Back To The City and the pros and cons of a celebrated festival

This past weekend, Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown was abuzz with the sounds of rap music. Hordes of heads emerged to head Back To The City (BTTC) to take in some of the best and brightest acts local hip hop has to offer.

As usual, it was a jovial affair, and the organisers even fitted the grounds with a few theme park rides which can be a harrowing prospect at first but turn out to be a refreshing addition to the festivities.

Blxckie

Durban’s finest, Blxckie graced the main stage and had the crowd writhing with delight.
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Notice how my first highlight has nothing to do with hip hop. I spent most of my time at the festival in the evening, ducking the sweltering midday heat. The main stage had an array of performers. Blxckie hit the stage with a poison green hair do. Nothing wrong with looking like a Sprite if they have you on their books as a brand ambasador.  Maglera Doe Boy had an interesting performance with a crew of dancers. Truth be told his set felt a little odd, but he turned things around when he brought out Cape Town’s Ziggy 4x and together they offered up the Honne remix.

Moozlie and Nadia Nakai also took to the stage and seemed to have fun together. The Joburg audience is notoriously hard to please, and this was another of those nights. Drawing an abundant reaction at a hip hop festival of this nature will always prove to be difficult.

 

Even Benny The Butcher from Buffalo New York found things slightly strained as he delivered a memorable set comprised of some of his best work. He did manage to have the crowd singing along and completing his sentences.

There is infamously a vast discrepancy in the sound when local acts perform, unlike international visitors. This might be done to bolster the performance of the visiting act, but it is hard to stomach. All night the sound was just not at an optimum with people struggling to hear acts even from close to the stage. We had the pleasure of enjoying the evening from the Sprite lounge and even from that lavish vantage point, lyrics were at times difficult to make out.

This is until Benny takes to the stage and it’s like a switch is flipped and all of a sudden, the sound is crystal clear. Late rapper AKA famously lamented this practice, and it does leave a lot to be desired. If a festival only has one international act, then for most of the day, we as the audience, are subjected to inferior sound quality. It makes no sense and dampened things like the 20-year celebration of Zubz as part of the heritage ensemble.

One thing the festival always does right is paying homage to prolific artists from hip hop-adjacent genres like kwaito. This year, they had the legendary Thebe dispense his timeless brand of live performance, and a few of the younger acts would do well to take note of what goes into having a long-lasting stage presence.

And as usual, a few rappers insisted on urging the audience to sing along to hooks by counting from one to three before the drop…we’re obviously still doing that and then having the DJ insert gunshots at the end of a decent record or set. Why so many rappers adopt this same approach is beyond a lot of us but hey.

I’ll skirt around the ever prominent calamity involving artists taking to the stage with a backing track playing. That is the height of disrespect and for the most part, those who resorted to this approach will not get a mention in this article because you basically weren’t at the festival. We could’ve just stayed in the car and bumped your set on Apple Music.

 

The overall festival has become a safer affair to engage with. The once perilous walk from the festival area to Newtown Junction Mall has been secured to ensure the safety of festivalgoers. To die-hard fans of what the festival once was, it feels almost gentrified. A bit too safe for hip hop but it is always nice to go home with all the things you came out with. It is an overall cleaner affair with the floor less strewn with trash and plastic as the night progresses and even using the restroom involved less gagging than it has in past years…pause.

There used to be a stage in the street below the overpass where Gwigwi Mrwebi and Henry Nxumalo Streets meet. This seedy looking sector was once home to the legendary Ritual Media Store. That whole street was cordoned off and this area would usually host the producer beat battles and things of that nature but it has since been done away with, something we would compel organisers to rethink.

Also the iconic repainting of the columns that prop up the highway overpass were not as aggressively repainted as we have grown accustomed to. A few of the murals that grace these were there before the festival and remain as they were now. Repaint all of those, bring that artistic and living contribution to the city, back, immediately.

BTTC is still a worthwhile ticket purchase and perhaps this year wasn’t as noteworthy as Talib Kweli, Pharohe Monch and Madlib all taking to the stage as they did last year but this gathering still has enough pull to be relevant. The glossier approach may have to be toned down and a touch of grime reintroduced.

 

 

by Phumlani S Langa from Drum

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