2012 Center Stage Participants

• Arieb Azhar (Islamabad, Pakistan): Azhar leads a quartet of acoustic musicians in an eclectic mix of urban and folk-based songs grounded in Sufi and other humanist poetries from the subcontinent and Europe.
• BélO (Pétion-Ville, Haiti): A socially conscious singer-songwriter with a sophisticated sound, BélO and his band deliver a high-energy mix of Jazz, Worldbeat, Rock, Reggae and Afro-Haitian traditional rhythm known as Ragganga.
• Compagnie de Danse Jean-René Delsoin (Pétion-Ville, Haiti): Delsoin’s outstanding, vibrant dancers and drummers embody choreography that captures Haiti now --- raw and refined, spiritual, powerful, and precarious.
• Jogja Hip Hop Foundation (Yogyakarta, Indonesia): This sharp Javanese rap collective promotes tolerance and pluralism with hooks that meld global rhythms, gamelan music, ancient Javanese poetry and literature.
• Nan Jombang (Padang, Indonesia): Percussive, persuasive and explosive modern dance.
• noori (Lahore, Pakistan): One of Pakistan’s top pop bands, helped define Sufi-rock.
• Papermoon Puppet Theatre (Yogyakarta, Indonesia): In a country with world-renowned puppetry traditions, the young, expert artists of Papermoon are extending the form and creating works that imaginatively explore identity, society and Indonesia’s recent past.
• Ti-Coca & Wanga-Nègès (Port-au-Prince, Haiti): Masters of Haiti’s acoustic twoubadou (troubadour) tradition.
• Very Live (Karachi, Pakistan): The comedic trailblazers insist on pushing boundaries in a place where stand-up was virtually unknown as a performance genre.
• Zeb & Haniya (Lahore, Pakistan): This acclaimed singer-song writing duo paved the way for many female musicians active on the Pakistani music scene today.