Violence has no place in showbiz
for violence and crowd disturbances that happen in the middle of the city and threaten all businesses near the venue? In all honesty, the City Hall Car Park is the best outside venue in Bulawayo central business district (CBD). The venue is central and accessible to all — mobile and non-mobile music fans. And before it became the venue of choice for many music promoters the City Hall Car Park has always been the home of Intwasa Arts Festival’s music shows — a concept borrowed from other cities around the world of turning public spaces into performance venues. This has worked well for the festival with no violence or crowd disturbances being witnessed for the past 12 or so years that the festival has hosted events there. One shudders to think what would happen if city fathers were to wake up tomorrow saying NO to any public performances at the City Hall Car Park. Bulawayo artistes and promoters need to protect this space as a performance space and that protection starts with all denouncing the violence that took place at the Busy Signal show.
While a lot of things might not have gone according to expectation or plan; gates opening at 10pm instead of much earlier because, according to sources close to the organisers, there were no wristbands, non-availability of advertised artistes — Tocky Vibes never came on stage after being called for more than 30 minutes, poor sound — as most, if not all, local artistes had not done sound check prior to the show, and lastly, headliners being programmed too late into the night. These and other factors contributed to the violence and crowd disturbances that night. However, Bulawayo people must know that the biggest loser in all this was Bulawayo. First, the people that paid to see Busy Signal and Busiswa never got to see these two artistes on stage. Secondly, the damaged property and looted goods belonged to Bulawayo people and businesses. Thirdly, Bulawayo was left with a soiled reputation of being violent. At the moment the city cannot afford to be labelled violent as this is bad for business. Any business. Violence has no place in show business. It chases away investors, big artists and even paying audiences. What needs to happen now is Bulawayo artists, promoters, and law enforcers coming together and denouncing, in very strong terms, the violence that took place during the ill-fated Busy Signal show.
On a more positive note, Arts Focus would like to congratulate Delta Beverages, particularly their Chibuku Brand for once again bringing the National Finals of the Chibuku Neshamwari Traditional Dance Festival to Bulawayo. Thank you Bulawayo for proving you are capable of hosting national events. And hearty congratulations to Ezimnyama Dance Ensemble for scooping the first prize of $7 000. Sithi Halala!