United States conductor and choir leader Pastor Chantel Wright featuring singers from Songs of Solomon (Harlem, New York City) and the HIFA Young People’s Gospel Ensemble performed on the closing night at HIFA.
Saxophonist and composer Ivan Mazuze, started in his home country, Mozambique. He is currently based in Norway. We were surprised to see Eve Kawadza on stage singing, the newest diva on the scene, and she had the Coca Cola Green crows on their feet. We know Eve as an actor for the theatre project ArtsLab. We hope to here more from her. We were also treated to some lively mbira punk from Chikwata 263.
Picked a few faces from the crowd to bring you a who's who from HIFA 2013. Celebrities and regular interesting people!
Since its inception have not been able to attend the shows at First street but this year we managed to capture one show with Josh Meck of Chabvondoka.
Environment Africa had a stall at HIFA where they were selling, crafts made from recycled material, raising wareness about the ozone layer and soliciting for donations towards reducing our carbon footprint. One thing that really impressed me were the bins which they placed around the HIFA precinct which were made from recycled materials.
Each year there are different workshops which are free to attend. At the Youth Zone there was the Guitar workshop by Prayersoul. Another workshop which was available was the drumming workshop, the bead making workshop and the sand painting workshop all in the Global Quater.
Each year the number of fancy cameras and lenses increases at HIFA but I am still to see the content of the festival grow proportionally. It seems since HIFA have dedicated cameras for certain shows but even they don't seem to upload enough content from the festival to create a huge internet buzz around the festival. The ratio between men and women with cameras and shooting at HIFA. The number increases when you add the number of photos taken by smartphones. Most of these end up on Facebook and transferred via Whatsapp so won't be seen in the public domain.
Took some time out to take random pics in and around the HIFA precinct.
The poetry cafe was also structured differently offering a much bigger stage accommodating more people. It lacked the cosy and intimate setting of the HIVOS Poetry Cafe at the old Gazebo. We only managaed to cover one poetry session which featured ports from Indonesia which included Dorothea Rosa Herliany, Saut Situmorangand and Sylvia Geist from Germany. we were lucky enough to catch Prudence Katomeni Mbofana sing a few tracks. Winner of the the inaugral Shoko Poerty Slam from 2011, Mandisa Mabuthoe from Botswana was also there.
The Global stage was crowded this year and I feel was slightly over subscribed with more stalls all the way around the entrance to the lays Global Stage and onto the otherside. Not sure if its a good or a bad thing. It looked overcrowded by stalls but it could be argued that it gave a Mbare like market feel. We attended the bead making workshop which was facilitated by Kati Torda from Ghana. Ubuntuism seem to have become a regular as they have showcased their quality T-Shirts for the past three years.
