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Monica Cheru-Mpambawashe
Zimbabwean artistes involved in traditional and distinctly Zimbabwean productions are being invited to register online for a chance to perform at the inaugural Africa International Music Festival to be held in Dubai next year. Only five artistes or groups from the country will qualify for this opportunity.
The cultural musical fiesta, which is to be promoted as an iconic festival of the continent, will feature some of the best and scintillating musical performances ranging from music, dance, percussion, instrumentation to theatre by performers from all 55 countries of the continent.
Speaking on this new project, the President of Motherland Beckons, the festival organisers, and Tourism Ambassador of the World Conference of Mayors, Otunba Wanle Akinboboye, said AIM festival is not only to rekindle the world’s interest in the continent’s greatest export product – culture – which over the years have been threatened by colonial and imperialists tendencies.
‘‘We believe that when we expose creative individuals and groups in Africa to the world that it would bring about economic empowerment and development to the people of Africa,’’ said Akinboboye who insisted that the world is yet to experience the best of Africa’s cultural export and one of the ways of doing this is to bring it to their doorstep.
To ensure the full participation and cooperation of all the 55 countries, Motherland Beckons, which is a world-based organisation and known for its effort at promoting Africa culture and bridging the gap between the continent and others, has began
extensive canvassing of the various governments, groups and individuals within the continent.
A series of events proposed for AIM Middle East are as follows: Taste of Africa: Monthly events commencing in October 2013 through September 2014 with two to four African artistes performing for approximately 150 people in an intimate venue.
This should be followed by Taste of AIM: A two-day mini festival in November 2013 that will feature six artistes from the six regions of Africa (North, East, West, Central, South, and the African Diaspora, which consists of the Americas, Caribbean, Brazil, Cuba, etc.
As the grand finale the AIM Festival will see a week-long festival being held in November 2014 and will feature five artistes per each of the 55 African countries, as well as 10 artistes representing the African Diaspora.
According to the tourism and culture ambassador, the urgency of embarking on this gigantic project, which is designed to change the face of cultural musical entertainment in the world, is predicated on many factors.
These include: the inaccessible nature of many of the African countries, lack of information on the growing colony of musical talents in the continent, lack of resources by many of the budding talents to expose themselves and the bizarre and mysterious tag that the world has placed on some of the cultural products of the continent because they are yet to fully understand and experience them as well as the lack of infrastructure and inaccessibility to some of the continent’s destinations and cultural products.
But with AIM Festival, which is aimed at becoming an annual celebration of the best of the continent’s unheralded talents, the world will be forced to pay serious attention to the continent once again.
Besides, it will also provide an economical platform for talents’ scouts, music, sound, movie and television producers as well as advertising agencies all over the world, among others to source for authentic Africa talents and materials.
One of the expected benefits of the festival is that each participating country is expected to take advantage of the platform to promote their tourism industry while the performances last by developing different tour packages round their musical performances.
The choice of Dubai is informed by the need to host the world audience at a safe and secured environment with the best of infrastructure and facilities that would add colours and value to the event.
Also, Dubai is readily accessible from the different parts of the world. With it growing popularity as a world-class destination and cultural centre where there is convergent of cultural entertainment round the clock, adding Africa culture to the mix would make the circle a complete one.
Disclosing that work on the project is already in top gear, the tourism ambassador revealed that each participating country is to produce five artistes, chosen from both the public and private sectors for the festival, adding that the mechanism for registration by each participating country and the artistes are being worked out and would be made public soon. Participation is not limited to A-listed artistes but should be an admixture of both celebrated and budding talents.
To register and find out more artistes should log onto the website www.aimfestivalafrika.com. A country manager for the festival in Zimbabwe has already been engaged and will be announced at the end of this week.
To facilitate the process of representation and organisation, he said that a co-ordinator is to be appointed for each of the region
who is expected to work with the country representative in charge of the different countries.
Africans in the Diaspora are not also left out of the festival. Akinboboye explained that the Diaspora would form the sixth continent as they would showcase the best of their R‘n’B, jazz, rock and other musical forms, which have evolved with them over the years.
The remaining five regions feature their indigenous and traditional musical entertainment, which is expected to draw
attention to their peculiar nature and symbolism.
In a development reminiscent of other regional cultural co-operation initiatives like the wildly successful Umoja, the organisers are expecting to use the combined artistic talents to put together a blend of production from each of the regions that will be
promoted to the world as Africa world music.
Online Reporter