Amsterdam Roots Music Festival

Where Em Amsterdam ?

Main venues for the Amsterdam Roots International Music Festival are Paradiso, Oosterpark, Concertgebouw, Tropentheater & Melkweg.

Why It’s a culture thing featuring excellent acts from all over the world. This year is the Amsterdam Music Festivals 10 consecutive year birthday and a crowd of 70,000 is expected.

The African Roots Festival of 1983 was it’s inception. In 1987 the Melkweg organised the festival as Amsterdam was crowned capital of culture. The success of this music festival owes much to the receptive Dutch people as well as the amount of foreign nationals in Amsterdam at that time.

For most Europeans this music was a fresh new sound. The Roots music festival took unknown African superstars to the European stage and in doing so coined the term “world music”.

Where to stay I stayed at the Cosmos Hostel, it has an excellent location and the staff are awesome. The bathrooms were small but the craic was great. Like any European city there is a great amount of excellent well priced hotels available in Amsterdam. Check out this Top 10 list of Amsterdam hotels

The rhythms are featured by Acoustic Africa, Balkan Beats Fuego Latino, and Tango Nuevo. There is also a large Brasilian influence at this years Roots Music Festival.

Previous performers at the Amsterdam Roots Music Festival include The Gipsy Kings, Ska Cubano & Babylon Circus.

What to wear It’s summertime so expect it to be sticky and humid. T-shirt and jeans or shorts. Shoes/ runners so you can dance are essential for Amsterdam Roots Music Festival.

Where to drink / smoke Well Amsterdam’s bars, nightclubs and cafes need no introduction. Perhaps that is the reason why it is difficult to recommend any specific one ! They are all over the centre of the city – happy hunting.



A friend of mine Lars owns a bikers bar called Suzies Saloon in the red light district. We had great fun over there I know him because Suzies Saloon sponsor a 7 aside rugby teams and I played with his team in Amsterdam 7’s.

Where to Eat There will be a range of stalls at the world market, a part of the Amsterdam Roots Music Festival.

DONT MISS THIS The Afro-salsa super group Africando, funky Cameroon soulsters Manu Dibango & Besh o droM will mix their gypsy roots at a free open-air concert in Oosterpark on Sunday 17 June. All 3 acts are veterans to the Roots music festival. There will be up to 50,000 people there and 6 podiums.

Dangers & Annoyances There are little or no dangers. Some people bust a bad move but Roots Music Festival is a mellow gathering.

However in Amsterdam beware of pickpockets around ATM’s and on the Direct rail link from Schiphol airport to central station and back.

The Gay scene Amsterdam is one of the only cities in the world with every scene in it. There are plenty of gay bars in Amsterdam and are not hard to find.

Airports Direct Rail Link connects Schiphol International Airport to the city center station. These run every 10 minutes for €3.60. Don’t try to get on without a ticket. Some of us had to learn the hard way (€35 fine) Taxi to city center should come to about €40

Internet is easy to come by in city center

Bank/ATM These are called geldautomaat's or chipknip's in Amsterdam. They are easy to come by.

Make sure you take enough money to see you past Sunday night as the machines on Dam Square often run out of money over weekends.

Weather Typically hot and sunny so sunscreen and shorts.

Official Website www.amsterdamroots.nl

Dub & Jamaican Music Culture For more info on these original sounds try

Dub-Culture.com

Festival Pig Fact Amsterdam has 8 windmills.

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