The Pan African Space Station (PASS) is a 30-day music intervention from September 12 - October 12, on radio and the internet, as well as venues across greater Cape Town.

It is an opportunity for Capetonians and visitors to engage up-close with the rich and complex web of creative expression which binds Africans across the globe.

PASS is also an exploration of and an intervention into spatial and cultural ghettos in the city and how to link them physically (through the music venues) and conceptually (on radio and the internet).

Now in its second year, PASS continues its cross-cultural and cyber-spatial exploration, bringing together diverse pan-African sounds from ancient grooves to future hip-hop.

PASS radio, a unique freeform radio station, is back with 30 days of cutting edge music streamed live online. The station features themed shows, live performances and readings, debates, sound art, speeches, interviews and much more.

In the build-up to the festival, throughout September, the daily radio programme includes a free, live performance at PASS studios on Long Street. These live sessions run between 7-9pm and are curated by guest musicians, DJs and artists, including world-renowned, Montreal based groove archaeologist DJ Andy Williams.

Other highlights on this year's broadcast programme include Songs for Biko, a 24-hour praise party for Steve Biko on 12 Sept (Biko Day) and Songs for Bheki, a musical tribute to the late philosopher and musician Bheki Mseleku, which closes the live music component on October 4.

From October 1 - 4 2009, PASS II plays host to genre-busting music outfits from global Africa dedicated to exploring new musical territory. The line-up features Kora maestro Toumani Diabate; Queen of Ndebele music, guitarist Nothembi Mkhwebane; 9-piece, Chicago-based jazz troubadours Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; Cameroonian funk-master Franck Biyong and his Massak Afroletric Orchestra; Zanzibar's legendary taarab orchestra and social club, the Culture Musical Club; Ras_G & the Afrikan from his El-Ay, Western Sahara space base; and Ghanaian Pidgin rapper Wanlov the Kubulor.

PASS II also features a series of new collaborations between South African musicians: Barry van Zyl's southern African sound-rhythm stew, Baboti are joined by jazz vocalist and trombone player Siya Makuzeni; and politically engaged, slamming jazz upstarts uDaba perform with spoken-word author Kgafela oa Magogodi.

Some of the continent's most esteemed selectors, including Dar es Salaam's DJ Yusuf Mahmoud and Cape Town's own Fong Kong Bantu Soundsystem are also making appearances.

In addition, the festival includes a collaborative, experimental chorale work based on the novella War Chorale by pioneering Chilean writer Fernando Alegria, with composition and direction by jazz guitarist Bheki Khoza.

The live music component PASS takes place in a series of different venues across greater Cape Town, engaging diverse together audiences and provoking new forms of creative expression and social mobilization that foregrounding history and memory as well as agency and difference. Audiences will travel from St Georges Cathedral, the Centre for the Book and the Slave Church in the city centre to Guga S'thebe in Langa and All Nations Club in Salt River.

PASS is a creation of the Heliocentrics in partnership with the

with the kind support of :

Website: François Naudé & Stacy Hardy

The Heliocentrics are Ntone Edjabe and Neo Muyanga. They work with sound, space, situation, word and image.

TheAfrica Centre is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African arts and cultural practices. In addition to the Pan African Space Station, the Africa Centre conducts three annual festivals in Cape Town: Spier Contemporary (art), Infecting the City (performance art), Badilisha Poetry X-change (poetry) as well as an artist-in-residency programme based in Senegal, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa - SPARCK - Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge.