Francistown Jazz announces new date
Koketso Kgoboge | Thursday April 27, 2017 14:10
According to the festival organisers, Streethorn, the festival was postponed because they failed to find cash sponsorship to fully cover the costs of artists and other logistics.
The festival director, Soares Katumbela revealed that alongside their partners, the Francistown City Council, they have strategically selected the new date in line with the city’s 120-years celebrations that would be held on the day.
He said because of the collaboration with the celebrations they are confident they will secure the sponsorship hence they took a risk to release the date before they rubber stamp a sponsorship. “The festival has grown bigger than our line up, the fact that it is now combined with the city celebrations gives it much identity and we believe we will be able to easily sell it,” he said.
“The postponement was more of a blessing in disguise really, besides we had other sponsors who were promising but failed because of the time frame. We had approached them on a short notice and we believe now the time frame is sufficient and we are confident someone will come on board.” Katumbela said the line up and other logistics remain intact and he said they will resume selling tickets in the near future. He advised those who had already bought tickets to hold on to them.
The first jazz festival is headlined by a duet of South African’s jazz legends, Jonathan Gwangwa and Ringo Madlingozi and has amongst its line up finest local jazz artists in Sereetsi and the Natives, Amantle Brown, Shanti Lo, Lister Boleseng and others.