Festival with a difference

The “Voice Of The Cape” radio station is a community broadcaster that is aimed squarely at the large Muslim population in Greater Cape Town, most of whom regard themselves as Coloured or Cape Malay.
The Annual Voice Of The Cape Festival, held at the Cape Town Market in Epping Industria, has become one of the major family and child-friendly events on the calendar.

This year it ran from 1 October to 4 October. With a record crowd of almost 80000 visitors for the weekend, the festival was hailed as a huge success by the organisers.

The festival, with its theme this year billed as the “Spring Festival 4 All”, naturally panders to the needs of Muslims in the sense that all the food stalls are Halaal and that the whole event is alcohol free.
There was also the rule that music was not played during the observance of salah (prayers).
This did however not detract from the fact that a large number of non-Muslims could also enjoy everything that was on offer at the festival. It is not strange at all that Muslims and non-Muslims mix socially and it is testimony to the diversity within the Coloured community of the Western Cape that almost every family has Muslim and Christian relatives. I even spotted a few White folk from the surrounding areas.

Besides all the attractions like food stalls, craft exhibitions, and also the fun-fair park with all the rides imaginable (which were a bit expensive), the main attraction for many was the fantastically large array of live entertainment available, all included in the daily gate-fee of R15 pp and children entering for free.
This was the perfect place to take my 6 year old son to see some live music without having to be too concerned with his safety or worry about some drunken miscreants spoiling the fun.

There were three different stages catering for the many varied tastes of festival goers, two of which catered for the more conservative tastes of the devoutly religious and more mature audiences.
Officially welcoming the audience and opening the live performance part of the festival on the “Main Stage” were MC Ashley and Ishmail Gallant, who is the main voice on Voice Of the Cape FM.
Soon after the formalities, renowned opera singer Cecil Peters gave the audience goose-bumps and later Ricardo Green showed that he has regained his beautiful voice after having lost it due to illness, singing old crowd pleasers like “Daddy” and “Julia”. In conversations we had backstage he seems reluctant to always have to sing the old songs but it seems that he accepts that, as with many musicians, if the song is your trademark, then you will have to sing it till you are blue in the face.

The Tea Garden, as the huge tented restaurant was called, also had a stage that mainly hosted crooners and performers of classical music. It was however unfortunate(?) that whenever there was a performance in “The Tea Garden”, there was something more appealing on “The Side Stage”.

The Side Stage was where all the youth and the young at heart could find entertainment that was more to their liking. The stage was the domain of the always funny and highly talented MC Ashley aka Brother-A, who between introducing the artists who performed their own spiced up versions of various hits from different eras, had the crowd in the palms of his hands with his unique brand of comedy.
One of the groups performed a rendition of the Phil Fearon & The Galaxy hit, “What Do I Do If I Wanna Get Through To You” to a very new and modern beat and they had young and old dancing and singing along.
There was also a 7 year old performing an awesome, yet very mature and somewhat sultry sounding version of Michael Jackson’s “The way You Make Me Feel”. It actually worried me that such a young boy had a sultriness that could possibly make grown women swoon.

The Saturday night crowd got to experience even more with MC Ashley doing his absolutely hilarious, highly accurate and on-point impersonation of the late great king of pop. This includes him in costume looking like MJ, really singing MJ songs but twisting some of the lyrics to great comic effect, as well as being MJ making statements on various issues. His act is always a crowd favourite having been aired on Cape Town TV in his recent “Red Carpet Show”.

Also sensational were the The Twins, Peter & John Talmarkes from Bonteheuwel who brought something different to the hip and happening stage with their beautifully pitch-perfect and harmonious performance of “The Quest” (The Impossible Dream).

More than 70% of the performers were Muslim and included some boy-bands like Society and Identity, and solo artists like Ekraam who with the help of MC Ashley was able to sell at least a dozen CD’s off the stage within a few minutes before he even performed. That’s how well-known and supported Ekraam is in Cape Town.
As a final act Ekraam really rocks and seeing him live makes one understand why people were lining up to buy his CD throughout the weekend.

The “New Economy” of distributing and selling one’s own music is really starting to gain momentum as even in these tight economic conditions, people are realizing that the money actually goes directly to the livelihoods of the artists and not some huge record company chasing high margins.

Having been allowed to sit in on the final briefing to the performers before the live shows, I knew some of them were either performing for a pittance or absolutely for free, yet they all gave it their best.
Some of the main criteria were that they were not allowed to perform rap music or anything of a vulgar or overtly sexual nature. This did not in any way impact on the funkiness but actually highlighted the fact that overtly sexual lyrics, the use of expletives or including a few bars of rap for the sake of it, is highly overated and that wholesome music that can still captivate a youthful audience is still out there.

The organisers did a great job of treading the fine line between upholding their religious tenets and catering for the youth in such a way that even though only for one weekend, they actually saw it as a great alternative to dodging their parents so that they can go clubbing.
As was later stated in articles on their website, www.vocfm.co.za, there were some detractors who would prefer no pop music, but in the end it turned out to really be a “Spring Festival 4 All”.

Bruinou.com will definitely be attending next year and so will that little bruin-child of mine who somehow managed to dance on the stage in front of almost a thousand people.
In the mean time, some of the artists like Ricardo and MC Ashley expressed their willingness to share a little more of themselves with Bruinou.com sometime soon.
Perhaps even the enigmatic Cecil Peters will share with us how he became such a celebrated opera singer.
Watch this space.