D’Banj – Action

This year, France is celebrating Portuguese culture. Fado music is often upheld as the essence of Lisbon, a mainstay in a rapidly changing capital city. In this special show from Portugal, Eve Jackson meets the duo reinventing the music that embodies the nation's soul. Fado Bicha are Portugal's queer anti-racist feminist musicians and they're challenging the traditional, conservative, ritualistic fado.

Her career has seen her smash glass ceilings in classical music, first at the prestigious Bayreuth Festival and now at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Oksana Lyniv is the first female director of an Italian opera house. The Ukrainian conductor spoke to FRANCE 24's Olivia Salazar-Winspear about her many achievements and how the war in Ukraine makes her public role even more important.

France is bustling with classical music events this autumn. Paris's Opéra Bastille is performing Mozart's timeless "The Magic Flute", with Franco-Italian conductor Antonello Manacorda at its helm. He stopped by the FRANCE 24 studios to tell us more about how the themes of this Singspiel still apply in 2022.

The first transgender singer to go number one in the US, German-born Kim Petras endured long rites of passage in her homeland before finding her voice abroad.

According to Hitler and Goebbels (Hitler's second in command), the three master composers that represented good German music were Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Anton Bruckner.

Globally recognized stars including Senegalese maestro Youssou Ndour, and Nigerian artists P-Square and Tiwa Savage are among those set to perform during the main awards ceremony at the 15,000-seat Dakar stadium.

Award-winning filmmaker Cécile Allegra joins us on Perspective to tell us about her new feature, "Songs of the Living". It tells the story of a group of migrants, or survivors as she prefers to call them, as they try to settle in the Aveyron region of France.

Songs are getting shorter and often launch straight into the lyrics. You have to listen for 30 seconds if the musicians are to get a fee from the streaming service. And there are so many songs jostling for attention.

American soul and blues singer Lee Fields has worked with some of the biggest artists in music, from Kool & the Gang to Martin Solveig. Now in his seventh decade, he's still releasing fantastic songs with a voice that pulls all kinds of heartstrings.

Getting enough sleep is essential to good health, but millions of people struggle with it. As a result, many of us turn to calming music in the hopes that it will lull us to sleep.

Sarah McCoy is an American who honed her songwriting and singing skills touring the US and New Orleans in particular, before moving to France several years ago. Unlike Emily (of "Emily in Paris" fame), she speaks French and has charmed her way into the hearts of the locals. She has just released her second album "High Priestess", which she is about to tour extensively throughout France and other European countries.

As Iranians continue to brave a deadly crackdown to protest against their regime, Iranian exiles living abroad have joined the movement in any way they can. For French-Iranian opera singer and composer Ariana Vafadari, that’s meant rallying support through music.