Couleur Café | FESTIVALPHOTO
| Couleur Café Couleur Café is the best World Music festival in Belgium. Not only being situated in a great location (Tour & Taxis, Brussels) and gathering great bands, it is an eco-friendly festival. Couleur Café is the "green festival" at a very affordable price! www.couleurcafe.be |
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Time has passed since Couleur Café first packed in its souks, restaurants and musicians into the Halles de Schaerbeek, the former covered market located in the heart of Brussels and now a flourishing European Cultural centre.
In 1990, year of the first Couleur Café, the idea was to offer a tolerant and exotic festival dedicated to fusion music, a festival that would also be set against in social fabric of Brussels’ colorful backdrop rather than amidst a no man's land field. The music line-up of the time mainly consisted of African and Afro-Cuban artists. It was an instant success drawing a crowd of 5300. The ingredients of the perfect Couleur Café cocktail were already there with its bright souks and decorations, world food stalls, craftsmen and blazing brass bands. Along with its ever-growing success, the festival expanded and broadened its musical horizons notably by including more and more urban music on the roster.
Over the years, the roster became even more wildly eclectic, offering the perfect setting for the latest discoveries from abroad and also on the Belgian music scene. Couleur Café remained faithful to the world beat though. As the years went by, the party side of the festival and its many different facets kept expanding, most remarkably in the breadth of Cool Art Café, a thematic exhibition devoted to the plastic arts, and the spread of non-musical activities such as dance lessons, demonstrations of freestyle, and NGO involvement…
In 1994, Couleur Café moved to Tour & Taxis, one of the most beautiful industrial sites in Europe. Nowadays, Couleur Café can no longer be rightfully described as a world music festival but more like a festival that proposes a full array of music styles coming from all over the world. With more than 50 concerts on 3 stages over three days, Couleur Café offers the best of r&b, hiphop, world, dubstep, afro, soul, funk, reggae, ragga, dub, dancehall, reggaeton, latin, salsa, rock, electro… There is also a dance floor featuring electronic music where festivalgoers can also feel the force of the musical mix.
Couleur Café is an apt reflection of the city it calls home, Brussels, with its cultural mix that makes travelling the world as easy as looking out your front window. Although today it welcomes more than 75,000 people – 3,000 of them are also staying on our camping - over three days, Couleur Café maintains a human scale. Independently organized and managed by Zig Zag, a non-profit organization, Couleur Café preserves its vibrant party atmosphere 24 years after it started.
Time has passed since Couleur Café first packed in its souks, restaurants and musicians into the Halles de Schaerbeek, the former covered market located in the heart of Brussels and now a flourishing European Cultural centre.
In 1990, year of the first Couleur Café, the idea was to offer a tolerant and exotic festival dedicated to fusion music, a festival that would also be set against in social fabric of Brussels’ colorful backdrop rather than amidst a no man's land field. The music line-up of the time mainly consisted of African and Afro-Cuban artists. It was an instant success drawing a crowd of 5300. The ingredients of the perfect Couleur Café cocktail were already there with its bright souks and decorations, world food stalls, craftsmen and blazing brass bands. Along with its ever-growing success, the festival expanded and broadened its musical horizons notably by including more and more urban music on the roster.
Over the years, the roster became even more wildly eclectic, offering the perfect setting for the latest discoveries from abroad and also on the Belgian music scene. Couleur Café remained faithful to the world beat though. As the years went by, the party side of the festival and its many different facets kept expanding, most remarkably in the breadth of Cool Art Café, a thematic exhibition devoted to the plastic arts, and the spread of non-musical activities such as dance lessons, demonstrations of freestyle, and NGO involvement…
In 1994, Couleur Café moved to Tour & Taxis, one of the most beautiful industrial sites in Europe. Nowadays, Couleur Café can no longer be rightfully described as a world music festival but more like a festival that proposes a full array of music styles coming from all over the world. With more than 50 concerts on 3 stages over three days, Couleur Café offers the best of r&b, hiphop, world, dubstep, afro, soul, funk, reggae, ragga, dub, dancehall, reggaeton, latin, salsa, rock, electro… There is also a dance floor featuring electronic music where festivalgoers can also feel the force of the musical mix.
Couleur Café is an apt reflection of the city it calls home, Brussels, with its cultural mix that makes travelling the world as easy as looking out your front window. Although today it welcomes more than 75,000 people – 3,000 of them are also staying on our camping - over three days, Couleur Café maintains a human scale. Independently organized and managed by Zig Zag, a non-profit organization, Couleur Café preserves its vibrant party atmosphere 24 years after it started.