Conakry, September 8, 2015

 

Vivendi organizes major music event in Conakry on September 26
Ebola: All Together towards victory



Vivendi, the international media and content group, is staging a major music festival on Saturday, September 26 at the Esplanade du Palais du Peuple in Conakry, Guinea, to raise awareness about action to combat the Ebola virus. Details of the event were presented today during a press conference in Conakry.

Ebola: All Together towards victory will bring together Guinean and international artists, including Wizkid, Kiff No Beat, BanlieuZ’art, Azaya, Soul Bang’s, Sia Tolno, Abram Sonty, Djanii Alfa, Instinct Killer and a surprise guest. This major concert will be free and about 25,000 people are expected to join to celebrate the success of the vaccination campaign against the Ebola virus.

This concert is the first of a series of initiatives launched in Guinea by Vivendi, which comprises businesses including Canal+, Universal Music and Dailymotion. Vivendi intends to promote talent from Guinea, and more widely in Africa, and to support their international development.

 

A new concert hall to celebrate talent in Conakry

With these objectives in mind, Vivendi will lay the foundation stone of a new, large concert hall devoted to music, shows and screenings on September 26, coinciding with the opening of the music festival. Sited in the heart of the Bolloré group’s Blue Zone in Kaloum, this new venue designed to celebrate African artistic talent will be named CanalOlympia.

  • Canal+ stands for quality entertainment, impertinence and creativity, and is a well-known brand in Guinea. As a distribution platform for African culture, it recently launched A+, a television channel for and by Africans.
  • L’Olympia is the iconic Parisian concert hall which has hosted performances by the world’s most prestigious artists including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Dalida, Eddy Mitchell, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Edith Piaf and Gilbert Bécaud. The famous venue also stages other shows, notably for popular comedians.

 

A new label: Island Africa/Universal Africa

Based on the iconic Island label, Island Africa, located in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, will be committed to discovering local talent and supporting them in their career development.

Island Africa is developing a large pan-African network of infrastructure and technical facilities to promote African music on the continent and worldwide.

Conakry is a first step, with the creation of Guinea’s first recording studio.

 

All of Vivendi‘s companies actively involved in this project

Vivendi wants to pay tribute to remarkable efforts from the Guinean government and the World Health Organization in their continuous fight against the Ebola outbreak. The organization of the event Ebola: All Together towards victory reflects Vivendi’s intention to celebrate the success of the vaccination campaign against the virus and major progress made in recent months in this field.

With the support of its Guinean partners, all the companies that form part of the Vivendi group have joined forces to make this concert a major popular festival and give it the outreach it deserves.

  • A+, the channel for and by Africans, the leading French-speaking African channel launched by Canal+ in 2014 on the Canalsat package, currently broadcasting the first Guinean television series, Alima ou le rêve brisé (Alima or the broken dream).
  • Dailymotion, one of the biggest aggregation and distribution platforms in the world, will be opening a channel this week specially dedicated to the event.
  • In France, the Canal+ Group television channels D8 and D17 will emulate this event.
  • In 2014, Universal Music joined forces with several artists to produce a double CD “Stop Ebola” whose profits were returned to the “Doctors Without Borders” association. Universal Music artists will again mobilize and be present on stage on September 26!

In addition to this important media coverage which will give the event international exposure, the Guinean channels RTG and Evasion will broadcast the concert, giving a chance for everyone in Guinea to enjoy the artists’ performance.

 

Artist mobilization

Organized by Vivendi and produced by Tidiane World Music, Ebola: All Together towards victory will bring together numerous Guinean artists as well as African and international stars on September 26.

  • Starting at 2pm, different shows will be organized on the Esplanade du Palais du Peuple to welcome the audience arriving. DJs will entertain fans and several groups, including four from Guinea, will perform.
  • At 5pm, Guinean artists will embrace the stage: Azaya, Soul Bang’s, Sia Tolno, Abram Sonty, Djanii Alfa, Instinct Killer and BanlieuZ’art.
  • Starting at 7.30pm, the Ivorian rap group Kiff No Beat and the young Nigerian music prodigy Wizkid will be among the artists performing.

 

The Vivendi group: priority given to talent and to living together

Vivendi, an integrated media and content industrial group, has significantly strengthened its presence in Africa, a continent where its subsidiary Canal+ Group has long been implemented in some twenty Western and Southern African countries. After launching the leading African channel A+ in October 2014, broadcast through the Canalsat bouquet, Canal+ launched four additional sports channels in July and added 25 new channels to the “Les Bouquets Canal+”.

Universal Music Group, the world leader in music, always attentive to the emergence of new talent in Africa, opened an office in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, a way to reaffirm its willingness to be the first international major to hold a first-rank place on the African continent.

For slightly over a year now, Vivendi decided to significantly strengthen its involvement in talent, firmly believing that it should be at the heart of a media and content group. Its VivendiTalents program (www.VivendiTalents.com) aims at discovering and supporting the development of talent in the fields of music, humor and audiovisual. The new CanalOlympia hall to be opened shortly in Conakry will invite and promote all talent; this first initiative in Guinea will be followed by the opening of similar such locations in other sub-Saharan African countries.

Vivendi has always been convinced that the intercultural dialogue plays a vital role for a leading media group. This is the reason why it launched the website www.CulturesWithVivendi.com in 2012, which offers regularly the opportunity to African artists to be featured and get international visibility.

For Vivendi, Living Together is a major corporate value which has been headlined on its website www.Vivendi.com and which is perfectly exemplified by the Ebola: All Together towards victory event.

 

Vivendi operates businesses throughout the media value chain, from talent discovery to the creation, production and distribution of content.

  • Canal+ Group is the leading pay-TV operator in France, and also serves markets in Africa, Poland and Vietnam. Canal+ operations include Studiocanal, a leading European player in production, sales and distribution of film and TV series.
  • Universal Music Group is the world leader in recorded music, music publishing and merchandising, with more than 50 labels covering all genres.
  • Vivendi Village brings together Vivendi Ticketing (ticketing in the UK, France and the U.S.), MyBestPro (experts counseling), Watchever (subscription video-on-demand) and the Paris-based concert venue L’Olympia.
  • With 3 billion videos viewed each month, Dailymotion is one of the biggest aggregation and distribution platforms in the world.