TJ Dema set to light up Zim festival

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Wednesday April 28, 2010 00:00

 

TJ Dema is featuring in a project dubbed Moto, an explosive collaborative project, uniting some of southern Africa's most powerful voices.

The Zimbabwean International Music Festival, also known as the HIFA, is considered one of the highlights of the African entertainment industry, and this year it is featuring musicians from Haiti, Jamaica, Spain,Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom (UK), Italy, and France. Selif Keita of Mali is among the superstars billed to perform at the Week-long music extravaganza.

So TJ Dema should count herself special because she is the only Motswana performing artist who has been picked to wow revellers at the Harare show. Fusing hip-hop poetry, live music and an electrifying live performance, the production features a powerful line-up of the region's top artists including leading Zambian-born South Africa based rapper, Zubs, Zimbabwe's trail-blazing protest band Comrade Fatso & Chabvondoka, Harare's premier hip-hop artists OutSpoken. Moto is a multimedia, multi-disciplinary performance experience to take southern Africans through their painful journey of struggles and injustices towards a place of hope and future.

The word 'moto' means fire in shona, and this production aims to depict the flames of the region's problems that can tear it asunder, juxtaposed with a burning power and hope of contemporary youth.

The extravaganza kicked off yesterday with the bira ceremony, a type of ancient African ritual, which the organisers say brings traditional spirituality to the HIFA festival through an evening of chidzimba, mbemberwa and makwiringwindo performances.

Fountain water, 7-day beer and holy chanting add to the transcendence achieved by the ancient sounds of mbira music. The mbira ceremony was led by  Zimbabwe's own award- winning  and internationally-acclaimed mbira phenomenon, Mawungira eNharia.