Pretoria’s biggest monthly music festival turns 9 years old

Get to the ninth celebration of Park Acoustics this weekend.

Image: Supplied

Pretoria’s biggest monthly music festival is turning nine years old in May. And what a journey it has been.

Park Acoustics has changed many musicians’ view of the Jacaranda City. Rekord has spoken to one of the initial organisers of the festival to hear what the past nine years have been like. Henk van der Schyf talks challenges, highlights, hard work, motivation and reward.

“I think the biggest challenge was to get the project off the ground and sustainable,” says Van der Schyf.

Van der Schyf says a lot of hard work goes into planning an event of this magnitude.

“But over the years we’ve built relationships with the venue and all of our suppliers, so after nine years everyone knows how it works and what their responsibilities are.”

Park Acoustics is not only about different genres and styles of music, but has become a great platform for creativity, art, diversity and colour in the city.

Van der Schyf says it saddened him that Park Acoustics could never bring Hugh Masekela and Johnny Clegg but adds the festival has broken rules, boundaries, expectations and most importantly, it connected people that all share a common interest and passion in local music.

“Back when we started out, there wasn’t a lot to do in Pretoria over the weekends, especially on Sundays. We loved music and noticed what a great success the Kirstenbosch Gardens concerts in Cape Town were. We figured we’ll create our own monthly Sunday concert with its own flavour and distinct characteristics.”

He says Park Acoustics is successful due to a persistent team who have organised a string of successful and popular music events with great live acts, at an affordable price.

“People can look forward to a new innovation for Park Acoustics – the Deep Roots mini market from next Sunday,” he says.

Rekord and Park Acoustics are giving away a set of double tickets to one lucky reader.

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