| Town International Jazz festival 2005 |
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Soap opera jazz In an era where arts and culture is relegated to the leisure pages, it's always a pleasure to see it making front-page news. It means that arts and culture has entered the realm of politics and economics. It means that people are paying attention. The Cape Town International Jazz Festival gets big attention. But nobody expected a soap opera. PRELUDE It was just a couple of days after the 6th Cape Town International Jazz Festival. The city was basking in the warm afterglow of a great weekend of music, the Joburg visitors were making their way back home with bottles of sea water, and the festival organisers were celebrating finally making a small profit. And suddenly the headlines were screaming: Festival sued by its former Dutch partners. `Partypoopers', mumbled some. `They still think we're their colony,' complained others. And then there were some that said `Ja, this was a long time coming'. The big question was: did Mojo Works BV, the producers of the North Sea Jazz Den Hague, not want to see the festival succeed without them?' The Cape Town International Jazz Festival - five years in the making This year, after five years as the North Sea Jazz Festival Cape Town, the festival became the Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF). An autonomous, fully Cape Town event. It was a landmark for the city. The five year contract the producers espAFRIKA had with Mojo to produce the event had come to an end. And, as per the original plan, it became the CTIJF. The idea from the start had been for Mojo to provide the infrastructure and support for the North Sea Jazz Festival Cape Town to become its own festival. And no sooner had that happened, Mojo went to the courts calling for the liquidation of espAFRIKA to recall a 500 000 euro debt created over the first five years of the festival. Fair's fair, a debt must be repaid. 500 000 euros is a lot of money. But the timing seemed very carefully selected to spoil the event - and to send a strong message to espAFRIKA: don't mess with us, we'll take you out. The message was felt. The Cape High Court put esp under provisional liquidation. The papers spewed headlines again, esp held press conferences, we all wondered whether or not the festival had come to an end. How to value a festival Now whether it was sour grapes or not, whether there was some dirty business going on at esp or not, these are questions that are not to be answered here. What is vital is that the festival continues. And it appears it will continue. On Tuesday the 26th of April, Esp announced that it had come to a settlement out of court with Mojo, repaying in full the debt. It's back to `business as usual', esp`s publicity people announced. Cape Town needs the festival. For more than just the revenue it brings to the city (approximately 8.7 million euros), the jobs it creates (2500) and the marketing value it brings. While South Africa's democracy is now eleven years old, Cape Town's democracy is only a year old. When the rest of the country changed government in 1994, Cape Town voted to stay with the remnants of the apartheid government, under the guise of the New National Party. Ten years later, the same electorate finally voted in an African National Congress majority. And while the rest of the country celebrated ten years of freedom, we in Cape Town celebrated the beginning of freedom. The composer laureate of Cape Town, Mac McKenzie, wrote 34 years ago: `Slow, change is slow. Change is coming, but change is slow'. He was right. Change in Cape Town has been painfully slow, but it is coming. And the festival is a barometer for that change. That's why it was so important that this year it became the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. It marked the first anniversary of our democracy. It was our festival, a Cape Town Festival. No longer the North Sea Jazz Festival (where is that anyway), but the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. It is supposed to be a tribute to our growing sense of the right to be ourselves. Staffed by us, produced by us. But attended by Joburgers. While there is no other event in South Africa that is this talked about, while it might be in Cape Town and while some fifteen thousand people attended this year, Cape Town audiences are the least represented. Some 60 per cent of the audiences are from Johannesburg, and some 16 per cent is foreign. At about 53 euros a ticket, the festival is an aspiration for Capetonians, and not yet a reality. This is simply an indication of where Cape Town is at economically, rather than a lack of appeal. Our people simply cannot afford a festival like this just yet. One year into democracy, Cape Town is only at the beginning of unlocking its economy. Over the next few years then, the increase in the number of Capetonians attending the festival will indicate the level of economic growth the city has undergone. Africa's grandest gathering (in the making) The festival publicity punts it as `Africa's Grandest Gathering'. That is not true yet. The greatest gathering is probably Fespam, the bi-annual Pan-African music festival Congo-Brazzaville. The debut Fespam in 1997 marked the end of civil war there, and each consecutive Fespam is a celebration of freedom from conflict. It is a festival with great significance for the people. The Cape Town International Jazz Festival has from inception needed to assume a similar position. A festival must have a reason to exist, and this year for the first time it did. It was a celebration of our freedom. And, for the first year away from the mothership Mojo, operating solo, it didn't do badly. It flirted way too close to nostalgia for comfort, and in an era that requires new impetus and new directions, we cannot afford nostalgia. Africa is not a nostalgic place, it is a place that is constantly looking ahead, constantly innovating. Cape Town, however, thrives on nostalgia. So it's not just the fault of the festival (the Cape Town bands at the festival this year were great examples of this). With the soap opera over, the festival can now refocus on becoming the soundtrack to our re-generation, and of course, Africa's Greatest Gathering. It will require a greater embrace of the continent and other developing nations. It will require the risk of creating stars, rather than merely presenting them. Originally published in Zuidelijk Afrika magazine, a publication of the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NISA). |
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