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FestBuzz bloggers Steve Kretzmann (West Cape News), Mike Loewe (Makana Moon) and Caitlin Ross (WCN).

This is post number 80. The pic is of us; FestBuzz, a three-person gig who produced the copy/content/stories/blather on this site.  (I exclude the Fast Forward podcasts. They were other people, but we still have to meet them.)
For the first time the NAF (National Arts Fest) hired journos for the blog show.

We loved it.

At first, we’d had a lot of ideas, but like so many media gigs here,  the sheer weight of the cultural current, stripped us down to something Steve Kretzmann (left), Caitlin Ross, and me, Mike Loewe know best: FIFO – File or …
With a combined experience in journalism approaching 40 years, to be handed an empty stage and told to perform a new act, was like saying: ’Fly!
Tom Wolfe, in his seminal New Journalism, has a description of a traditional news room. Every hack should read it. I did, in 1980, in my first year in journ at Rhodes. His advice was, roughly, flee now or die  an agonised death from boredom and routine.
Every time I looked into, or worked in, a South African subs’ room  I kept getting these severe head flashes. The subs in their caves, looked distinctly cadaverous. I’d imagine cleaners coming around in the mornings and having to prise the occasional slumped form off the computer, roll it from the chair into the bin and later heave the deadweight into the dumpster at the back …  Staying independent was, like, save your own life!!

To be handed a three-piece lineup by CE Tony Lankester and told to get out there and play to the fest audience was … strange.  Freaky. All this freedom!  Who was out there? We tried peering into the lights, but Steve was the only one who had the courage to come up with an answer:  “One.”
So to the power of that oneness, we got the set going with much clattering of keyboards, coffee, way too many cigarettes (I am the non-smoker), a rusty-coloured dog called Jedi licking himself underfoot, and a spectacular view of the festival headquarters — the Monument building — seen from my personal restoration project, a former servant’s quarters in my backyard.
At first, it was all spritzy openings and lightness and wherethefarkarewe birds flying around. But as the days ticked by, and the massive festival press of creativity kept turning and churning, we seemed to find a naais cadence and rhythm. Then, from the darkness at the back our imagined theatre,  some stats arrived from web maestro Matthew Buckland.
It shows some 1400 page views with readers spending almost three minutes each on the page. 

Now there are some poephols out there who like to carry on about how bad festival is. This feels atavistic. I will never forget the rage and raving that characterised festivals leading up to the mother of them all, the 95 fest. Amid all that decadent partying and freedom wahooing I picked up a distinct sense of loveless ness among the general crowd. Those were the release valve years and it’s taken 14 years to see and feel what is happening now.
I’m definitely perplexed by this. I cannot understand where this love came from. Even when a show bombs, audiences do not express rage and hate — dressed up as criticism — towards the performers.  It’s more how and why the show sucked. There are very few statements of hatred toward’s Grahamstown as an ailing hick town, or how ripped off I was, or how bad, really bad, everything was.
Because that’s how it was in the 90s. When we woke up in the morning and started clearing away the party wreckage, it felt bad, really bad.

Today,  I have no argument with the naysayers, no matter how venomous, wrong they are.  It’s because I’ve spent long hours in this festival, ending up in the early hours at the Long Table.
The violence of the past has faded. Yes, there are the occasional incidents of ugliness, but last night out on the streets I could only pick up the sweetest vibe.
To those downers, I can only say you are farting against thunder. Why? Because this festival has become young and very in. The nasty critics need to know that trying to tell a person aged 15 to 25 that this is a bad, terrible or useless event, is utterly ludicrous. Ask any older person, especially a parent, how it feels to be skewered on the wrathful contempt of a teenager or 20-somehting.

They will simply say: “You are old.” And, given our apartheid and post-apartheid abuses, they might be right. 

So on this  first morning of the rest of our lives,  this first day of no festival, I’m still struggling with the question of why now? Why at this point in our history do we have this incredible outburst of creativity? Not only from performers, but from the festinos too. People are into it. They have a way of moving, between shows, in the craft fairs, on the streets, which expresses one simple emotion: happiness.
Even when they are stripping and ripping, there is a palpable perfume of joyful engagement.  If the show was crap, it was poor characterisation, use of three staging techniques when one would do, and even “the acting was not very good, but at least the lead was hot!” If the show is good, they like to stand on their feet and really tell the cast that they are freakin awesome! And the look on the performers’ faces, is so surprised, so grateful.

It you want to know about this festival, you need to look at all the faces during the ovations.

Yes, too often older people, I am afraid to say, have behaved badly. But I don’t think they are here anymore. Instead, there are those who young at heart and in the kop. I’m turning 50, and I’m criticised for being an old hippie. But that’s just a label. I’m actually just an ordinary Seffrican oke who went through the biltong-slicer of life in the 60s,70s,80s and 90s. Now, in 2009 emerges from the bogs of our history, a cultural event which simply shines. It really does. It stands out way above the too-often mass produced and minority-controlled events in South African life.
This festival is not really, as national events go, a big financial investment, but the return in social, cultural and artistic terms, spreads far and wide.  It’s really funny to see how, in the last few years, government and other corporate sponsors have recognised this value and are here now.
What they are really doing is coming in behind a social and cultural movement driven by the artists and a  few key others.  In fact, sponsors are probably being swept along by it, and heads up to them for being able to recognise the underground social power of this crusading movement of artists.
Festivals do compete. Some go for niches. This festival, under its new, younger leadership, has been smart enough to retain and hold to its breast, the skills of pioneering director Lynette Marais. I know that while director Ismail Mahomed and CE Tony Lankester have been out there playing with the crowds and soaking up the intelligence, Lynette has been in her office tending to the levers of administration.  Festival has also been superbly served by another woman, media director Gilly Hemphill. Right now, they seem to be an awesome show themselves, a thrilling coalescence of generations of festival leaders. I’ve heard them talk to each other; it’s fresh. Just what festival needs as it finally, starts to blossom and blossom some more.
Back to the core: Younger people, are into the groove. They hold this event close to the chest too; they Facebook, they SMS and Mixit, they make it an extraordinary lifestyle event in their annual calendar.
In fact, there’s a distinct issue of whether the soccer crowed next year will in some way impinge on next year’s fest – all sorts of silly twakky shows abounding with  soccer balls.
There are some of my observations.
It’s been life-shattering.
So farewell, bi, check you next year, love u,
Mike

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