Malawi held its last performance at this year’s 37th Surajkund International Crafts Festival in New Delhi, India on Saturday with traditional dances.
Cultural Standards Officer from the Department of Arts in the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture James Thole said overall Malawi delivered outstanding performances as well as exhibited the best of artworks during the festival that ended on Sunday.
The Malawi team which included visual artists, dancers and musicians among them, Maggie Kadrum and Asante Maulidi, is expected back home this afternoon.
“In total Malawi had 14 performances at the festival which started on the 2nd of February 2024 and ran for 16 days. We had close to 20 African countries,” Thole said.
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He said the 37th Surajkund International Crafts Festival was a great success looking at the performances, management of pavilions, festival space, ticketing, security and safety.
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“These are some of the areas that the festival did well surpassing most renowned arts and cultural events in the world. This is when you take into consideration the increasing number of international guest countries, an array of local talent and the daily patrons to the event in each edition,” Thole said.
He said that despite the fact that the initial objective of Surajkund Festival is to promote underprivileged craftsmanship in India, which is basically promotion of visual arts, the event graduated into a fully-fledged arts festival with so many performances taking place at both designated stages and random spots within the pavilion spaces.
“This to an extent posed as a challenge to the organisers, who are now left with no option but to build capacity in their crew to handle staged performances. The 37th edition was even more challenging as a good number of countries brought full music outfits requiring band equipment. An example from Africa is Senegal that brought a national band,” he said.
Thole further said that Zanzibar had two hip- hop artists while Cape Verde had one whereas Mali combined modern music equipment and traditional instruments such as Kora.
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“Some brought accordions, keyboards and unlike the 34th edition that Malawi last attended, this one even had a drum set on stage,” he said.
Thole said the festival also stages fashion and comedy “but these two genres are a preserve of the local artists”.
“All these additions to the festival have made the management of the event, particularly staged performances more challenging. The organisers need to be commended for the effort they are putting in coping up with this great dynamism of culture,” he said.
Thole said Malawi needs to borrow a page from the same and begin to consider making some of its festivals all encompassing.
