The summer Music Village - Europe's longest-running festival of world cultures - makes an eagerly anticipated return to London's Hyde Park on 12th & 13th July 2008. Twenty groups of London-based performers are featured in two jam-packed days of music, dance and spoken word from all over the world. The line-up includes African, Latin, Jewish, Asian, Kurdish, East European and Chinese performance styles, to reflect decades of converging migrations into London from every corner of the earth.

The Music Village has developed a devoted and extraordinarily diverse public following over the years for its blend of artistic excellence and topical themes. The line-up will feature around 20 top class performing groups and soloists from around the world. Confirmed artists include: Africa Jambo (Congo); Palenke (Latin); Khantara (Colombia); Harare (Zimbabwe); Klezmer Klub (Jewish); Kathy Hall/London Uyghur Ensemble/Sin Man Yue (China); Jyotsna Srikanth (India); PinknRuby (Slovenia); Jide Chord (Nigeria); Koma Roji Nwe (Kurdish); Panache (Caribbean; Cheb Nacim (Algeria); Osvaldo Chacon (Cuba); Guillermo (Argentina); Gnawa Taroudant (Morocco).

Festival Director, Prakash Daswani, sets the scene for 2008: "All the performers in this year's global line-up are London-based, though the origins of most lie way beyond these shores. Some are emerging superstars - or long-hidden gems - within the city's broad sweep of diaspora communities. Others have already attained mainstream popular acclaim, both within the capital and far further afield. Together they represent the fruits of cross-cultural mingling among host and incoming populations over several decades that has dramatically transformed the character of this historic capital".

The 2008 festival presents an easy and direct way for Londoners of all national origins and faith persuasions - or none - and all backgrounds and ages, to come together and experience this vibrant expression of London's rapid transformation into the 21st century's leading World City: a thriving, cosmopolitan, creative - and, above all, outward-looking - enterprise, of which they themselves are an indispensable part.

This year's festival is set in a gladed natural amphitheatre nestling by the Serpentine in Hyde Park, central London's most popular green space. For further information visit www.culturalco-operation.org