SWITCH ON! Looking back on the highlights of HIFA 2014
Landing at Harare International Airport was an exciting moment. This was to be my first experience of the critically acclaimed Harare International Arts Festival (HIFA) and I was excited to see what was in store.
Following an unpleasant holdup at customs (note: do not write you are an artist when coming to Zimbabwe during the festival period), I was picked up by a good friend and we were soon cruising through the congestion free Harare highways. The well laid out streets and tidy roadways reminded me that for all the difficulties attending the country, the systems are still functioning in some manner.
Billboards celebrating the 90th birthday of Comrade Robert Mugabe festooned the city’s roads. The political crisis that began in 2007, which saw life savings vanish, food insecurity skyrocket and the currency dollarized, has eased somewhat, with well worn dollars the principal means of exchange. Investments led by Chinese capital along with whispers of diamonds, serve as the real currency that underpins the regime. This is the context in which the 15th edition of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA)2014, Zimbabwe’s premier cultural and arts festival was launched this April 29th and May 4th, 2014.
HIFA offered a huge menu of arts ranging from Opera, Theatre, Dance, Comedy, Circus arts, Design/Crafts, Fashion, Live Music and Dj culture. Artists, Bands and Theatre companies from all over the compass made Harare their stage. The opening show entitled “Light Up the Darkness” featured a logo of a dung beetle pushing a ball of dung. An allusion to the struggles of present day Zimbabwe?
The bulk of the festival was centered at the Harare Gardens, an urban park located in the center of the city overlooked by the Crown Plaza Monomatapa. The Gardens were transformed into a world- class festival site, hosting three music stages, a kids stage, a poetry tent plus crafts and food vendors.
The Coca Cola green, the popular center of the festival hosted a variety of local Zimbabwean acts, served by a bar with the humorous name “Pariah State”. It was a pleasure to take in a show by Kenya’s own resident Zimbabwean born artist Queen Mashie as she performed a set full of zest and dance, with lyrics sung in Kiswahili , Shona and English.
I caught some acts at the HIVOS Poetry stage, no doubt helped by the fact that the bar at the poetry stage offered the best drink prices in the whole festival. Performances by Dutch poet Erik Linder, Zimbabwe poet Biko Mutsaurwa and South African Kgafela Magogodi were among the highlights.
Party bands Jamaram from Germany and Chef’s Special from the Netherlands reminded me how much of today’s globalized music is rooted in African American and Caribbean styles. Of all the European party bands, Booty Jive from Germany were the most fun with their irreverent theater as space alien immigrants from planet Bayou 7 offering their hymns of hot instrumental funk and R&B.
The Sunday of the festival arrived, my feet were tired and I felt like I had reached my limit but the invitation to take in a gospel concert proved too irresistible and I was not to be disappointed. Switch On To Gospel, a family friendly performance, featured a collaborative between Songs of Solomon from Harlem in New York City under the leadership of Pastor Chantel Wright and Zimspiration HIFA’s young peoples choir led by Kundisai Mtero.
As the afternoon wore on, word began spreading among festival goers that Freshly Ground , a pop and township jive band from South Africa, who were meant to close the festival, had been denied entry into Zimbabwe. Freshly Ground had released a music video in 2010 in partnership with the comedy puppet t.v production ZA NEWS lampooning Robert Mugabe as too “Chicken to Change”.
No doubt HIFA organizers must have known in programming Freshly Ground, that they were testing the limits of artistic freedom and/or the governments sense of humor. On both scores the festival rumors were confirmed as members of Freshly Ground were turned back and put on the next flight back to South Africa.
The action of the government didn’t dim the light of the festival and festival-goers happily committed to the closing performance made up of short cameo performances by many of the bands, poets, comedians, and dancers. A spectacular firework show lit up the night sky bringing down the curtain to HIFA 2014 and in hindsight had me wondering if Chinese pyrotechnic engineers were enjoying a weekend off from their mining investments.
As I caught my Ethiopian Airlines flight back to Nairobi, I was satiated and thankful to the organizers and artists who made HIFA 2014 possible. Considering the diversity of the arts presented, the professionalism of the technical and sound crew, and the overall look and organization, HIFA, has to rank among the grand fests on the African continent.
By Abdi Rashid Jibril
Photos Courtesy of HIFA
