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Yeukai Karengezeka Arts Correspondent
Organisers of the annual Zimbabwe Festival of Bira that will run from August 5 to 9 have introduced a dancehall act for the first time to take part at the forthcoming event.
The festival that will take place in various areas in Harare and Guruve will feature the rising dancehall chanter Munashe Tanjani aka Spiderman and renowned reggae outfit from Sweden called VibeTricks.

Sweden based artiste Manlukerz who is the event organiser said they decided to incorporate dancehall artistes to bring diversity. “We realised that we need to diversify in our operations and this year we have included participation of a dancehall artist for the first time.

“Although we are into traditional music we believe that there is need to share our skills with artistes from other genres for diversity sake,” he said.

Some of the local artistes expected to perform at the festival include Manlukerz himself,the mbira ensemble Mawungira eNharira, Ambuya VaJestina Madhinga, among others upcoming artistes.

Manlukerz said preparations for the festival are at an advanced stage.
“Almost everything is in place now and we have already acquired all the visas and work permits needed by the visiting Swedish artistes who will be participating at the event,” he said.

Manlurkerz who is also a versatile mbira artiste said this year’s festival is bigger and better.
“This time we have upgraded our event and it has become bigger because we will conduct some workshops during the course of the festival.

“The workshops are meant to train artistes on how best they can market themselves in the flooded arts industry and artistes will be taught how to create websites and blogs for themselves,” he said.

The second part of the festival will be held in Stockholm, Sweden in September.
Manlurkerz said the purpose of the festival is to showcase Zimbabwean traditional culture and some selected artistes will take part in different festivals in Sweden this year.

Zimfeb was formed in April 2007 and its objective is to bring people together through celebrating cultures from different parts of the world.