The big opening with Arlo Parks, INIKO, and many more.
Hosted by Hadnet Tesfai, our opening show is dedicated to the question What's Next? What does the future of the music industry look like and how can we shape it healthily and sustainably? We will get to the bottom of these questions with AY Young and Mari Copeny. We are also looking forward to greetings from the Minister of State for Culture and Media, Claudia Roth, and Hamburg's First Mayor Dr. Peter Tschentscher. Enissa Amani will bring a smile to our faces afterwards and we will dance to Arlo Parks, INIKO and Cassia in front of the Opening Stage. As a festival visitor you are very welcome to open the four days of the Reeperbahn Festival at the Operettenhaus with us! You can find all further information about the Opening Show here.
But that's not all, you can also look forward to new acts with Paula Hartmann, Ebow, Mayberg and Cloudy June.
“Collapsed In Sunbeams” (2021) catapulted the British singer–songwriter onto all the playlists of the major streaming platforms within a few weeks with tags such as “alt pop”, “neo-soul”, and “bedroom producer”. Today, the introspective poet with the breathy timbre is considered one of the visionary artists of her generation. With her new album, “My Soft Machine” (2023), she has proven with sentimentality as well as sovereignty, with stylistic certainty as well as eclecticism, that she knows how to realise and develop her very own style independently of the norms of the streaming era.
Since the 2018 release of their debut single, “Kingdom”, INIKO has become an online icon of Gen Z who makes no compromises. From the artist’s first independent releases to their globally successful hits “Caught A Body”, “Pinocchio”, and “Motion”, it took only a few years for everything to change for INIKO. Omnipresent on TikTok for a while now and hailing from New York, INIKO has become the soundtrack to the lives of thousands of people in countless videos thanks to their dramatic mixture of electropop and alternative R’n’B.
Years before Paula Hartmann started her singing career, she had already appeared in numerous German film and series productions. Last year, after an intensive songwriting process, her debut "Nie verliebt" (Never in Love) was released via Four Music and can not only shine with a cinematic sound design penned by Biztram (Casper, K.I.Z. and others) but also shows her to be a gifted storyteller. It's not for nothing that Hartmann describes her songs as "modern fairy tales from the big city".
A self-made talent who shows all doubters how it's done: Ebow has successfully emancipated herself from the status of an up-and-coming rapper in recent years and has become a style icon of German-language hip hop. Much has been written about her beginnings in Munich's Bahnhofsviertel, where she raps in supermarkets and on the tram - over ten years ago now. Her feisty lyrics, which cross capitalism criticism with queer feminism and anti-racism, are about her Kurdish heritage and the bitter aftertaste of postmodern city life and the turmoil of Gen Z.
He has not only made the DIY spirit his own, but has also lived it out and exhausted it with great success so far: Luis Mayberg Raue is one of the most promising new singer-songwriters in the country and likes to hold all the strings of his art in his own hands. From the provocative, zeitgeisty lyrics to the touching hooks to the balanced production between indie pop, electronica, and Gen-Z poetry, Mayberg's sound is a creation of his own, placing the unlimited charm of a postmodern dandy next to the nostalgia of the new New German Wave.
Cloudy June
The Berlin native with Cuban roots gains her first experience making music when she teaches herself screaming techniques like grunting to shout in a death metal band. The feeling of being excluded, and the burden of eternal self-doubt lead the young musician to vent her disappointment about the culturally divided coexistence in songs like "FU In My Head" (2022) or "21st Century Princess" (2023). Barely in her mid-twenties, the singer and songwriter has now become the icon of a generation that holds up a mirror to the contradictions of the status quo and asks: Is that it?
Other confirmations:
49th & Main | COMA | Aziya | LINA | Lucifer Xo | Picture Parlour | YFG Pave
Uma | Dream Nails | Sabrina Bellaouel | Floodlights | Blush Always | HENRYY | Wide Mouth Mason | REEZA | LA PLACE | RIA | Josh Island | Adwaith
Wolf & Moon | iedereen | Thomas Meilstrup | Mace The Great | CHAILD
MAZ | Vanity Mirror | Gillie | liska | Das RADIAL
Unfortunately had to cancel:
Seafret
Wallners
Big Joanie
Glüme
FIL BO RIVA
Baby Rose
Kristen Roos