September 18, 2006
By Lucky Sindane
SOUTH African musicians are to get together to share ideas and find solutions to challenges faced by the industry during the third annual Moshito conference and exhibition to be held in Newtown.
Moshito '06 will take place from Wednesday, 20 September to Friday, 22 September at Museum Africa.
"We couldn't think of any other venue than Newtown," said the City's director of arts, culture and heritage services, Steven Sack. "Newtown is the cultural precinct of Joburg and it should be seen as the capital of the province's cultural scene and host more big events."
The minister of arts and culture, Pallo Jordan, requested that Moshito '06 be staged in September to coincide with Heritage Month, according to Moshito committee member, David Alexander.
This year Heritage Month puts music in the spotlight. "We were delighted to be able to contextualise Moshito in this way because obviously music heritage is something that we strongly feel about," Alexander added.
Under the theme, Celebrating our music, our heritage, Moshito '06 is set to draw over 500 delegates from around the country, the continent and internationally.
Over three days the conference offers presentations, debates and exchanging of ideas from speakers drawn both globally and locally, an exhibition and showcase events.
There will also be a photographic exhibition of music-related photographs from Peter Magubane. The Film Resource Unit will be screening about 10 music-related films drawn from their archives.
"We are really looking forward to Moshito '06 to see what the new issues are," said Sack.
"We have an excellent line-up of speakers this year. Moshito '06 is going to be bigger and better than before," said Nicholas Motsatse, chief executive officer for the Southern African Music Rights Organisation.
Among the speakers are chief operations officer of Calabash Music, Erich R Ludwig, who will address collective administration and the role of independent labels; Wolfgang König of SouthPool, who is an expert on exporting South African music into Europe; and Andrew Missingham, an independent creative consultant who co-produced Moses Molelekwa's Genes & Spirits.
"Delegates are in for a fantastically stimulating three days - that I can promise. We have worked hard at creating a programme that covers a range of topics and that is also not afraid of dealing with controversial issues of the moment," said Alexander.
Amongst the issues, which will be discussed at the conference, are:
- The role of music in the 2010 World Cup and beyond,
- Intellectual property challenges in the African diaspora,
- Selling South African music to the world,
- The role of women in the music industry,
- The preservation,
- Exploitation,
- And archiving of indigenous music,
- Making money from music downloads,
- The role of music managers in South Africa and
- A South African music hall of fame.
"We go into the third Moshito seeing tangible results from the first two successes that have come out of individuals, companies and representative bodies arriving at the Moshito conference and engaging with each other in a way that really moves the industry forward in this country," said Alexander.
The organisers have promised another dynamic conference element featuring speakers and topics, which promise to make this year's conference a memorable one.
The exhibition, which was established last year, has also been stepped up this year with more companies from the African continent expected to take part.
"We are still working hard at fine-tuning this year's Moshito, but I can tell everyone in the industry that they should book their places now because they will certainly not want to miss out," concluded Alexander.
People wanting to attend Moshito '06 can register online by logging on to www.moshito.co.za.
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