May is the month of pan-African music festivals. Now a new initiative aims to unite them into one touring circuit — for the benefit of artists and fans. By
T’S getting cold in Joburg. Winter is coming and — because you’re a sensible person who hasn’t wasted your money and energy trekking to the desert to consume copious amounts of drugs and pretend that AfrikaBurn is not a horrible excuse for acting out the worst excesses of white privilege — you’re looking for one last chance to shake your booty and remind yourself that, like Thabo Mbeki, you’re an African. So what can you do? Well, you’re in luck, because May is the merry month of cosmopolitan, pan-African musical celebrations and, depending on your budget, energy levels and location, you have plenty of options.
There’s no excuse for not getting up and getting out, beginning with the seventh Azgo Festival in Maputo on May 20, continuing with the 11th MTN Bushfire Festival in Swaziland, the third Zakifo festival in Durban (both from May 26-28), a Joburg gig by Damian “Junior Gong” Marley at what used to be the Bassline in Newtown on May 26, the 13th Bassline Africa Day concert at Nasrec, Johannesburg, on May 27, and, for diehards with the means, the 14th Sakifo Musik Festival on the island of Réunion.
Thanks to a newly formalised initiative called Igoda — Zulu for “knot” or to “bind together” — several of the artists performing will appear at all five of the festivals, taking advantage of what is envisioned as the first incarnation of a regional touring circuit.
For Joburg, the focus is on the Bassline Africa Day concert. It began in 2004 when the legendary Melville jazz club founded by Brad Holmes moved to Newtown. At the time, recalls Holmes, “the Johannesburg Development Agency was a superdynamic organisation and everybody wanted to work there … and they came to me as the music guy to say, ‘Do an African music concert and make it for Africa Day in commemoration of the founding of the AU.’”
The first edition was headlined by Zimbabwean guitarist Oliver Mtukudzi and Bassline stalwart Vusi Mahlasela. It was a free concert and, as Holmes remembers, “it was full and it was fantastic”.
From there the concert became a platform for performances from some of the continent’s best known stars — from Amadou and Mariam (before their breakout Manu Chao-produced album Dimanche à Bamako) to Ismaël Lô, Femi Kuti and Kanye West’s favourite Nigerian Rapper D’banj. The concert has since moved, from Dries Niemandt Park in Ekurhuleni and now to the amphitheatre at Nasrec, and while it’s no longer free it continues to focus its attention on the diaspora audiences of post-apartheid, panAfrican Johannesburg.
Since inception, the approach on the part of Holmes and his business partner wife Paige has been to “do a legendary African act and then balance it out with younger acts and then a South African legend and a South African youth act in the mix”.
This year will see Thandiswa Mazwai, Ray Phiri and Vusi Mahlasela representing South Africa; while Zimbabwean Jah Prayzah, Congolese-Belgian Baloji, Niger’s Tuareg guitarist Bombino, Ghana’s Jojo Abot and Belgianborn, Cape Town-based indie superstar Petite Noir are among those adding to the pan-African flavour of the event.
Holmes believes that “what differentiates our audience from any other audience that goes to a fairly big concert in South Africa is that Bassline has a long, long reputation of bringing out African music. We’ve done more African music than any other venue or promoter, probably in South African history.”
As to the benefits of Igoda, Holmes believes it’s not just an association looking out for the interests of promoters but one