Cape Town World Music Festival a great success

The proceeds made from the two day festival went to charity as part of Mandela Day.

The lineup consisted of local and international musicians representing a wide variety of experimental, electronic and alternative music. The audience left inspired, and artists with new fans. With three stages set up within the City Hall, the crowd could choose between the main stage which hosted the headlining acts, the electronic stage which became a home for the dance floor enthusiasts and a third stage which hosted the more gentle and slow tunes which the crowd listened to while seated.

The event hosted over 20 bands, both local and international, with Thandiswa Mazwai closing off the festival with one of her most spectacular performances to date. Okmalumkoolkat delivered the most stand-out performance of Friday night, and most certainly shone as a small fish in a big pond. Many only first heard of him on Dirty Parraffin’s 2009 Greatest Hits vol. 1 album and most recently from setting the Johannesburg music scene ablaze.

This vocal artist, designer and dancer delivered a hard kwaito and hip-hop sound and the crowd responded well to his set. It was surprising to have his unique sound so successfully taken in by the crowd after he followed the likes of Los Tacos (a 10-piece Spanish band), Vieux Farka Toure aka the Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara (guitarist from Malawi), Carol Mombelli and Bongeziwe Mabandla.

The festival accommodated many types of music lovers, from the serious to the curious and the fun-loving, and that undoubtedly contributed to Okmalumkoolkat’s great performance and the reaction he got from the audience.

When Saturday came, there were more people in attendance and spirits were high as this was the day that the biggest names would be performing, including the much anticipated Thandiswa Mazwai, DJ Clock and Beatenberg. Right before Beatenberg sent the crowd into a dance and lyrical frenzy, they discussed their musical success so far with GroundUp.

The band which describes themselves as “Three handsome, young and intelligent” men is comprised of vocalist and guitarist Matthew Field, drummer Robin Brink and bass guitarist Ross Dorkin.

Field describes the band’s sound: “It’s about emotions, images and fleeting senses of things: the mad stuff that everyone feels and almost understands.”

The band often described as, “If Johnny Clegg had three sons and they started a band, that would be it,” doesn’t attribute the start of their career to the success of their first single ‘Chelsea Blakemore’.

“I think that there’s something very sincere about our music,” says Dorkin, “There’s something new and fresh about our sound and it’s offering something very different to what’s out there at the moment. So that’s probably why people are responding well to it. Our music has a genuine emotion and feeling to it,” he adds.

With the success of ‘Pluto’, their chart-topping collaboration with DJ Clock, it would come as no surprise to see the band featured with bigger artists.

“I think that people first caught on to ‘Chelsea Blakemore’ and thought that it’s something fresh, but our song with Clock is what really got people to listen to our music,” said Field. “We’ve been fans of DJ Clock for a really long time,” adds Brink, “Now that our name is out there through our collaboration, it’s opened doors for us,” he explains.

Fans of DJ Clock dance to his music. Photo by Zethu Gqola.

Besides the charity aspect of the festival the band agrees that it’s the diversity of artists and music in the line-up that encouraged them to take part.

“This isn’t a line-up of artists in training and we’ve been fans of some of the performers for years now, so performing at the same event as them is great,” says Field.

“With this festival, the line-up is so good and these are the kinds of people that everyone wants to see perform or be associated with. It’s perfect for us,” adds Brink.

“Hopefully everyone enjoys our new material, and tonight we’ll be playing a lot of our new music and unfamiliar tracks that people, especially here in Cape Town, haven’t heard yet. It’s nerve wracking but we’re hoping for the best,” says Dorkin.

And indeed their music was well received by the audience with the standing area of the main stage packed to capacity. Beatenberg ended off their performance with ‘Pluto’ which had every single person in the audience dancing and cheering, asking for more.

For the young and musically ambitious, free workshops with some of the headlining acts were hosted on Saturday afternoon, where advice was given on how to break into the music industry and the personal skills one needs to have in order to launch a music career.

Youngsters were also advised on the route to take once they enter the music industry so as to keep themselves fresh and relevant.

Thandiswa Mazwai also held her own workshop on how women are the future (of music) and how women can get themselves into in an industry where certain genres seem to be ‘reserved for men’.

As part of the fundraising for charity, the festival goers could buy lanterns designed by Heath Nash for R10 each, and some of these were part of the light installation for the event.

This was inspired by the festival’s theme. When speaking to Candice Kennedy, the PR spokesperson for the event, she said, “Audiences have experienced music around bonfires, held candles, matches, glow sticks, lighters, mobile phones and, begrudgingly, tablets in front of brightly lit stages. As light evolved so has music – from the analogue to the digital. This festival will hopefully look into the diversity of global music and the evolution of traditional sound via technology. In keeping with our theme of light we decided to include lanterns and light installations by local creatives.”

For every ticket purchased the festival was able to give a member of the Ubuntu Academy a free ticket to the festival and for every lantern sold the proceeds went towards the development of the academy. Ubuntu Academy is a Cape Town-based school for arts, entrepreneurship and leadership. They have created a place of inspiration for young, talented people who want to make a difference in their own lives and in those of others. For more information visit ubuntuacademy.co.za.