The newly appointed director of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival shares his plans and vision for taking the jazz festival forward, writes Stefanie Jason.
“Billy Domingo sings a sweet tune for the jazz festival’s future.”
The recent appointment of Billy Domingo as director of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival is one more notch on his impressive resumé in the music industry. Having started in theatre as a young man in the late 1960s, Domingo finessed his craft in the music industry while working behind the scenes for music productions and as a tour manager for one of the country’s biggest music exports: Lucky Dube.
“I toured with Lucky Dube for many years around Africa. And I was a part of the artistic direction of Faranani theatre production in 2002, which Mandela attended [at the Royal Carre Theatre in Amsterdam],” he says.
With plans to extend the event from a two-day festival into a two-weekend spectacle and to focus more on South African acts, Domingo spoke of his 16-year journey with the show dubbed “Africa’s grandest gathering” and of its future.
What can audiences look forward to in upcoming years?
I think we’ve been sold out for six years, so by next year we will definitely be running [the festival] over two weekends and making it a bit longer. I’m also looking to see if I can bring in some people from the film side.
There are so many beautiful music videos to be made and it’s important for young emerging artists to understand that genre. It’s part of the entertainment and it’s part of the music. We will start classes soon.
We are also expanding and looking at doing three if not four events in South Africa – one every three months. We are now just looking at timeframes.
For full interview with Billy Domingo by Stefanie Jason, see Mail & Guardian
