Moonchild Sanelly

As Paléo’s opening day unfolded and crowds explored the festival’s many sounds, those hungry for energy and collective celebration tumbled into the Club Tent to find South African artist Moonchild Sanelly. After releasing her third album Full Moon at the beginning of this year, Sanelly has become synonymous with her self-confidence and sex-positive lyrics, as well as the sound she calls “future ghetto funk”. Her performance blurred the lines between rave and dance therapy, with amapiano-tinged beats and unfiltered lyricism, she lit up the stage with tracks like Tequila, Sweet and Savage and Falling – the latter a moving anthem about survival and self-preservation drawn from her own life experience. At one point, she invited fans on stage for an impromptu booty-shaking contest. Bold, hilarious and fiercely dynamic, Sanelly was a radiant force whose presence reverberated long after the set ended.

Asmâa Hamzaoui and Bnat Timbouktou

As the first female Gnawa musician in Morocco, Asmâa Hamzaoui’s presence is groundbreaking in itself. Opening the Dôme tent on Tuesday, part of the Maghreb-focused Scène des dunes area, her commanding performance set a spiritual and sonic benchmark for the artists who followed. Playing the guembri – a three-string bass lute central to Gnawa music – Hamzaoui led her all-female group Bnat Timbouktou through a hypnotic, spiritually charged set. The performance felt like a ritual: deep, meditative grooves paired with piercing vocals and mesmerising polyrhythms. It was both beautiful and profound, an invitation into a centuries-old tradition reimagined with purpose and power.

Toccororo

Praised for bringing diasporic sounds into forward-thinking dancefloors, Toccororo’s set at the Belleville stage, the festival’s dedicated electronic space, was a non-stop thrill. A masterclass in high-energy club culture, the Cuban-Spanish DJ moved effortlessly between guaracha, raptor house, tribal and hardstyle sounds, constructing a set that was as technically impressive as it was infectious; a breathless surge of high BPM sounds that pushed bodies into motion and never let up.

Crème Solaire 

Life-affirming, anarchic and totally unclassifiable, Crème Solaire’s performance was a revelation. The duo, composed of Rebecca Solari, a surrealist poet, and Pascal Stoll, a sonic wizard behind massive beats and dreamy soundscapes, delivered a set that was part rave, part theatre and full of heart. Singing in Italian, French, German and Romansh, their performance embodied a multi-lingual, multi-genre spirit that felt deeply connected to the cultural patchwork of the festival’s home in Switzerland and its neighbours. Their refusal to adhere to genre boundaries, or language ones, made for a thrillingly unpredictable show, one that reflected a generation unbothered by categorisation and fueled by pure expression.

Chien Bleu

For many in the crowd on Thursday, seeing Geneva native Chien Bleu live at Paléo was something of a homecoming. The Club Tent overflowed as fans flocked to witness the local rapper, whose debut album dropped last December. His track Saisons proved a clear favourite, its brooding melodies and introspective lyrics resonating deeply with a young Swiss audience. His set was intense, moody and magnetic, a defining moment not just for him, but for Swiss rap’s growing presence on the European stage.