Kelly Khumalo to headline Jazz Mu Toropo

FRANCISTOWN: South African controversial songstress, Kelly Khumalo will headline the Jazz Mu Toropo Festival, which will be held on December 17, 2022.

The Jazz festival, which will be held at Obed Itani Chilume Stadium, is organised by Bana Bana Bantongwa (BBB).

Addressing members of the fourth estate recently, BBB manager, Diamond Daniel said the mega jazz event will be sponsored by the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture (MYSC) with a whooping P100,000. He said they managed to pay the Asine hit maker and a contract has been signed for the event. “Khumalo has packages and we managed to pay for the second top best package, which includes a live band. With the same package she will also perform her latest hits and some of her old time best songs,” he explained.

The distinguished SA artist’s last performance in Francistown was in 2016 at the Francistown Gold Club.

Daniel indicated that they chose Ngathwala Ngcobo hit maker to headline the show, because they believe she is a crowd puller and matches the mandate of the show.

“We were looking for a woman to headline the show. We believe that we have lots of stars locally and are aware that a Motswana artist can fill up the stadium, but we wanted to give our audience a variety of international and local performances during the festival,” he said.

He shared that their first female artist is Anafiki, Re Babedi hit maker and other performers will be unveiled at the event.

“This show seeks to celebrate women like the founder of BBB Teedzani Ntogwa and that is why we partnered with Emang Basadi,” he added. He stated that a lot of local artists are going to be included in the line-up, adding that they have already started drafting payment contracts as per their agreements with them.

Speaking about the reasons for the jazz festival, he said they realised that there was no jazz in Francistown, but the music genre is only played on Sundays at local bars. He said the jazz played at bars does not cater for everyone as most of the people are not bar lovers.

The jazz festival, which was expected to revive the genre in the city, was the Francistown Jazz Festival, which was supposed to be held in September 2017. The festival was never held due to the passing on of promoter Soares Katumbela of Street Horn Jazz.

As part of build-up activities for the event, he revealed that they have lined up activations prior to the event. Daniel also said security of the patrons will be prioritised as they have partnered with G4S Security, which will be sponsoring the show by deploying 100 security guards.

For her part, the lady of the moment Ntogwa was in tears that her dream of hosting a mega event was being realised.

The Dzo Dusa singer, who was in tears of joy, expressed gratitude to MYSC for supporting her vision through the sponsorship. Ntogwa also thanked all of the sponsors and the community at large for their continued support.