Marrabenta Festival

Marrabenta is a Mozambican music genre, said to have emerged in the 1940s in Maputo, or Lourenço Marques as it was then called, at a time was a cultural mixing pot, with traders, immigrants and workers flocking into ‘the Pearl of the Indian Ocean’. It is from this cosmopolitan heyday of the city that Marrabenta emerged.

The annual Marrabenta Festival celebrates the significance of this musical genre and aims to not only promote but preserve the genre's existence. The aim is to pass the love of Marrabenta down from generation to generation. It features a special 'Marrabenta train' taking music lovers and musicians from Maputo's historic train station to the nearby town of Marracuene, where the festival incorporates the Gwaza Muthini concert, the history of which dates back over a century.

Where: Maputo

When: February