The Sunday News
HAPPY New Year to you all! I hope you all enjoyed the festive season and are excited about 2017. It is our sincere hope that you’ve entered 2017 fresh, healthy and looking forward to new opportunities and challenges.
For those who love the arts our hope is that you had a great time at Ibumba Arts Festival which had several events scattered around the city during the month of December. We know of many young people who danced till they dropped at the Black Motion show hosted by the 3D events at Hartsfield’s Tshisa Nyama and of the thousands whose brains were blown away by Kalawa Homecoming. Yes! As expected the Kalawa Homecoming crowds were exceptional once again. This was even after Babes Wodumo and Mampintsha of Big Nuz had failed to catch their flight. We are aware there were rumours of a boycott soon after Winky D and Jah Prayzah were announced as part of the Kalawa line-up. But boycott or not Oskido and his crew smiled all the way to the bank or to the airport — whichever came first.
While still on the new year it is our hope that all artistes entered 2017 with a new and progressive mindset. We observed, with a great sadness, that most artistes went on holiday during the festive season. Obviously there is something wrong there! We could be wrong on this one but we strongly believe that only unemployed artistes go on a holiday during the festive season.
The arts are not your ordinary 8-5 pm jobs. They are not your Monday to Friday kind of occupation.
Artistes are in the entertainment business and we all know that entertainment business thrives more when everyone else is on holiday. In other words the busiest time for artistes should be during school holidays and the festive season. It was sad to see the theatre closed for most parts of the festive season. Few performances outside the music genre took place during this time.
Most of our dance groups were busy with weddings, and few put up performances for families to enjoy away from weddings. If we are not mistaken only Iyasa and Sunduza put up public performances away from weddings. Christmas should not be about eating rice and loads of chicken, it should be the time for families to explore different experiences together. Of course, after meals families need to be entertained and it is up to artists to plan on how to make the festive holidays a time for new experiences. Artistes must see this period as an opportunity to make money.
Anyway, the first week of January is always the week of making resolutions. We know a lot of people are busy planning and writing down what they want to do this year.
For many years we have set down and wrote beautiful and life changing resolutions only to go through the year without realising not even a single one on the list. Sometimes the pressure is so hard that we never get to take the list out to see what we had put down as resolutions for the year. So a few years ago we replaced our yearly list of resolutions with what we call a wish list. This is a list of things we wish to see happen or at least be part of during the course of the year. So our 2017 wish list goes like: To see more unity among Bulawayo artistes. Unity among artistes would translate to speaking with one strong voice on issues affecting the sector. Something that is missing at the moment. Unity will encourage more meaningful collaborations among local artistes.
To see more performances, especially in the field of dance, theatre and spoken word. We believe a true picture of what our arts are about and where they are going can best be captured in our performances. The money for performing artistes is in performance, and nowhere else.
To see the closing up of the generation gap. It is our wish to see young artistes working more with established artistes. There is enough space for different generations to co-exist and work together.
To see digitalisation becoming a reality and actually watching local television productions on several digital channels.
To see the final approval and adopting of the National Cultural Policy. This document carries of lot of artistes’ dreams.
