Ethiopia, centre for the third edition of the Casa África's Vis a Vis Meetings.

Ethiopia has been the country chosen to host the third edition of the Professional Meeting between Spanish promoters and African musicians, known as the Vis-a-Vis Meeting, which is organised by Casa África in collaboration with the  Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) - Authors Foundation and which has the support of the Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the Spanish Embassy in Addis Ababa so as to open platforms and new communication paths  between African artists and Spanish cultural agents.

Attending this year are representatives of Spanish festivals such as Etnosur, Territorios de Sevilla, Pirineos Sur, the International Jazz&Más Festival of the Canary Islands, the International Jazz Festival of Madrid or the Imagina Funk Festival, meetings which normally have African musicians in their line-up. Fourteen Ethiopian groups of diverse styles will meet up with them and later perform, and were chosen by the programmers among all the candidatures received in the last month.

The selection process for the groups that will play and take part in the work meetings  with the Spanish Promoters have taken place on the Internet through (http://ethiopiavisavis.com). New musicians that are not established and are still unknown in Spain are being sought. Once their music was uploaded, the promoters who will go to Ethiopia this week, listened to all the proposals and voted for the ones they wished to get to know and listen to live.

Thus during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th February, 14 nightly concerts will be programmed in different areas of the city of Addis Ababa. In this edition there will also be collaboration with the prestigious Acacias Jazz Festival, of Addis Ababa, which will incorporate a Casa África stage in which to programme the final Vis a Vis concerts on Saturday 4th February

Casa África is carrying out this support programme for the internationalisation of African music to balance out the opportunities of these musicians, who often face complex and unfavourable situations. In the previous editions, Senegal and Cape Verde were the chosen countries.