• Metá Metá @ Black Box, Belfast

    Two years have passed since Metá Metá’s memorable gig at the Crescent Arts Centre as part of Moving On Music’s Beat Root festival. The São Paulo band’s incendiary performance that evening was all the more remarkable given the absence of saxophonist Thiago  França  forced to spend the night in a Belfast hospital due to a virus. Without him, vocalist Juçara Marçal, guitarist/vocalist Kiko Dinucci, electric bassist Marcelo Cabral and drummer Sergio Machada served up a heady brew of indie rock laced with Afro-Brazilian and psychedelic colors. Back to full strength for its return trip to Belfast, Metá Metá greets Black…

  • Beat Root: Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh & Metá Metá

    Back for its second year, Beat Root, Moving On Music’s festival of roots music, offered a program as diverse as imaginable, from harps, fiddles and thundering rock to singer-songwriter mastery and psychedelic folk.  Traditions, and the bending of them, were the constant dualities at play across four evenings of uplifting music, that taken together, amounted to one of Belfast’s best music festivals of the year to date. Though often associated with formal recitals, the harp can be one of the most expressive and one of the most thrilling of instruments – just think of Colombian Edmar Castaneda or Shetland islander Catriona…