The ups and downs of Sand Festivals

As the hot weather is reeling its face in some parts of the country, mostly along lakeshore areas, festival organisers are also raking in hot cash as witnessed over the weekend where three festivals took place across the country.

Obvously falling on the same dates meant patronage of the two festivals was divided ending in a “lose-lose situation”.

As expected, the festivals were not short of strengths and weaknesses.

The maiden Likoma Summer Festival Li-Suf was scheduled to start with a pre-festive show at Chikale Beach in Nkhata Bay with a performance by Lucky Stars. But to the disappointment of fans, the show failed to take place.

As early as 2pm, fun-seekers were already at the beach, waiting for the show to start at 5pm. While nothing tangible was explained to them on the future of the show, they kept themselves entertained with music from pubs along the beach. It was after they learnt that equipment meant for the show was not readily available that they gave up and left the venue, disappointed.

The festival, however, drew its strength on the ship cruise to the venue. It was the first time for a festival to start with a cruise. However, the organisers failed to keep time. The ship was meant to start off at 5am on Saturday and return at 12 noon the following day.

This was not the case. The ship started off at 6am for a four-hour cruise and left Likoma on Sunday at 3pm.

But the fun-seekers were not perturbed with this. To them, the beautiful scenery of Likoma was what mattered than time.

The festival also scored a point on patronage. It was hugely patronised by both the old and the youths. This was mostly because the people of Likoma are starved of entertainment shows, as a resident of the area Simeone Manda said: “This year we only had a performance by Evans Meleka.”

While most shows have challenges with quality of equipment, the Likoma Festival had other things to worry as the equipment never disappointed.

The show was interrupted for about 30 minutes with a blackout due to technical problems in tapping power from a nearby house. This affected the mood of the show when Piksy was on stage.

But Piksy showed some level of maturity as he raised heat of the show since the time he set foot on the stage.

Li-Suf scored as they made it affordable for the the food and beverages were affordable to people unlike at Dand Festival where food and beverages coasted from K6 000 ($15) to K15 000 ($40) and K1000 ($2) to K1500 (about $3) respectively.

However the ticket for the festival was more than two times expensive at compared to Sunbird Sand Festival tickets.

On the other hand Sunbird sand Music festival an event that attracted the country’s big shots, among them the Black Missionaries, the Banda brothers Lucius and Paul, Skeffa Chimoto, Lawi, Maskal, Lulu as well as Zambia’s Danny K and Orga Family, the 2014 Sand Fest expected to pull a huge turnout.

However, the situation turned out to be not as the organisers had anticipated. It might have been a fair attendance but to the organisers, it was not good enough. For an event that expected to attract 2,000 to 3,000 fans through the three days, the attendance was just above 1,000.

The low patronage has been attributed to the clash of festivals on the same weekend, as Blantyre and Likoma Island had two others arts carnivals, namely Mwezi Wawala Arts Festival and Likoma Summer Festival.

Others also attributed it to the forthcoming Lake of Stars arts festival, observing that many people might be saving for the event, slated for 26-28 September at Sunbird Nkopola in Mangochi.

But Sand Music Festival director and local music icon, Lucius Banda, observed in an interview at the end of the festival that the change of venue from Mangochi to Salima, where the weather was not conducive on Saturday and Sunday, could have been another contributing factor to the low turnout.

For an event of such magnitude, the Sand Festival should have invested in the best equipment that would stand the heat of the 70+ hours of sound production. The organisers could have done better and if they can start saving now for up-to-standard equipment next year, the better.

Commenting on the sound, Lucius said while it was not up to standard, as an artist he appreciate the sound system was good. He however admitted they could have done better.

“We are aware that we could have done better on the sound system. We tried our best. Our desire was to have equipment from Zimbabwe or the Mibawa system, but the corporate let us down, they could not honour their commitment to assist us with funding.

Initially, the 2014 Sand Music Festival had South Africa’s celebrated artist, Professor, but a week ago the organisers announced that the house singer was not coming because he had a busy schedule in his country the same weekend he was billed to perform in Malawi.

With Professor off the line up, it meant patrons were left with Zambian and Zimbabwean artists as their international entertainers. This might have also contributed to the poor patronage as fans might have felt let down, after last year’s incident when South Africa’s Big Nuz did not show up for the 2013 Sand Fest.

While Zambia’s Danny K and Orga Family did well in their performances, the local acts were marvelous from Friday to Sunday and the festival could still be exciting without the presence of the international artists.

Another Zambian artist, B1, did not show up for the festival, while the highly flaunted Zimbabwean Nikki, who performed on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, was a disappointment to many fans who booed him off stage during his two sets.

Accommodation was another problem that faced most artists and patrons at the festival as Sunbird Livingstonia Hotel could not accommodate even a smaller percentage of the attendees in its 35 rooms. The situation forced many fans and artists to sleep in their cars, tents and on the beach.

The Clean Senga Bay Campaign, facilitated by Impact Events and Sunbird Tourism Limited, to clean up Senga Bay all the way to the beach ahead of the festival has also created a cleaner environment which can be seen two weeks after it took place. The communities have hailed the festival for the initiative.