Dear Diary,
I attended the Cape Town International Jazz Festival this weekend and wow, what an amazing experience.
Apart from the fact that I had a postcard view of Table Mountain from my hotel, it was also a feast of good music. Those who could not afford to buy weekend passes which cost R499 or day passes for R365 – and let’s face it, that money goes a long way towards an electricity bill or groceries – were treated to a free concert in Greenmarket Square on Wednesday.
The line-up included upcoming Cape Town band Tribe of Benjamin, Tortured Soul, The Cape Town Tribute band Hanjin and Gang of Instrumentals. With a line-up like this, who says that there is nothing worthwhile for free these days?
Tribe of Benjamin kicked off the evening with rocking jazzy electro beats which appealed to both young and old. The leader of the band, Benjamin, shared with the audience that the band was influenced by the late Robbie Jansen and they played a heartfelt tribute to the jazz veteran.
A woman next to me was so moved that she started crying. After comforting her, she told me that she was Sonya Le Grange and her son Zeke was playing the saxophone.
“It’s been a while since I have seen him play and seeing him on stage today is bittersweet for me.
“For years I used to go everywhere with him and made sure that he was not exploited, but I had to let him go and find his way in the world. Being a classical pianist myself, I know how playing music is like breathing and I am so proud of him,” she said.
What do Hong Kong and jazz have in common, you may ask. Well, the answer is the charismatic Hanjin. When he stepped on stage the audience was sceptical, but when he started crooning, that scepticism was replaced by joy.
He sang Fly Me to the Moon and his own version of the Beatles’ song Blackbird. With each song he had the audience hooked. If Frank Sinatra was reincarnated he would be Hanjin and he is cute.
One is often unaware of the effect of the deaths of jazz greats such as Basil “Manenberg” Coetzee,Winston Mankuku and Robbie Jansen, to mention but a few, but thanks to the Cape Town Tribute band we now know. The band played a combination of music by the jazz veterans which also included a performance by the elderly Danny Butler. Instead of the performance being a sombre affair, the audience honoured the fallen jazz heroes by jazzing the night away.
One thing that my colleagues who have attended the festival before neglected to tell me was that you run around the CTICC like a lab rat to catch as many performances as you can.
Over the two days, it was hard to choose as most of the acts that I wanted to see clashed on the schedule, but I managed to watch Dave Koz, Ivan Mazuze, Tortured Soul, Tumi and the Volume, Hanjin and Gang of Instrumentals, Earth, Wind and Fire, Gazelle, Bebe Winans, Naima McLean and a bit of Youssou N’dour.
South African-based, Mozambican-born saxophone player Ivan Mazuze is the future of jazz. His music is light and playful but still maintains the seriousness that jazz is associated with. Before you even know what is happening, your feet and body are swaying to the music.
While Dave Koz has that serious jazz element that we have come to love over the years, he played all of the favourite hits including The Dance, which he performed with Bebe Winans and nearly caused a stampede at the overcrowded Kippies stadium.
The difference between Mazuze’s and Koz’s playing of the same instrument was refreshing as it showed their versatility and origins. Unfortunately, Hanjin played the same set he did at the free concert, which was disappointing but still great.
The other disappointing thing was Gang of Instrumentals’ performance, both at the festival and the free concert. Tumi was singing off-key and it seemed like her voice was taking strain, while Mandla N’s rapping fell flat.
Bongo Riot’s reggae vocals tried to keep the performance afloat, but the conflicting sound from the instruments sank his efforts. They injected a rock influence into their set which sounded horribly wrong and furthermore confused the crowd. Maybe they should leave the experimentation out of the set next time.
Tumi and the Volume delivered a fun and breezy set and an improvisation of the TKZ song Dlala Mapantsula, which the crowd loved.
If you haven’t heard of the American live house band Tortured Soul, then you better ask somebody about them. This three-piece band does house music well and they give it personality – what’s not to love? Then there’s Gazelle and their weird costumes, especially DJ Invisible who was wearing a Sotho hat and silver mask. They were exciting to watch as you couldn’t guess what crazy antics they would pull off next.
Earth, Wind and Fire might be celebrating 40 years of being together, but their energy was dynamic. The youth in the crowd, myself included, did not know the lyrics, but no one cared – they just boogied down to the music.
The group’s bass player Verdine White needs to get rid of that weave, though. It makes him look like the creatures from the Alien versus Predator movie.
Overall, their performance was the highlight of the festival – after 40 years they still sound as they did when they rose to fame and still maintain their status of delivering soulful music.
The festival was great in terms of artists and performances, but the organisation was terrible. Most of the shows began an hour late and no explanation was given. Some artists were still struggling with sound issues which could have been sorted out well in advance.
The public relations company Chatroom which facilitated the media was rude, unapproachable and didn’t ensure that artists were there for the press conferences.
Leaving the PR disaster out, the Jazz Festival was the most memorable, worthwhile experience of my life.
[Chatroom response:]
Dear Thandiwe
It is pleasing to read that the experience of this year’s Cape Town International Jazz Festival was memorable and valuable to you. Regrettable, though, that you felt moved to describe the PR efforts of an event of this magnitude, dealing with the constantly moving schedules of world famous artists and media, with the word ‘disaster’. The pairing of over 700 one-on-one interview requests from journalists with 40 international and local music acts is, as you can appreciate, quite a challenge.
To give you some more insight into behind the scenes of managing media at a festival of this nature: Media accreditation was restricted to 350 working journalists. Strict criteria had to be met in order to fill the 350 limited places across international, African and South African media. Furthermore, there has to be a quota for TV, radio, print and online in order to have a balance of media present. This led to many an online journalist or blogger having to be declined, not because they weren’t as important, but because there were just so many that applied for accreditation. This year there was a major change in the mandate and criteria for accreditation, which meant that some regular media were not accredited for the first time, leading to a fair amount of disgruntled media, understandably, stating their cases to Chatroom, who ourselves were working on the event for the first time. So, having a better sense of the scope of this event and the managing of the many variables required may help you to get a better understanding of the challenges. It may also enable you to see how we might have come across as unapproachable.
Finally; highly coveted, the one-on-one interviews with artists and approximately 20 press conferences had to be scheduled to take place on the day before the festival and the two festival days. To a large extent, we were accommodating artist requests. Most artists do not like to have a press conference or interviews on the day of their performance and one-on-one interviews had to be scheduled after a press conference of an artist. Then there were travel schedules to be considered, that kept changing – flights coming in over the three days, delays and change of plans. Imagine, having to attend a press conference when you are jet-lagged. As mentioned before, approx. 700 interview requests had to be allocated to 40 music acts with a max. of 120 interview spots available, with some artists only allowing a max. of 2 interviews. However when it came to the first day of press conferences and our first artist arrived almost 45 min. late, it became clear, that a lot of re-scheduling had to take place on our feet. I trust, Thandiwe, you better see that we have very little control over whether an artist makes hisher conference on time or even at all, in fact we would love to have more control over an artist’s busy schedule while on tour and have happy media conducting their interviews as scheduled. It would make our lives so much easier.
We welcome constructive criticism of any kind, so that future processes can be improved where necessary.
All the best,
The Chatroom Team