Music Events
Event Highlight
Sierra Leone has a series of festivals throughout the year that have their roots in local culture, and others that are simply occasions for locals to spend time with their family and friends, enjoying music and spending time outdoors.
A beach festival which celebrates and promotes Sierra Leonean culture, the Ma Dengn festival is held in December and January. Meaning ‘let’s meet, let’s get together’, Ma Dengn sees performers, artisans, musicians and artists from across the country come together to entertain audiences.
Ma Dengn Beach Festival
This beach music festival happens every year between the months of December and January, the best time to visit Sierra Leone, when the warm and sunny weather is just perfect to spend time on the beach.
The aim of the festival is to celebrate and promote Sierra Leonean culture, through music, the arts, literature, cuisine and fashion.
However, Ma Dengn is not just your usual beach festival with performances on a stage and the audience just watching and attending. The aim is to create a series of shows where performers and audience can have a dynamic interaction, with a variety of performances including contemporary and traditional musicians/dancers, infamous masquerade performances from secret societies such as Hunting and Paddle, and exposure to Sierra Leonean literature through comedy sketches and dramatic poetry.
The festival also includes an arts and crafts display for sale, and an opportunity to taste tantalizing local cuisine. And to make everything even more special, it all happens on the beach!
ECOFEST
ECOFEST is short for ‘ECOWAS Music Festival’, a regular appointment in the Sierra Leone festival scene that sees the participation of musician, dancers and performers from all over West Africa.
It is primarily a music festival, aiming to offer a platform to musicians of ECOWAS countries to come together and celebrate West African music and culture. Internationally acclaimed and emerging artists come together during this annual festival, making it the largest music festival in West Africa.
The festival typically happens in late November, and the venue is the National Stadium, where 60,000 attendees are expected to dance till the early hours of the morning.
