The Hindu Business Line : Jazzing up South African tourism

It is an awesome and delightful sight; the huge and sprawling Cape Town International Convention Centre bang opposite our hotel – SS Cullinan, wears a festive look as the International Jazz Festival begins on March 28. It has brought in the best of Jazz artists across the world is an event that Cape Town has been talking about for weeks.

At the Kippies auditorium, on Level 1 where Mike Mainieri and Steps Ahead are performing – the Soul Brothers have just finished their concert – a couple of thousand people are in the hall. Jazz enthusiasts are all over the place – on their seats, on the floor and standing near the stage, which is elevated so nobody can grumble.

Armed with the food and drink of their choice — potato chips, chocolates, sandwiches, Coke, beer, wine — they are mesmerised by the mind blowing music.

Later in the night, when The Manhattans performed in the same hall, the auditorium was packed with no room to even stand. Tapping feet, swaying bodies and heads swinging to the music, say it all.

During the two-day festival, over 40 concerts are planned in the five huge auditoriums at this convention centre which wears a merry, festive air. Even the park across the road has a concert, and here people are wildly dancing away to music that is simply explosive.

As the CEO of Cape Town Routes Unlimited Calvyn Gilfellan puts it, the jazz festival “is not a great party with some of the world’s best musicians performing live in the world’s most beautiful setting, it is also a social and economic activity”.

The weekend saw 30,000 guests from across the world; last year, more than 51 per cent of the international visitors were from African countries and nearly 70 per cent from outside the Western Cape Province. This year, too, the pattern is expected to be around the same.

South African Tourism is obviously using the festival to boost tourism activities; the economic windfall expected from this music bonanza is $10.8 million (over 80 million Rands), of which about $7 million would have been spent on accommodation.

Gilfellan is confident that events like this jazz festival “enhance the reputation of Cape Town and Western Cape as a premier destination for world class entertainment and culture, and provide a life-giving catalyst for growth, development and social uplift”.

He was addressing a group of international journalists invited for the festival and on their way to the Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned from 1964 to 1989.

The tourism industry’s effort during such events is obviously to ensure that the visitors get a taste of local life and hospitality, art, culture, and, of course, the swinging night life of Cape Town.

After having turned down the invitation of my Dutch friends to accompany them to a night club the previous evening… to be honest, one is a little nervous about the “wild times” they have promised, I catch up with them the next morning… well evening, as they have returned to the hotel only in the morning.

“Just to catch my morning wake up call,” jokes Rene Seghers, a writer and photographer from Amsterdam.

According to Tim, a Kenyan colleague who had accompanied them, “they visited 10 night clubs. Oh man, those guys are so funny… they rock.”

But Seghers dismisses this with, “How would he know, he was sleeping throughout… we had to push him in and out of taxis.”

His more sober colleague Dirk W. De Jong persuades me to accompany them to a night club the next evening. I promise to go provided they drop me back to the hotel at a decent hour; if the trip is made, these columns will get an update!

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