Let ’ s boost cultural tourism
Global interest in our culture, music and dance should be packaged to attract international visitors, writes Nombulelo Guliwe
The pursuit of truly authentic cultural experiences has always been a major drawcard for tourists. This is why many travellers will spare no expense for a bucket-list club experience in Ibiza, to do the tango in the cobblestone-paved plazas of Buenos Aires, catch a block party in Harlem and, increasingly, thanks to the globalisation of contemporary urban South African culture, dance the night away at an amapiano party in Mamelodi or my home Soweto.
While cultural tourism has always been a major contributor to tourism worldwide, it has, for decades, tended to pivot around packaging a destination’s cultural heritage for a curated, neatly displayed and guided experience “presented ” or “sold ” to visitors through museums, galleries and sites of historical significance. This type of tourism continues to be of great importance and is not to be scoffed at.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, reiterated in its 2022 G20 working group discussion paper that cultural tourism continues to be one of the largest and fastest-growing tourism markets, accounting for up to 40% of global tourism.
Increasingly, however, creative tourism is growing in importance and presents a frontier yet to be fully tapped. In its 2006 discussion, the Unesco Creative Cities Network defined creative tourism as “travel directed toward an engaged and authentic experience, with participative learning in the arts, heritage, or special character of a place, and it provides a connection with those who reside in this place and create this living culture”. The definition was agreed to following robust exposition of the concept, including the identification of key features. These were said to include access to culture or history in a manner that involves “doing something experientially, and an authentic engagement in the real cultural life of the city”.
It is this kind of creative tourism that South Africa is well placed to fully harness to bolster the broader tourism sector, economic growth, and job and entrepreneurship opportunity creation. As a country, we’re in this sweet spot thanks to the pulsating creativity of our urban culture and its unprecedented resonance globally.
South Africa’s urban youth culture and expression through creative art forms such as music and dance are having their heyday, and the world is not just watching and listening but is enthusiastically singing and dancing along. While global recognition is not a new phenomenon, it arguably used to be confined to a corner of the global stage carved out for “world music” and touring theatrical productions.
But contemporary South African urban creative culture is rewriting that script, and placing South African music and dance firmly at the centre of the global stage. In fact, the reception of amapiano music, dance and lifestyle around the world is arguably beginning to counter the longlamented one-way globalisation of Western popular culture. Where South Africans were mere recipients, consumers and assimilators of genres such as hip-hop and RnB, today those genres’ leading purveyors are known to either be “yanos ” (amapiano) disciples or looking to collaborate with the South African township-born trailblazers such as Kabza de Small, DJ Maphorisa, Tyler ICU and Tumelo_za, among many others.
From the dance floors of the Netherlands to the UK’s Ama Fest held in August, the signature log-drum, heavy bassline with a sprinkling of jazzy piano and a seasoning of kwaito is showcasing South African urban music and dance to legions of spellbound fans. It’s a cultural export that’s building on the scaffolding laid over the past few years by other South African pop culture icons such as house music DJs like Black Coffee, Zakes Bantwini and DJ Zinhle, and further back by legends such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela, Johnny Clegg and Miriam Makeba.
In turn, the international success of these cultural exports, coupled with our track record of hosting world-class events and critically acclaimed incoming tours by music and comedy superstars, has served to cement the country’s standing as one of the creative and cultural capitals of the world.
I submit that we should be purposeful and deliberate in our plans to curate and tailor-make tourist experiences that respond to the trend of international visitors who are willing to travel in order to experience an immersion in our urban culture. In doing this, we will reinforce the impact that cultural and creative tourism can have on the growth of the tourism sector and the dividends it yields for an economy.
Naturally, our design and curation of urban cultural and creative tourism experiences will be underlaid by our country ’ s renowned warm hospitality, ubuntu and generosity of spirit.
Beyond the thumping of the log drum, the reverberation of the piano and the soulful vocal melodies (which our visitors can and do stream and enjoy in their home countries), it is the 62-million smiles, warm welcomes, kind and generous assistance and guidance, and most importantly the inspirational culture and stories behind the creative music and unique dance trends that our visitors come here to experience and take away with them, to treasure forever.
Guliwe is South African Tourism acting CEO