June 13, 2023

Inaugural Eden Festival Line-up Announced ft. Ms Lauryn Hill

Eden Festival – New Zealand’s first music festival to blend the hypnotic rhythms of Afrobeats, Amapiano, Reggae and R&B will be held in Auckland on Saturday October 7 headlined by global Hip-Hop and R&B sensation Ms Lauryn Hill and supported by a range of leading acts including NZ superstars SIX60, who will be playing their iconic album “GOLD” in full, the first time the band has ever done so at a music festival.

The culturally-diverse lineup, which will be staged at Mount Smart Stadium, was released at 8am today which features other global stars such as Davido, Giveon and many more. Pre-sale tickets are available from 7pm on Wednesday June 21 via Ticketmaster with general tickets on sale from 7pm on Thursday June 22. The full line-up is detailed in the attached poster and includes:

Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill — Photo by Veronica McLaughlin

Ms Lauryn Hill

Eden Festival will be headlined by Hip-Hop & R&B royalty Lauryn Hill who celebrates the 25th anniversary of her seminal solo debut album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”. This work was era-defining, successfully integrating Rap, Soul and Reggae into a singular sound – something that hadn’t been done before. Eclectic, uplifting and empowering, the album is often cited by younger artists as the industry benchmark. This marks Ms Hill’s first tour of New Zealand in over 4 years.

Six60

Six60 are considered one of New Zealand’s leading rock bands after building a huge fan base since establishing in 2008. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2011 on their own label Massive Entertainment and debuted at number one in the NZ charts, going gold within a week. Their first two singles “Rise Up 2.0” and “Don’t Forget Your Roots” reached number one and two respectively on the singles chart and both went double and triple platinum.

In 2018 the band won five New Zealand Music Awards and were the most streamed artist by NZ fans on Spotify. In February 2019, Six60 became the first local band to play a sold-out concert at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland to a crowd of 50,000. They repeated this success two years later at Auckland’s Eden Park Stadium.

Davido

The event will represent global Afrobeats star Davido’s debut in NZ. Davido blends traditional African elements with global mainstream pop and R&B that’s equal parts unique and infectious.

His rise over the last five years has been impossible to ignore, boasting over 10 million monthly listeners across streaming platforms and having collaborated with heavyweights like Nicki Minaj and Chris Brown. This Nigerian icon has a huge fan-base in NZ and the team at Eden Festival can’t wait to host him.

Giveon

US star Giveon, who will also make his debut at Eden Festival, rose to prominence with his collaboration with Drake on their 2020 single “Chicago Freestyle”. That same year, Giveon released the EPs “Take Time’” and “When It’s All Said and Done”, the former being nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, and the latter reaching the Top 10 on the US Top R&B Albums chart.

The rest of the lineup doesn’t slow down with Reggae and Afrobeats/Amapiano artists including Koffee, Katchafire, Sammy J, DJ Sir-Vere and many more. No such festival representing the distinct sub-cultures of Eden Festival have been held in NZ before.

Festival directors Emal Naim and Bernard Kumar, of FestCo Events, said the concept of Eden Festival had been under development for some years. “We have been working on the concept of a specialist festival to cater to Afrobeats, Amapiano, Reggae and R&B for some time and are pleased to finally bring this opportunity to New Zealand fans,” they said. “We are now keen to establish Eden Festival as a regular event on the New Zealand music calendar.”