Scot–Zimconnect in Scotland in conjunction with SimChal in Botswana will be launching a cultural exchange festival dubbed Jambo Festival at the Londoners Sports Bar in Strathaven, Harare on June 24 this year.
The event is being introduced by Charles Mutama, who resides in the United States, Simon Rambi in Botswana and Malvin Dyoco in Scotland.
The festival will be graced by various artists from Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe among them the likes of Slizer, Deejay Sanchez Africa, GITCA Mbira group and Brity Yonly.
SimChal’s co-director, who is one of the festival’s co-founders Simon Rambi said the festival aims at promoting local talents, diversity and cultural exchange
“Jambo Festival aims at promoting local talents, diversity and cultural exchange. The festival will be launched in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Scotland in three consecutive months with all the events being headlined by Brity Yonly, who is a Zimbabwean award-winning mbira artist,” said Rambi.
“We want to showcase African art to the world and we want the world to embrace our music, tradition and culture.
“More so we want to unite Africa through music, which is why we are hosting the festival in different countries together.”
This event will celebrate traditional cultural practices and showcase the best of African, Caribbean and diaspora music, dance and arts.
Scot-Zimconnect so-director and reggae dancehall artiste who is also one also one of the festival’s co-founders, Malvern ‘Daddy Slaggy’ Dyoco said the festival is something he has always wanted to do for a long time as it is an opportunity to bridge the gap between music in Zimbabwe and in the diaspora.
“Personally this is something I have always wanted to do for the longest time, I have been involved in music promotion from the early days of Zimdancehall in 2005/6 with my website, which also introduced the world to the name Zimdancehall and the amount of talent I came across was immense,” said Daddy Slaggy.
“I noticed there is a huge difference between the way we market and push music in Zimbabwe and in diaspora, and that gap is so overwhelmingly huge that even when our local artists come to perform in diaspora they tend to perform in Zimbabwean circles thereby not giving our music a wider audience.
“With the Jambo Festivals this is all going to change as the artists chosen to take part will get to perform in three different countries with a diverse audience giving their music and culture a wider market and we also get the artistes from different countries to collaborate, hence the tagline ‘bridging cultural gap with music and arts’.”
According to a press statement released by Scot-Zimconnect, the event will be a friendly-oriented event which will allow the same artiste to experience different audiences.