And what a day
for us! We had three events on the programme and couldn't have had a better culmination to our HIFA week. First at 11 in the morning we had Patrice Naiambana's one man act, 'The Man Who Committed
Thought'. It's quite simple. If ever Naiambana comes anywhere to a theatre within say 500 miles, do whatever needs doing to be there get a ticket and see him. It doesn't matter what he plays. He
is with the RSC* and plays Warwick in the 
History plays and Aslan in their take of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. He could play the wardrobe or that damn
lamp post; I don't care, go see him! Yes, he is just that good! My guess is you have to be pretty damn good to come from Ghana and end up a leading man with what to all intents and purposes is
the best English speaking theatre company in the world and certainly the most Shakespearean one and play their Othello. He is a physically imposing presence but it's the voice that mesmerises
you. It's like a musical instrument in perfect pitch. It can roar to shake you in your seat, whisper and make the hair on your neck stand up and it can seduce like the mellow, honeyed sound of a
cello. And when he moves into Shakespeare's verse, well I am an admitted junkie and I got seriously drunk on the few quotes that were scattered across the performance of 'The Man Who'. The latter
is a self written one man show of about 80 minutes. It's an intelligent examination of, well, more things than I'll list. There is our relationship with language and its seduction. The danger of
believing the ideals you speak of. The history and intertwined responsibilities of Africa and Europe and as the Scotsman put it after Naiambana's performance at the Edinburgh festival; Inspired
by the courage and humor of Africans who have dared to challenge ignorance and oppression, this production 'packs more power into its 80 minutes than most would-be writers manage in a
lifetime. You are left gasping for breath.' We certainly came out of the dark theatre into the bright Harare sunshine needing time to come back from that place we had been transported to so
completely by a single man with a few props on a black stage.
*Royal Shakespeare Company
After the
wild ride with Patrice Niambana, things didn't really get much less stormy with the two Australian piano wizards Coady Green and Leigh Harrold. They started off 'gently' enough with a brilliant
rendering of Mozart's sonata for two pianos. Then followed a beautiful Porgy and Bess suite by Gershwin and Granger. They finished off with Ravel's la valse where you could hear WW I bombs going
off and the rot creeping onto the dance floor as imperial Vienna danced while millions died.
Then it was a rush to get from the recital room to the open main stage and the Slavic Soul Party. An American group with roots
deep in the Balkans. Their sound may be a tad less zany than Bregovic and the mad Gypsy brass band that regularly played in the dreary coffee shop below the old Delegation in Belgrade's
Ruzveltova street but they certainly brought me back to the streets of old Belgrade and two years in the Balkans in the late nineties. Susanne too enjoyed her memories from a Christmas holiday
where she and Mutz came prepared for an icy central European winter and finally made Christmas cookies in the sun in my garden.
Patrice Naiambana said HIFA was possibly the most important festival of arts in the world just now. He may not be entirely wrong because for the last 12 years HIFA has defied the odds and happened year after year come rain or shine or a violent election campaign right at the same time. And it has never been less than artistically honest and outspoken. Theatre, music, dance, all, year after year voice their opinion about the state of affairs in Zimbabwe and their criticism is never less than pertinent. The fact that this year the tone was particularly open and trenchant may have to do with what happened over the past few months in northern Africa and the Arab world and perhaps also with a feeling that change of one sort or another is ever more imminent here.
I may yet come back to Harare for another HIFA and the main stage on the green behind the Monomotapa Hotel... Edinburgh may pull me or Avignon or even Zurich but there is nothing else quite like HIFA because of where it happens.
Clockwise Duo are Jacqueline Kerrod and Marc Uys on harp and violin. Two brilliant young musicians that brought a World Premiere to HIFA yesterday with Robert Paterson's 'Freya's Tears'.
Then there was Britten's Lachrymae (Reflexions on a song by Dowland) where Uys exchanged the violin for the viola. They may be New York based but both are South African and another modern piece
specially written for them gave the nod to Cape Town and the Table Mountain: Péter Luis Van Dijk's 'dancing into light - an urban walking song'. It was good to see how appreciative the audience
was of the modern pieces. However, brilliant and interesting as the 20 and 21st century music may have been, there was no question for me that old JSB remains firmly on top of the musical
Olympus. The concert started with his Sonata in E major for violin and Harpsichord (BWV 1016) and nothing quite matches the luminous clarity of Bach's music. Remarkable too, how Kerrod managed to
make the Harp do the Harpsichord's job even sounding most piano-like in parts. She looked calm and unruffled waist up but, as Uys cheekily pointed out, there was a lot of pedal work going on
below down. Reminds you of the swan looking serene and unruffled above water and paddling furiously below to move against the stream. 
Das tolle an HIFA ist, dass man ohne grosse Anstrengung um die ganze Welt reist. Am Dienstag waren wir in Afrika, am Mittwoch in der Oper irgendwo, am Donnerstag in Spanien und
Portugal und am Freitag in Finnland mit dem Chor Philomela. In der Form, in der sie in Harare erschienen sind, sind Philomela 16 Frauen in rot, weiss und schwarz, die mit viel Bewegung Lieder aus
Finnland singen. Das sind Volklieder aber auch moderne Kompositionen die über das Leben von Frauen, ob moderne oder aus der Vergangenheit, erzählen. Der 
Chor war echt toll. Finnish scheint eine Sprache zu
sein, die sich gut singt und obwohl wir kein Wort verstanden haben kam der Sinn der Lieder und ihre Emotion sehr klar durch und nicht nur wegen der drolligen Erklärungen, welche eine der
Sängerinnen gab. 16 starke Frauen haben uns bestens gefallen.
Jeudi étais la journée ibérienne de notre semaine HIFA. We started off in the late afternoon with a Fado performance. Jorge Fernando and Fabia Rebordao
appeared with guitarist Guilherme Banza on Lay's Global Stage rather than the huge main stage. Despite also being open-air, the global stage with its steeply rising seating on three sides
and overhung by trees creates a more intimate space adapted to the performance. Jorge Fernando joked that Fado should be sung in the evening with little light and not in a broad 
African afternoon. he got his wish, as the performance
advanced the skies darkened and a winds started shaking leaves from the branches above. But we escaped the rain that followed later and the performance wa something rather special. They
mixed traditional Fado with more modern takes on it and it worked well for an audience that might have been overwhelmed by too much 'fadoish' melancholy. As it was Jorge Fernando has a beautiful
sombre voice and got the public to sing along to some of the lighter pieces and the young Fabia Rebordao seems destined for stardom. She has a huge and very expressive voice. Banza on the
Portuguese guitare was brilliant and there was a definite feel of old town Lisboa in down town Harare. Rebordao finished off the concert with a Fado version of 'Bridge over troubled waters' and
hat the public standing. The encore, was the most intimate moment with these three performers who clearly know and like each other well and have a complicity that shines through. They sat down at
the stage edge and sang and played without amplification not afraid of being lost in the pen space. Harare loved them.
From Portugal we went straight to Spain and Flamenco macandé. And this was perhaps part of the problem because the jarring screech of the male
Flamenco singer was a real distraction from the rather good dancing and music. Susanne thought it might have been less worse if we hadn't just come out of Fado with its intimate tone. I'm not so
sure. I think that guy would grate on my nerves any time and I'll look out to avoid Bernardo Vazquez in the future. The publicity said Vazquez Flamenco voice was attracting international
attention; I know just why!
The traditional second night of HIFA. Susanne, having recovered from a tummy bug was there and wowed by the place, the atmosphere and the show. Almost as soon as we had clambered onto the
scaffold and found our seats,
she remarked how the towering presence of the Monomatapa Hotel that curves behind the scene, reminded her of the opera staged in Bern with apartment buildings in the background. All around us
were some 2000 or so other Harare opera fans and the quintet of singers: Natasha Jouhl (s), Alenka Ponjavic (s), John Hudson (t), Quentin Hayes (b) and Philip Blake-Jones (b). The ladies got
things started with Offenbach's 'Barcarole'. Then came a splendid lament of Cleopatra from Händel's Gulio Cesare sung by Jouhl. Hudson was a less than entirely lyrical Pamino in 'Das Bildniss'.
He got help from 
Hayes who
steered things through a beautiful Posa-Carlos duo and then went on to sing HIFa's first ever Wagner - the Abendstern aria. There was the Fledermaus with Brüderlein Schwesterlein and Lehar's
Judita with Pojavic singing a sultry Meine Lippen die küssen so heiss! Blake-Jones did a kilted, funny and rather very good Figaro with largo il factotum. A new addition were the 'Festival
Singers' a chorus of local singers who did rather very well with Cavalleria Rusticana's Easter Hymn. Their earlier 'Va pensiero..' was creditable enough too even if it lacked some of the Italian
'oompf' and swell. My friend Col, who directed the choir, can be rather proud of their first HIFA appearance.
encore's were
Tonight from West Side story and then a world premiere, according to Blake-Jones, of a rediscovered Rossini: One o'clock, two o'clock three o'clock rock! And while the public roared, the
fireworks went off and another memorable HIFA opera night rocked to its end.
Sonntag 24. April 2011, Tengenenge steht auf unserem Program. Ohne Tengenenge kein Zimbabwe für mich! Dieses Steinhauerkünstlerdorf ist wie
schon die letzten Jahre für mich einfach ganz besonders wichtig. Dieses Jahr haben sie sich neu formiert. Es scheint es sind manch wieder in die Heimat zurückgekommen, denn es hat viel mehr
Kûnstler und es scheint als ob es dreimal mehr Platz und Skulpturen gäbe als in den letzten Jahren. Die Vielfalt der Werke maccht es meiner Meinung nach noch viel interessanter und die Auswahl
fällt einem leichter!
Schön war es auch für mich zu erleben, dass wir einen Riesenstein von David Bangura ganz unabhängig von einender bewunderten und auswählten.
Thomas hat bei zwei von mir gefundenen Werken zum Ankauf ja gesagt, und das macht mich auch ein wenig Stolz, da ich das Gefühl habe immer noch in der Künstlerszene dabei zu sein.
To start with a couple of dominant facts of the countries political life of the past few years:
In this context HIFA's 2011 logo, a drawing of a red or yellow diamond announced the colour, so to speak. HIFA has a history of saying what none else dare and are allowed in Zimbabwe. So it
was to a roar of approval that the opening show 'opened' with a rendering of 'Diamonds are forever' sung by a local singer with a great voice.
riches to men in white. While the material men were dancing a cleaning woman slid onto the stage on her knees and you saw her looking at the strange goings on. No one who lives here could
have failed to recognize the man in the spiffy grey suit and with dark-rimmed, square glasses and slightly jerky body movements as the old man himself. Nor was there any mistaking of the arrogant
men in white buying up the country for anything but the Chinese. In how many police states can you get away with this sort of thing? But here you can and HIFA does.
The scene changed and there was now a central figure on a throne on stage, indistinguishable between a chief and a Leopard. Before him came people who had been displaced, who were beaten,
imprisoned and finally, one of them killed. His reaction to their pleas was to give a little dry bread. Finally, men in uniform brought the corpse to him and he started ripping it open and taking
diamonds from it. The 'people' rose and a singer with a great voice sang: 'Go! There is the door!
You are not wanted here anymore! The roar of the audience sent shivers down my spine as the beast-chief was forced off the stage by the determination of the 'people'. At last the singer
took away his bag of diamonds and started to distribute them to all. The became lights and the dancers whirled with them on stage, to a song 'Peace on Earth' before throwing the 'diamonds' out
into the public. As the show stormed into the finale it was the pink uniformed cleaning woman who stood on top and sang her heart out. The heavens lit up above the 2-3000 clapping and cheering
audience in Harare gardens. HIFA, in best HIFA fashion, had started with a bang indeed!
I
hadn't been back since the new year so when we went to Tenegenenge yesterday, I was as surprised by the resurgence as was Susanne who had seen it a year ago. Then the little community in the
magical wood had felt encroached upon, menaced by the nearby Chinese chrome mine that had started functioning again after having been dormant due to the country's economic collapse. In the second
half of last year that had changed a bit and the village seemed at least less threatened my the modern world. Yesterday, Tenegenenge was resurgent and transformed. They had completely
redistributed the stands of the artists partly because a number who had been away had come back but also to renew the look and give new value to the myriad of stone sculptures that 'litter' the
woods here. The result is optimism and a feeling that a corner has been turned. That is confirmed when they tell us that collectors have returned and that a couple of dozen pieces lying together
in the grass are being made ready for a shipment to Australia.
As
to us, well Susanne was welcomed back with open arms by Blessed, Agrippa and Cosy (a.k.a. Cosmas) and I felt like coming back home to friends. We watched how work 
progressed from the
rough rock to the polished, heated and waxed finished pieces and from under-foot we were greeted by those which had sunk back int the earth. We had brought some friends with us who had never been
there yet and Joseph and Pascale were 
clearly smitten. Their talk was about how weight didn't really count if you transported your household by container when you moved from Zimbabwe ...
I of course have passed that stage long ago and my collection has been
consistently growing as have the pieces themselves in size. Yesterday, I was struck by 'The Hunter' by David Bangura, a first
generation Tengenenge artist. It's a big if slender piece and looks stunning in a leafy corner of my garden. Susanne went for a happily curious Owl by Juja Tembo and a quirky baby one by Cemet
Chakawa, the son of Davison Chakawa whose two smiling faces adorn my front garden. And, of course, Cosy had a truly lovely couple in stone that I just couldn't leave there...
Ljiljana Vecic, Mille sogni e il
Mare
Ku-ku-ri-ku e le Stelle
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