntables, shortly thereafter he decides to take things more seriously, supported by Van Graph kfe where he conceives a series of thematicall evenings and other venues. The receptivity of the publick and musical variety assure his ascension on the clubbing scene of Timisoara, promoting genres such as: funk, jazz, nu­jazz, afro­beat, hip hop, bossa nova, broken­beat, breaks. He has a great passion for that which is turntablism, therefore his dj­sets are sprinkled with quite a number of scratch­acts. He performs not only amongst almost all the locall djs, starring on the line­up of festivals such as: 48H, Summer Break, Student Fest, IRAF or Rock la Mures.