Nigeria's Pioneer Afrobeat/Soul/Funk/ Hilife exponent, Orlando Julius Debuts at the Helsinki World Village Festival

Orlando Julius Ekemode (from back cover of the festival's magazine)

Finland's apex annual multicultural event 'The World Village Festival' for this 2015 will be kicking off next weekend 23.-24.5. The focus for this year is Africa and the Middle East.

AfrobeatFinland will be bringing you coverages from the event, we will bring you interviews like one with one the pioneers of Afrobeat and a standing guru of Afro-pop, Orlando Julius Ekemode, yes you heard right, Orlando Julius is one of the major features of this year's festival.

Other African acts expected are the Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, Aziza Brahaim of Western Sahara, Guinea's Ba Cissoko, and many others.

So you be on the watch out!

Orlando Julius Ekemode

The biography of Orlando Julius reads like a kaleidoscope of who is who in the mainstream Nigerian and international music scene. 

He is one man who met and collaborated with an enviable list of top notch artists from around the globe, some include:

• Ademola hasstrup
• Eddie Okonta
• IK Dairo
• Fela Kuti
• Hugh Masekela
• Ray Charles
• BB King
• Temptations
• Smokey Robinson
• Ohio Players Sun Ra
• Miles Davis etc, etc.

follow this link to find out more........ 

Orlando Julius contributed in penning the making of the 1970s international disco hit 'Going Back to My Roots'  one of the biggest disco hits of all time with Lamont Dozier, but unfortunately, they failed to give him his rightful credit for his contribution. Hear him...

           Orlando Julius & the Heliocentrics doing his1960s hit single 'Jagua Nana' at Banlieues Blues Fest Paris in April 2013

See ya at the festival

“The Dream of Championship” photography exhibition on soccer – Sophia Ehrnrooth

A game of 21 people running after a rounded object made of leather and kicking it around may ordinarily sound and look stupid, but not at all.

Call it football or soccer, it has become the most popular game world over.

At every single moment, there are millions of people doing something around the game of football. If they are not talking or arguing about it as the case may be, they will be either playing, watching or reading about it, real time live, on television, from newspaper and magazines, or virtually through computer games.

Football is so powerful that it can be used to bring peace and harmony among people, or create havoc, as in the form of hooliganism and promotion of negative ideologies like Nazism.

These are made possible because people follow the game with so much passion and emotion, and are ready to do anything for the sake of it.

A good example of how football was used to change the lives of people positively was well portrayed in the film, Football Rebels, a five part documentary movie about five legendary footballers who used their influence and fame based to their social conscience to challenge dictatorial regimes, join opposition movements and lead the fight for human rights and democracy.   

The movie was presented and narrated by former Manchester United star, Eric Cantona.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=19&v=JM_DIO1695A

“The Dream of Championship” a combination of Photographic arts and Football struck me as another project comparable to the movie 'Football Rebels' as both are using the art of fooball to tell real stories that affects the lives of real people.

Sophia Ehrnrooth a Finnish photographic artist and a mother is not a football type, as a matter of fact according to her, she is not a sports person at all, but her young son, like most kids his age got possessed by the spirit of football which he followed with great passion and in that way her poor mother had no other alternative than to be reluctantly dragged into it due to mother/son unconditional love, and that was where it all started.

Finland has quite a short summer, for that reason most games and practices are done in the indoor football domes found around the country during the long winter season. Sophia found herself boringly standing on the sideline with other parents as they watch the kids play matches, but it did not take long for Sophia's artistic instinct to take over. She saw beyond the games as colours splashed from the lighted domes reflecting the green turf, the design of the dome's walls and the emotion of players, all these prompted her going to the games armed with her camera, providing for her an added reason to be at the games. One day while driving home with her son from their regular football practice, her son said to her "mother I am going to say as many world renowned football players I know and I want you to count them" He started reeling out strange sounding name according to Sophia, exotic names from around the world and over a hundred of them. 

That was at the moment Sophia's idea of having this exhibition was born.

The “Dream of Champions” exhibition is the result of several photographic shots and video she took between 2014-2015.

           

Sophia Ehrnrooth spoke with Grass-Root media correspondent Ike Chime about it all in this video interview .