It is billed as ”Africa’s grandest gathering”, and with all those corporate logos shouting at the audience the Cape Town International Jazz Festival would also qualify as ”Africa’s brandest gathering”.
The jazz festival’s own brand has migrated — at last — from its North Sea origins to the Mom City, bringing it into line with other world-famous festivals that take their names from the cities that play host to them. So now it’s the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which takes place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. In Cape Town.
The Easter weekend is one when the passion for culture attracts thousands of South Africans to the Western Cape, but not quite making it the home for all. For thousands of white folk make the southward trek to Oudtshoorn for the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, while thousands of black people semi-grate to Cape Town, and are granted temporary asylum in the liberated zone of jazz. Culture attracts. And culture divides.
How does culture unite? This was one of the themes at a symposium on racism hosted by the Cape Town Festival and the premier of the Western Cape two days before the jazz festival. Directly after the symposium, and in alliance with the Cape Town Partnership, the jazz festival showed in practice what the symposium was grappling with in theory. A free concert in Greenmarket Square, featuring some of the festival’s artists, attracted hundreds of people from all walks of life.
The Cape Town Festival was launched with the vision to build ”One City, Many Cultures”. This theme has been dropped from the festival’s name (and from its focus?), perhaps because of its current pretensions towards being the ”official gateway to African arts and culture” — whatever that means.
The Cape Town Festival and the North Sea Jazz Festival were launched about six years ago. But while both have undergone branding changes, the Cape Town Festival has remained a relatively amateur affair, while the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has gone from strength to strength and, through experience and sensitivity to its audiences, has become a shining example of organisational professionalism, media excellence and technical sophistication. From its inception, the jazz festival set the bar for street-pole advertising with its striking images of the participating artists, its brand consistency and clear messages.
Under the overarching theme of jazz, other popular and emerging artists are showcased, whether they be kwaito/hip-hop exponent Pitch Black Afro, veteran Johnny Clegg or Afro-pop Mahotella Queens, shrewdly introducing their fans to jazz and vice versa.
Last year a survey showed that nearly half of the attendees at the festival were from outside of Cape Town, boosting local tourism. With 15 000 people in attendance each night, the economic spin-offs of the festival are estimated at more than R60-million.
But besides its entertainment and economic value, the festival is also investing in the advancement of jazz by hosting master classes and workshops for musicians and courses in jazz journalism. Soon the festival will be taking local musicians to other parts of the continent, creating further work opportunities and markets for South African artists.
The festival is a grand gathering of ministers and minions, captains and stevedores of industry, decision- makers and those about whom decisions are made. The dress code is unpretentious, the atmosphere is feel-good, new South African. And the music is sublime.
Rashid Lombard and esp Afrika, take a bow.