Nigeria’s The Cavemen and Tommy WÁ to play the Great Escape 2024

Running for the past 18 years, the festival traditionally roughly hosts 500 bands across 30 venues, over 450 up-and-coming artists and hotly tipped talent across 35+ walkable venues throughout the city and claims to facilitate “new music discovery” while acting as a springboard for rising artists.” More acts are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

The Cavemen were selected as part of the festival’s vision of “amping up its jazz, R&B and soul offering with the new line-up announcement featuring an eclectic blend of artists” this year, while Tommy WÁ is among musicians “hand-picked from the worlds of folk, Americana and country.”

For the Cavemen, behind 2020’s debut album, Roots, and 2021’s Love and Highlife, the show marks a historic return to the UK after backing Afrobeats giant Wizkid on tour last year at Tottenham Stadium in front of 50 000 attendees. In 2023, the band also graced prominent festivals across Europe and Africa such as Montreux Jazz, Love Supreme and Lowlands.

“Every time we play in front of a different crowd, it’s very beautiful to see how people who even don’t know our songs react to them… how everybody’s face brightens up immediately you get there,” Kingsley Okorie, one-half of award-winning highlife duo told Music In Africa recently. “It’s all very beautiful, even just looking around at great locations, venues, sounds  –  beautiful.”

Tommy WÁ’s Great Escape debut follows the release of his Roadman and Folks EP back in December. It will cap a series of international performances from March to May, heralded by gigs in Cape Town, Hamburg and Berlin.

“With the release of my EP Roadman and Folks, this is the year of connecting the dots and Great Escape just happens to come at the right time,” Tommy WÁ said. “I am super pumped about the spontaneity and rawness the festival brings out of artists and I am excited to meet new folks and industry execs during this showcase.”