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Many of you have read in the Guardian and elsewhere about the terrible situation concerning artist visas for the UK - particularly for African musicians. All of it is true and then some.

KING AYISOBA and his band applied for expensive, fast track UK artist visas at the British embassy in Copenhagen on July 17th. 28 days later the band is still waiting. Because the embassy is holding their passports, they have had to cancel several shows in Poland and the Netherlands already. Today is the first date of their UK tour, and the band remains stuck in Copenhagen - held hostage - unable to travel, continuing to cancel shows and continuing to suffer financial losses.

The situation is outrageous and and inexcusable, especially for a band who has previously had UK artist visas several times - without incident.

The band's management has issued this statement:

Famous Ghanaian artist King Ayisoba already stuck in Denmark for one month due to UK border policies.

A good four weeks ago Ghanaian musician King Ayisoba and his band members applied for a UK artist visa at the UK embassy in Copenhagen. They had all paperwork in order since they had done this at least five times before in Ghana and they took the priority option to make sure they would not lose any show. They were supposed to get back their passports within two weeks but the band is stuck in Denmark already more than double that time and lost at least five big festivals in several european countries since the UK embassy is holding their passports and the band can't move.

Private company TLS does not give any information, the embassy is not providing any information and King Ayisoba was supposed to start his UK tour on August 14.

He is not the only African artist suffering from these UK border policies, where understaffing and incompetence might be the reason of the huge delays. Many artists have suffered from huge loss of money since flights were already bought and other investments were done.

If this continues we can expect many big UK festivals in 2019 to have a separate stage for all the bands and artists who did NOT get their visa.

To be continued.

Photo by Žiga Koritnik