African-American music

On its 24th year, the International Ankara Jazz Festival will take place as an online festival due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Works are almost completed for the festival to take place between April 30 and May 10.

Meeting with its audience with a different theme every year, the festival underlines important issues within jazz.

South London post-funk collective Normil Hawaiians are coming to Greece for the first time, where they will be performing a show at Death Disco in central Athens on February 22.

The Athens Big Band present their "The Swing Era" at the Maria Callas Olympia Municipal Music Theater. The show will also feature the Athens Lindy Hop dance company and musicians Jennie Kapadai and Stavros Romanos.

It was the voice of the marginalised, pure and simple: "Behind the gray blocks / There we are - the majority / They're higher closer to the street / So the hunger is not visible."

Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis returns to the Herod Atticus Theater for his annual summer concert, presenting an upbeat program of popular jazz and swing tunes in a show titled "P.S. I Love You," following a sold-out run last winter. He is joined on stage by the Blue Skies big band and Tammy McCann, hailed as one of the top jazz acts in Chicago right now. Doors open at 9 p.m.

Jazz enthusiasts and those enjoying fusion musical experiences are invited Sunday, on 4 August, starting 19:00hrs, at the JazzUp Casino concert, to be held in the Constanta Casino, a show performed by three renowned musicians, a local administration release informed on Wednesday.

Its lilts and grooves can feel like nostalgic rhythms from a bygone era, but jazz remains a thriving contemporary art form and its proponents still flock to New York hoping to catch a break.

The critically acclaimed Plissken Festival, hailed for its line-up choices, returns to the Greek capital's Technopolis cultural center with 34 artists covering a wide range of contemporary music styles, from indie to soul-funk, electronica and synthwave pop.

Popular Bristol-based dancefloor DJ duo The Allergies will be on the decks at Gazarte on Saturday, March 23, with their funky mashup of soul, disco, hip-hop and breakbeats. Admission costs 5 euros and doors open at 10 p.m. Tickets can be booked in advance online at www.viva.gr or by calling 11876.

The Russian parliament on Dec. 13 announced a rap song competition amid a crackdown on contemporary music that evoked Soviet-era censorship of the arts.