Hifa: Something for everyone!

Festival of the Arts comes to an end tomorrow.
The fireworks show expected tonight has in the past proved to be a crowd puller in its own right.
The Coca-Cola Green, which hosts many free acts and the food stalls, is another much loved facet. You can go there to grab a drink, sit at a table with a complete stranger and just chat or exchange critiques of the whole shindig.
And there is no prediction who you will find yourself next to; it could be your neighbour or someone from one of the Scandinavian countries!
The festival brings together not only audiences from all over, but we get to see stuff that most of us may never experience otherwise.
The ballet, opera productions, piano recitals are just a few examples of the things that some of us may have been introduced to at Hifa.
Some may have captured the imagination and others might have failed to strike a chord with the majority, but the experience would certainly have been worthwhile.
Art is subjective and until you have seen or heard it, how can you know whether you will hate it or it may become your favourite?
Like one of our musicians pointed out in a song, you have to taste any foodstuff before declaring that it does not suit your constitution.
For others it has been a chance to renew their love affair with arts genres that they may have seen only on TV or on sojourns in foreign lands.
It is only by knowing what the rest of the world has to offer that we can truly appreciate the bounty that is right here on home ground.
But still yet for many, Hifa has been a platform to meet local art whose existence would not normally impinge on our day-to-day lives.
There are locals who openly admit that they have ever only been exposed to music by big names like Tuku and Macheso at Hifa as they would normally not patronise the usual venues where the artistes perform.
Hifa has been labelled elitist and blamed for promoting foreign artistes at the expense of the local industry and would like to see non-locals removed from the programme or tucked into little obscure corners.
So should local artistes also be denied the chance to perform on the international stage as they might also be prejudicing the local industries in those countries where they perform?
While there is nothing wrong with championing the rights of the home artistes to equal treatment and payment, sometimes it appears as though some critics just miss the international part of the Hifa acronym!
This year the organisers have said the festival is giving everyone “six days to live” and anyone who enjoys the arts should embrace the opportunity to enjoy old favourites and try out new things.
Go on take the challenge on this last day and try an artiste, visual or performing, whose work you have not seen before and you may just add a new dimension to your life!
Acts that you might consider not to be missed today include the National Ballet, Villa 1 Nyau Club, Nneka, Winky D and the Flatfoot Dance Company.
And tomorrow there is the Youth Zone Carnival where the kids may just be writing a new tradition on the Zimbabwean cultural scene.
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