Jazz festival giv
Large-scale, tourist-attracting festivals and celebrations, such as Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the French Quarter Festival and Bayou Boogaloo call New Orleans home. A continent away, Soweto has given us platforms of cultural exchange such as the Soweto Wine, Food & Culture Lifestyle Festival and the Soweto Heritage Festival. To add to the idea, the annual Soweto International Jazz Festival will be inaugurated this weekend.
The festival is the brainchild of International Art Solutions, a New York and New Orleans-based market consulting agency that specialises in concerts, tours and festivals.
According to the agency’s managing partner, Ernest Kelly, the founders’ relationship with South Africa dates back more than 20 years.
He explains that International Art Solutions was behind the 2014 World Jam Music Festival, which was to have taken place in Durban but fell through for reasons that Kelly attributes to the eThekwini municipality.
In addition to this, the agency manages Africa Umoja’s American tours and other South African initiatives to dispel any ideas that the festival is a parachute initiative by an American organisation.
“We did the One World Music festival in Durban from 2005 to 2009. We’ve also been involved in bringing international artists here during that period. And we have local partners and local relationships that we have developed over the many years. We couldn’t fly in, walk in here for two weeks and fly out to do a festival. This is not a part-time process; it’s the output of a year’s work,” explains Kelly.
In 2014, Kelly’s company brought the World Jam Music Festival to