I remember picking up a flyer for the first Lake of Stars over 7 years ago, from a coffee shop on the corner of Fashion Street and Commercial Street in East London (that’s how much it stuck in my mind). The message was Andy Cato of Groove Armada and Chibuku Shake Shake DJs on a beautiful lakeside location in East Africa, and I simply thought “THAT.SOUNDS.AMAZING”. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford the £600 flight at the time, but knew that, one day, I had to get my white ass out there.
Earlier this year I applied for a grant from Art Moves Africa, an organisation which funds travel within Africa for those involved in promoting the arts. Imagine my joy when said application
was duly accepted to pay for me to fly out to the other side of Africa for LOS 2010 and see what the hell all the fuss is about!!!
Now in its 7th year, the Lake of Stars festival is one of a handful of music festivals across the
continent which help to increase tourism into the country in which it operates, while supporting that country’s arts scene. Started by Englishman Will Jameson (who also ran legendary Liverpool-turned-nationwide club night, Chibuku Shake Shake, named after a Malawian beer), this particular event brings big name artists from the UK alongside local Malawian and regional acts, with names such as The Noisettes and Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly attracting a large international audience. The festival’s location, Nkopola Lodge, is probably one of the most beautiful festival settings available on earth, attracting people from all around the world and providing Malawians with one of their biggest shows of the year. The event is “Powered by Volunteers”, which gives it that extra bit of genuine love in the way it’s put together.
It was really insightful to get a chance to see how it all works, speak directly to the people
involved and witness the kind of elements that we’ll inevitably go through for our own event. I saw the problems faced by holding an event of this nature in an emerging nation, heard about how the festival has developed over the years and what the organisers had been through, and saw first hand how the event affected the local community. There was a nice blend of African
and European music and, the Funktion 1 soundsystem – donated by Funktion 1 in the UK to show their support for the cause – simply took me to another level, particularly during Aly Keita’s hypnotic balafon session and when MistaJam opened his DJ set with Rusko – Jah Hova, which was possibly the most explosive wall of sound I’ve ever experienced.
The epic round trip from West to East Africa and back involved taking off and/or landing a total of twelve times, various over-capacity battered vehicles across Malawi (including standard live chickens in the face, breakdowns, tent being stolen out the back then retrieved by random local hero, etc etc), a 5 star hotel stopover in Nairobi (nice one Kenya Airways!!), and “persuading” immigration officials to set our visa differences aside and let me back into Ghana...but, it was an amazing experience which certainly helped to put our event into perspective, and I would certainly recommend the festival to anyone who has the opportunity to get out there.
Big love to Will Jameson and co for having me, and to all the volunteers who helped to make it happen, bring the festival to where it is today and increase awareness of Malawi on the international tourist map. And also to friends old and new, Michelle, Pete and Em, whose photos they may have noticed have been 100% stolen as my camera has been giving me issues that I'm too upset to talk about.
www.lakeofstars.org
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