The biggest showcase of emerging talent from the North East is back! Evolution Emerging have revealed their full 2017 line-up coming to the Ouseburn Valley on the 27th May. Late last week the headliners were announced including Lulu James, Coquin Migale and Eat Fast. Tickets for the event start at £10.00 with the event spanning 12 hours from 2pm til 2am.
Bob Allan from Generator, the company behind Evolution Emerging says: “We’re really proud of this year’s line-up and feel it’s definitely our best yet. Not only do we have Evolution Emerging acts from previous years returning as our established headliners but there’s a torrent of new talent coming through too.
“I’m really excited to see new acts like Blesh, Keiandra, The Old Pink House, Sagaboi and Llovers and with a few new venues and a couple of surprises up our sleeves, festival goers should snap up their tickets soon to avoid disappointment. This is the ideal opportunity for people in the North East to discover their new favourite artist and to support future success stories from the region.
“Evolution Emerging is a great importance to the local music scene as it’s a major platform to showcase the talent of our local acts and give them a stage to attract a wider fan base.” Says Emily Fox, the Head of Local Music at Sunderland community radio station Spark.
“Being on the panel was a great insight into how many amazing local acts we have but also how widespread the festival is having seen acts apply from across the country.”
Among the acts performing at this years festival, we have Zico MC. Zico has performed on stages up and down the country with some of Grime’s biggest names.
He says he is: “really pleased to get on there looking forward to playing alongside such a diverse amount of talent from the North East. It’ll be great to get a chance to meet other artist and make a few new fans so I best bring some fire.”
Leddie MC, who has recently enjoyed airplay on Radio 1, will be performing at the Tanners Arms and on Evolution Emerging she says “Its a great opportunity to reach a new crowd, meet industry professionals and hopefully use it as a springboard onto bigger and better things, so I’m looking forward to it, I’m excited to see what the day brings and enjoy watching other acts too.”
Jister, an artist Leddie is very close with, has also been revealed as part of the line-up. An MC who has enjoyed cosign from Scroobius Pip and actually performed on an Evolution stage before.
“I played the UMT Emerging stage at Evolution Festival 5 years ago and while it was an amazing experience it wasn’t really the right audience for what I do. Too many kids running around meant I was always slyly jealous of people playing the actual Emerging events in Ouseburn because they were playing their music to actual adults and musical types. The vibe is perfect for me so to be invited to play this year is amazing especially considering over 800 acts applied and only a select few are chosen, and it’s also really good to see a few Teesside hip hop acts being chosen to represent the North East as we often get overlooked by our Geordie counterparts.”
Last year, Kay Greyson was one of the highlights of the festival and has achieved a lot of success since. Following her 2016 Evolution Emerging performance Kay has gone on to support Hip-Hop legends like Pharoahe Monch, KRS One and Akala.
Originally, Kay “didn’t think hip hop acts were a thing at Evolution Emerging.” She continues to say that with her “brand of hip hop being beside the norm anyway, I definitely didn’t think it would act as a spring board for my career the way it did. I think the growing inclusion of hip hop at Evo has shone a positive light on rap in the North East and I appreciate all they done for me and will do for young hip hop artists in the future.”
Jay Simian, frontman for Jay Simian & The Midnight Society, has also weighed in on his experience at the 2016 Evolution Emerging festival, “To perform at Evolution was truly the best starting block to have if you want to expand with your music career for a new act, and we would recommend it to anyone wanting to get their music heard.”