Songwriters (emerging and established) in francophone Africa are invited to register for this year’s edition of The Cookout Africa, a free masterclass with Grammy Award-winning musician Vincent Berry II, which will take place via Zoom on 22 June.
Now in its second year, the masterclass series gives participating songwriters the opportunity to create a song in real-time and contribute lyrics to locally created beats through a collaborative process.
The Francophone leg of The Cookout Africa is open to participants in Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, DRC, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mayotte, Niger, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, São Tomé & Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, and Togo.
Vincent Berry II is celebrated for being the lead songwriter of Sandcastles on Beyoncé’s highly acclaimed, Grammy-winning project Lemonade, which became a pop culture phenomenon. The album and film provoked an intense worldwide discussion about race, feminism, social media, and the music industry. Berry has also worked with big names like J Cole, Akon, Sean Paul, Shaggy, Ari Lennox, Babyface, Brandy, Chris Brown, and Mary J Blige, among many others.
The Francophone Africa masterclass will begin at 5 pm WAT (6 pm CAT). There are limited slots available, and interested participants can register here
The Cookout Africa 2021 masterclass dates:
- 31 March – Eastern Africa.
- 20 April – Southern Africa.
- 18 May – Anglophone Western Africa.
- 22 June – Francophone Eastern, Central and Western Africa.
- July – Northern Africa.
Supported by Afreximbank, The Cookout Africa is part of the build-up to the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) at the Intra-African Trade Fair 2021 (IATF 2021) in Kigali, Rwanda, from 8 to 14 December 2021.
