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Afrikadey! 20th Anniversary Celebration!
Prince's Island Park
Monday, August 8 - Saturday, August 13

More in: World / Reggae / Latin

There are but a handful of summertime events that can compare to the excitement and energy of Calgary’s Afrikadey! Festival. Abounding with visual and performing arts, the annual celebration of African culture celebrates its 20th anniversary this year by acknowledging the significant and lasting contributions of African ambassadors of change. Hence the official theme they have chosen for 2011 — “Rhythms of Change.”

“The last 20 years have proved the adage, ‘build it and they will come,’ with the slow and steady increase in support,” says artistic director Tunde Dawodu. “Now, 20 years [later], Afrikadey! is deeply rooted and well known in the Canadian arts and cultural community. Local bands like Dr Zoo, Mitsho Mundo, M5, Balafon and solo artists like Malcolm Mooney, Luis El Pana, Moyeen and others are going to play a pivotal role in this year’s celebration.”

Promoting positive growth within local and international communities, Afrikadey! hopes to construct new bridges between countries and cultures through music and dialogue. Conceived in 1991 as a concert with Fela Kuti and his 30-piece Egypt 80 band, it became the first African festival in Western Canada.

“Perhaps the bar was raised high with the festival’s first headliner being a world beat icon,” says Dawodu. “We’ve managed to maintain the calibre of performers over the years and also create new artistic careers for unknown talents.”

The diversity of the festival is staggering — and that a fest can boast an award-winning Canadian rapper, a border-hopping South African star and a University of Calgary filmmaker speaks to the remarkable strides Afrikadey! has made in the last 20 years. Read on.

SHAD

Born in Kenya to Rwandan parents, hip-hop sensation Shadrach Kabango, better known as Shad, is as Canadian as they come. Raised amidst the comparable comforts of London, Ont.’s suburban jungle, Shad developed his talents for singing and songwriting starting at an early age. His 2005 debut, When This is Over, was a gamble and a labour of love — he financed this first release himself while an undergraduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University, utilizing the prize money he’d won at the Beat’s Rhythm of the Future talent show. The unforgettable “I’ll Never Understand” holds a mirror to his own emotions, exploring Rwandan genocide and featuring original poetry penned by Shad’s mother, Bernadette Kabango.

“My musical style focuses on reflecting my experiences and my musical history, as well as my personal history,” he says. “I have Canadian roots, I have African roots and I have experiences within both kinds of music. Canada’s such a young country in terms of immigration from Africa, and we’re seeing the first generation of Canadian-African artists emerge. As an artist, I’m just feeling my way out and trying to talk about my experiences and my ideas and my life, and in doing that, you tend to stumble upon something unique.” Encouraged by his initial wave of success, Shad released The Old Prince two years later. Tapped for two MuchMusic Video Awards as well as making the short list for 2010’s Polaris Music Prize, the album also earned the emerging rapper his first Juno Award nomination. Along the way, he earned a master’s in liberal studies from B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, an accomplishment he considers a pragmatic necessity.

“School is something I’ve always liked and I’m realizing more and more that learning is really a privilege. It’s helped me approach music in a more genuine way,” he says.

Later, on a tangent: “It’s amazing how music has changed. I find myself saying that, even in the few years since I started, things are different. Things have really opened up — I’m going to be in Rwanda in September playing for the first time. I think there’s reverse diaspora in that African people who have lived or spent time in North America and Europe are taking my music back to Africa.”

Taking on the title of role model is another unexpected turn for the humble rapper — he’s the very antithesis of a genre commonly defined by megalomania. Acknowledging his upbringing as a source for inspiration, Shad parlays that experience on his third album, 2010’s TSOL (True Sounds of Liberty), which won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year.

“TSOL — that album was the first album that I’ve made that music was my job,” he says. “My previous albums were more about the energy of being young and really pouring everything into music. The same sort of things came up, such as keeping the subjects varied, and... representing the different sides of where I’m at as an artist. I must say that knowing I already had an established audience out there actually made me feel a lot more comfortable with, and less awkward about, speaking from the heart. ”

NOMFUSI

Known to the musical world as Nomfusi, 25-year-old singer-songwriter Nomfusi Gotyana has travelled a long road from her humble beginnings in the Eastern Cape province’s KwaZakhele township and eventually Khayelitsha (on the outskirts of Cape Town), South Africa.

Incrementally constructing a successful international musical career, the young Nomfusi is now a seasoned pro, melding South African musical styles with modern influences. Inspired by soul-stirring singers and songwriters such as Tina Turner, Lauren Hill and Aretha Franklin, Nomfusi injects each of her songs with soulful power and fiery passion, creating beautiful music while remaining true to her cultural roots.

Having lost a great source of support with the death of her mother, a traditional healer, in 1988, the then 12-year-old demonstrated her resilience in using her personal pain as emotional motivation to compose her first song, “Uthando,” which means “love.”

“Losing my mother made me understand what love is and the kind of love she was teaching us,” she says, “and that for me was to love myself so much that I would not let any situation destroy me, not even her death.”

That resolve was tested yet again, when her sister passed away recently. And again, the diminutive diva parlayed hardship into harmony, stepping into the recording studio to record Kwazibani. Named for her mother — it also means “who knows?” — her debut garnered acclaim from both fans and critics. And why not? Recalling the rhythms and melodies of Sophiatown jazz and inspired by musicians such as Abigail Khubeka, Kwazibani was embraced by the world-beat community as a work of exceptional maturity and honesty. Nomfusi even had her touching Xhosa lyrics translated into English as a nod to her growing international fan base.

Praised for her signature Afro-soul — described as a blend of rhythm and blues, jazz and South African contemporary music — she has taken her craft across festivals in Europe and North America, the petite-powerhouse brings the warm heart of Africa home to stay.

NIC DAVID

The culmination of 17 years of studying, living and working abroad, 13 Months of Sukur: Africa’s First World Heritage Site is a documentary film set in the verdant Mandara Mountains, in the northeastern part of Nigeria along the Cameroon border. Selected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site — thanks in part to the efforts of Nicholas David, Ph.D., an emeritus professor of archeology at the University of Calgary, and his wife and colleague Judy Sterner — the region is known for its tall agricultural terraces and colourful farming villages.

“This is my fifth feature about the region, the other titles being Dokwaza: Last of the African Iron Masters, Vessels of the Spirits: Pots and People of North Cameroon, Black Hephaestus, and Regenerating Sukur: Male Initiation in the Mandara Mountains,” explains David of his filmmaking background. “This one takes a broader look at the society and how the people of Sukur live and work within their landscape over a long period of time. The film puts together the 13 months that make up the lunar calendar, but for Africans it’s the rain that counts. I believe it’s the only ethnographic documentary that has attempted to show the full cycle of the seasons.”

13 Months of Sukur will be screened to audiences for the first time as part of Afrikadey’s opening night gala at the Republik. An introduction to the complex and compelling world of the Sukur people of the African highlands, the film unfolds month by month, revealing the close ties between agricultural cycles and traditional rituals. And with the region’s complex cultural landscape, the doc reveals how the ongoing integration of technology, society and ideology have indelibly transformed the montagnards and their region.

Capturing rarely seen ceremonies and traditions on camera since 1984, David and Sterner’s work isn’t strictly observational — they become part of the proceedings. Treated as honoured guests, and eventually members of Sukur society, the veteran academics are now sharing their intimate, unrivalled knowledge of the Sukur with the rest of the world.

“One of my first experiences was witnessing an important ceremony and I didn’t know what I was looking at. Two years later I saw the same ceremony performed, but with the benefit of talking with a local school teacher, I was able to get a hell of a lot more out of it. I was finally able to attract a linguist to the project, which was significant in that their language had never been recorded.”