From the festival
News & notes
Announcements, production write-ups and the February accounts. Nobody here has a communications department, which is most of the reason this reads the way it does.
Ten years of
booking the unbooked
Half of every Anthem bill goes to acts who have never played a festival. It is the rule we are asked about most and the one that has cost us most — three years of partners asking why the Saturday headline was somebody they had not heard of, and one year we nearly dropped it. A count of where those hundred and ninety acts are now.
Read the piece
From the festival
What we have
been writing
The Drum Circle joins the bill
A fourth stage, free inside the gate, given entirely to the Ga, Ewe and Akan ensembles that the festival was built around in the first place.
Why we rebuilt the main-stage sound
Two years of complaints about the field beyond the mixing position, and what a delay tower stack actually fixed about them.
No phones, no printed lineup
The one room at Anthem where you find out who is playing by walking in — and the reason we are keeping it that way.
Highlife
Afrobeats
Gospel
Drill
Palmwine
Hiplife
Fontomfrom
Kpanlogo
Highlife
Afrobeats
Gospel
Drill
Palmwine
Hiplife
Fontomfrom
Kpanlogo
Everything else
The archive
Why we pay in ten days and how we afford to
The cash-flow arithmetic behind the one promise nobody in this industry makes.
Six rhythms and where each of them came from
Fontomfrom, kpanlogo, adowa, agbadza, borborbor, kete — a field guide for the Drum Circle.
We moved the gates, and the queue halved
Two years of complaints, one afternoon with a tape measure and a scanner supplier who listened.
What we do when it rains in November
It has happened three times in ten editions and we have cancelled a set exactly once.
The bill was 22% women in 2019. It is 47% now.
Nothing about that was accidental and none of it required lowering a bar.
Nine tonnes off the ground, and where it went
The waste audit from the ninth edition, in full, including the part we are not proud of.
Early-bird passes
close on 30 September
Weekend passes go up by eighty cedis at the end of September and the Late Room sells out every year before the lineup is even announced.
Confirm your place