The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu
WHEN life gives you lemons, make some lemonade goes the popular saying. Whoever coined this age old motivational phrase, which time and frequent use has worn to a cliché, must have had a prophetic eye trained on the 2016 edition of the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo as it best describes events at this year’s arts fete.
A Bulawayo spring is not complete without Intwasa, the annual festival that comes around every year to reinvigorate the citizens of Bulawayo and in explosive mix of song and dance, banish any memories of the shivers and colds of the preceding cold winter.
Simply put, Intwasa is the very pulse of a new spring, indicating the excitement of sunnier days ahead.
This year however, Intwasa’s glow was diminished a bit. The fever-pitch excitement with which Bulawayo greets the performers that twist their bodies and strain their voices for their entertainment for six whole days was not as intense as usual.
This was not due to a lack of effort from both artistes or the people of Bulawayo. The 2016 edition of the festival has simply not had the resources it had in other years.
The most glaring absence at this year’s festival was the main stage, which over the years has attracted both artistes and spectators like moths to light. This year, the stage only surfaced on the fifth and penultimate day of the festival.
While venues like the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo and Bulawayo Theatre have played host to some of the best and most sophisticated acts in a variety of arts genres, the main stage has always been Intwasa’s nerve centre. Without it for the first five days therefore, the arts extravaganza looked like it had lost its soul. The low level of excitement around this year’s festivities indicated that indeed when the main stage caught a cold, the rest of the festival sneezed.
The annual fashion show, which was also starting to set its own tradition within the festival, was also another high profile event that got shelved.
“Honestly, this year’s festival has set us about five steps back. We’ve struggled like everyone else and if you look around the country, only about five of the 30 major festivals will be taking place,” festival spokesperson Nkululeko Nkala said previously.
However, all these problems did not seem to have any impact on those that had the honour of taking to the stage for this year’s extravaganza.
Artistes showed that even though sponsors had held back the precious coins that made the practice of their craft possible, they could still please arts lovers with the little that they have.
There was no better example of this than Thursday’s Spring Jazz Festival. Established talents like Prudence Katomeni Mbofana showed that their high billing is justified, while Lady Tshawe’s mix of song and poetry won many hearts on a momentous and soulful night.
Intwasa however, is not all about the big names and this year, it continued its penchant of plucking out relatively unknown names from the dark corners of the arts scene into the full glare of the spotlight.
Accompanied by the Outfit Band, which effortlessly supplied the soundtrack to most of the sets by acts on the night, young Mimmie Tarukwana handled herself expertly as she gave a convincing performance, which was crowned by a flawless rendition of Brenda Fassie’s Weekend Special.
Perhaps the highlight of that night was when Albert Nyathi and Katomeni again performed Senzeni Na over two decades after they made the original.
After fiddling around a few rhythms, Katomeni’s band found the right groove to compliment her heart wrenching lyrics and voice, which in turn provided the perfect springboard for Nyathi to launch his famous lyrical onslaught.
It was a moment of pure spontaneous magic that could not have been possible on any other stage, and with other such nuggets of brilliance littered throughout the six days of the festival, Intwasa for all its troubles, proved that it is still a vital and necessary platform for artistic expression.
