This year’s Lake of Stars Festival, which took place from Friday to Sunday, is the biggest in the event’s 11-year history, organisers said today.
In a press release, Lake of Stars said this year’s event attracted more people than the previous festivals.
Festival Founder and Director Will Jameson said: “The festival’s over 70 acts from Malawi, Scotland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, England, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana performed in front of more than 4,000 people – our biggest audience to date. We also sold the most tickets in the Lake of Stars project’s 11 year history.”
Last night Lake of Stars closed its most well attended festival with a strong line-up of local and international acts including Malawi’s Lawi and Agorosso alongside South Africa’s Christian Tiger School and John Wizards, with festival favourite DJ Goldierocks (UK) closing out the three-day event.
“Some of the weekend’s highlights included our amazing South African line-up with festival headliners Mafikizolo and Reason setting the bar high with their sets on DHL Main Stage Friday night. Zimbabwe’s own, Selmor Mtukudzi (daughter of Oliver Mtukudzi) also lit up the TNM Beach Stage with a beautiful set that lived up to her family’s legendary musical talents. We continued to build on the connections between Scotland and Malawi by hosting 12 creatives from Scotland who were kept busy during the weekend by hosting industry workshops, performing and joining the community outreach activities including the local soccer match.”
“The rich local music talent was on display this year with up-and-coming artists such as George Kalukusha and Adrian sharing the stage with festival legends including Sally Nyundo, the Black Missionaries and Body, Mind and Soul,” says Will.
Head of Sponsorship Zilanie Nyundo says “Another highlight has to be the incredible support we received from our local and international partners. For the first time, we had a DHL Main Stage, TNM beach Stage and a Malawian Airlines sponsored journalist trip to South Africa to interview our South African Headliners.”
Additional support for artist mobility was provided by sponsors Kenya Airways flights from London to Malawi, Proflight flights for Zambian headliner ZoneFam, while Malawian Airlines flew in Mafikizolo and Reason from South Africa and InterCape bus brought artists from Cape Town to Malawi. DHL Express’ enabled the transportation of Lake of Stars’ music and lighting equipment from the UK to Malawi. The Royal Norwegian Embassy, biggest arts funder in Malawi was also a key festival sponsor.
On Friday the Lake of Stars Festival showed its appreciation by hosting a Media & Sponsors welcome cocktail with the Minister of Tourism, Kondwani Nankhumura as the guest of honour. Media awards were given to several arts journalists who have provided excellent coverage of the Lake of Stars Festival recently and since its inception in 2004. These journalists were; Sam Banda for “Print Media” from the Lake of Stars Festival’s Media partner Times Group; Kimpho Loka of Nyasa ShowBiz was recognized for “New Media”, Waliko Makhala of MBC TV for “Television Media”, Dennis Imaan “Innovation” from Giant Plus Malawi , Capital FM for radio, Yvonnie Sundu was the “Rising Star” from the Nation Publications and Jack McBrams from Nation Publications Limited with an award for “LOS Lifetime coverage”.
