HISTORY
Couleur Café is a festival that proposes a full array of music styles coming from all over the world. With more than 40 concerts over three days, Couleur Café offers the best of R&B, hip hop, world, afro, reggae, ragga, dub, dancehall, Latin, salsa, electro and rock. Some extra juicy ingredients are added such as the bright souks and decorations, world food stalls, craftsmen and blazing brass bands. 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.
Couleur Café is more than a globe-trotting urban festival. The Cool Art Café exposition features work by contemporary artists from the 'North' and 'South' with a typical Couleur Café-touch. The Solidarity Village wants to sensitize the audience about international social problems. 10 NGOs and associations provide information about awareness-raising campaigns and concrete solutions for worldwide social problems.
21 years of music...
1990
First edition @ Halles de Schaerbeek, the former covered market located in the heart of Brussels and now a flourishing European Cultural centre.
* First festival with new African & Afro-Cuban artists
* Bright souks and decorations, world food stalls, craftsmen and blazing brass bands included!
* Instant success: 5300 festival goers
1994
Couleur Café moves to Tour & Taxis, one of the most beautiful industrial sites in Europe.
* Focus on black roots music from abroad & the Belgian music scene
Over the years…
* Line up more and more urban & eclectic
* New: Cool Art Café (thematic art exhibition), dance lessons, 2 world food streets, Solidarity Village
* Increasing number of festivalgoers from Belgium and abroad
* Camping “Zen” next to the festival site
2010
* Urban world music festival: the best of R&B, hip hop, world, afro, reggae, ragga, dub, dancehall, Latin, salsa, electro and rock
* 42 concerts & 4 brass bands over 3 days; 1 open air stage & 3 marquees
* 76.000 festivalgoers over 3 days
* Saturday 26/06 and Sunday 27/06 were sold out