WATER AND SOUND

23.7.- 1.8.2026 in Augsburg | Festival for global music | art | performance | panels | water

“A powerful rush of water and music that opens Augsburg to the world.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Waterways connect, lead through cities and landscapes, across seas and continents, through trade relations, memories and power relations. Canals, rivers and sea routes are not neutral lines on the map. They have given rise to cities, enabled industries, supported empires and set people, goods, languages and music in motion. At the same time, they tell of violence and exploitation, of migration and resistance and of the question of how much this history still shapes our present.

The Water & Sound Festival 2026 is dedicated to these waterways under the leitmotif “Waterways – Canals, Sea Routes, Empire”. The theme will have a special resonance in the UNESCO World Heritage City of Augsburg. The historic water management system with its canals, fountains, waterworks and power stations is itself a dense network of technology, urban development, craftsmanship and nature. From here, the festival focuses on larger contexts: from the Lech to the sea routes of colonial trade, from Augsburg’s canals to global infrastructures, from water as the basis of life to water as a medium of power, movement and memory.

The focus is on waterways as routes of trade, power and empire building. Straightened rivers, canals, ports and straits made transportation, control and expansion possible. Tea, sugar, cotton, coffee, cocoa and rubber became global commodities across the oceans, spreading botanical knowledge, new consumer habits, colonial labor regimes and lasting dependencies. Many of these connections continue to the present day: in supply chains, migration histories, ecological crises, cultural identities and digital networks.

Above all, however, Water & Sound makes these histories tangible through music. The festival presents artists from the current global music scene who do not preserve traditions as museums, but continue them in today’s sounds: with voices, rhythms, languages and timbres that combine local musical roots with improvisation, electronics, pop, jazz, rock, songwriting and experimental forms. In this way, waterways are not only narrated historically, but can be heard as musical movements here and now: as paths of migration, memory, exchange and renewal.

One of the special moments of the program is “Waterways Re:Imagined” at the Parktheater: an evening with Sathnam Sanghera, Laura Misch, Ganavya and the Water & Sound Ensemble that combines conversation, song, improvisation, field recordings and chamber music colors. Sathnam Sanghera opens our eyes to the aftermath of the British Empire; Laura Misch forms atmospheric songs from saxophone, voice, electronics and recordings of rivers and canals; Ganavya’s voice combines South Indian classical music, improvisation and spiritual presence to create a haunting musical language.

At Kuhsee and Annahof, the festival becomes an open meeting place for music, encounters and urban society. Daraa Tribes transform the musical traditions of the Draa Valley into a driving desert groove, Lala Tamar brings North African-Jewish memory, poetry and danceability into a contemporary form. At Annahof, Meral Polat and her quartet open up an intense sound space between Anatolian folk music, Kurdish poetry, blues and improvisational freedom; Mari Froes stands for the young, global lightness of a new Música Popular Brasileira; The Cavemen. celebrate highlife as a warm, elegant and danceable sound of the present; MELINA combines oud, voice and rebetiko traces with neo-traditional pop; and BCUC bring their ecstatic live energy from Soweto to Augsburg.

The installation “The Tea Chariot” in the former Dominican church of St. Magdalena adds a walk-in art and sound space to the festival. At the center is a living tea plant in a contemporary Wardian Case, surrounded by sound, cartography, light and space. The “Liquid Histories” panels delve deeper into the historical and political lines of the festival and range from the Danube as an imperial waterway to colonial water landscapes and Augsburg’s own fountains, canals and waterworks. With guided tours of the World Heritage Site and the water bird parade, the festival takes these perspectives further into the urban space.

Water & Sound 2026 invites you to experience waterways as sounding lines: as connections between cities and seas, local histories and global interdependencies, past and present.

Girisha Fernando. Artistic Director