Music show: Slowthai on his new album, cancel culture and his love of French hip-hop

This year, France is celebrating Portuguese culture with concerts, exhibitions and performances from the country's top artists. To mark the occasion, FRANCE 24's culture show Encore! takes you on a musical voyage to Lisbon. The Portuguese capital has a sound like no other European city, where a boom in music influenced by African beats is eroding social barriers and making waves internationally.

If you have been a constant follower of the Nigerian music industry, you would have noticed a constant bitter battle involving artists and record labels. Entertainment lawyer, Akinyemi Ayinoluwa talks to GuardianTV about the issues and how they can be solved. 

Brooklyn-based duo Bottler (aka producers Pat Butler and Phil Shore) have created a unique soundscape blending a myriad of styles including pop, indie rock, trip-hop and club music. In 2020, they released a double bill of EPs, "Clementine" and "Grow". Now the childhood friends are back with their debut album "Journey Work", in which they’re on a mission to explore and express the full spectrum of human experience. They joined us on Encore! to tell us more.

Ukrainian opera singer Sergiy Anastasyev, who had to flee the war in his home country, now lives in Bonn, Germany. He talked to DW about how singing has become therapy for him, and how he longs to return to Ukraine.

The 'Because of You' hitmaker's marital split from Brandon Blackstock - who she first filed for divorce from in June 2020, after seven years of marriage - has impacted Kelly's song choices as she only wants to release material she is "comfortable" with.

After two years of cancelled events due to the pandemic, it was severe storms that disrupted the opening of one of France's biggest music festivals. The gates of Les Eurockéennes had only been open for 20 minutes when heavy rain and strong gusts of wind brought down multiple trees across the Belfort event, damaged some of the equipment on site and left several of the early festivalgoers injured.

DJ Aus J is shaking up Nigeria's music scene. August Akpeji Ayodele became blind when he was a baby. But the musician and DJ, also known as 'Aus J' has made a name for the positive vibes of his music.

For many, "Wacken" is more than just a music festival — it's holy ground. Fans from around the world travel to the small town in northern Germany for the Heavy Metal meet — one of the world's largest.

Mona Magdy, a popular Sudanese singer, has not stopped performing in concerts despite undergoing treatment for stage 2 breast cancer.

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.