Poets come out in full force at Spoken Freedom Festival

Lingering, some connected, some missed – but sentences and phrases remained in the dark air at the Barney Simon Theatre during the Spoken Freedom Festival.

Amagama, as they say in Zulu, or marito in Tsonga, the word, curated by the wordsmiths at Word N Sound held sway on an opening night blessed by the gods of poetry themselves.

Words gave birth to stories, and poet and host Thabiso “Afurakan” Mohare shared a tale about how poet Napo Masheane had worked at the Barney Simon Theatre as a student and intern but she had never performed at the venue.

Masheane recognised the momentous occasion in her own words: “As Thabiso said, I grew up here [the Barney Simon Theatre]. I used to clean and paint here,” Masheane said.

“At times it was painful, and sometimes I would cry and ask myself why I was an intern, because I just wanted to be on stage.

“But at some point in my life I realised that if you plant a seed, you need to water the seed, and then you wait for that seed to become a tree that will bear fruit that everybody can share.

“I am very grateful to Word N Sound for bringing me back to Barney Simon as a performer.”

On this occasion, Masheane had prepared prose she described as “heavy” and offered to change it slightly with a piece that really got the audience involved.

Love in contemporary South Africa, in tandem with womanhood, was the focus of a piece titled God Find Me A Man: “God, find me a man/ Unbelievable, sizeable and dark.”

Giggles from ladies in the audience followed the opening.

Vilakazi delivered an honest sermon on social ills at the Spoken Freedom Festival.
Picture: Refilwe Modise

“A man who can carry all of me/ God, find me a man with a nine-to-five job/ A BEE brother with a square shoe/ A CEO, a CFO, a COO/ Or a minister without portfolio as long as he can build me a 32-room house with a view to die for, a house that will accommodate my grandmother, mother, sons, cousins and all my uncles and their wives”.

But more seriously, she wanted “a man who will give her five kids, and who will be a father to them and not a sperm donor”.

In conclusion, and more importantly, “he must not be scared to love me and walk next to me all the days of our lives”.

Gift Ramashia, known as Makhafula Vilakazi, was the chosen one on the night.

His gut bucket renditions of the material conditions of the majority of people in this republic have earned him a following that goes beyond the traditional confines of the spoken word sector.

Alas, on this night his performance was marred by a lack of rehearsal with his musical accompaniment, but his words rang true nonetheless as he narrated a township missive: “I am the sum of all the violence, all the cries and endless deprivation/ Swelling inside and coughing out a very heartless and dangerous young lion with a semiautomatic assault weapon/ Label me a dangerous criminal/ Label me a crazy happy trigger animal/ Label me the incarnation of the devil/ Label me a gangster because you could not save me while I was innocent”.

Words reigned supreme on the night in a celebration of natural tongues and adopted languages.