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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) 2010 - Index of articles, audio and images
The
arts are crucial - Interview with Manuel Bagorro, Director of HIFA
Upenyu
Makoni-Muchemwa, Kubatana.net
April 22, 2010
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Inside / Out with Manuel Bagorro
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 Manuel
is the Founder and Creative Director of the Harare International
Festival of the Arts (HIFA), the first Festival of its kind in Zimbabwe.
He is a classical pianist who has travelled for performances all
over the world. He splits his time between New York, where he works
with Carnegie Hall on various arts projects and Harare, the home
of HIFA.
What
do you do when you're not organising the Festival?
I do a lot of things! I think about organising the Festival. I dream
about the Festival itself. HIFA has become something of an obsession
for me. When you have been so personally invested in something it's
gives you a wonderful feeling of connection, where it constantly
plays in the back of your mind. Sometimes you're not even
aware that its there and then suddenly you have a conversation and
you realise that an idea has been distilling in your mind. The Festival
is very close to my heart. The rest of the time I'm in New
York and working on various projects there, some of which are somewhat
related. I work on a wonderful project with Carnegie Hall, which
is a big presenting organisation in New York City. What we do is
work with a new roster of artists and take them into different community
settings . . . so into prisons, hospitals, elderly care organisations
and shelters. I work on residency projects, performances, and work
with different sectors of society that don't have so much
access to live music. It's been amazing working with some
wonderful musicians in this new way.
Listen
Outside
of the Festival what have you accomplished that makes you most proud?
I like the idea of being a traveller. I'm not a great traveller
but still I think I'm a traveller. I like to get settled in
one place and have my little nest and have nice food, and go out
and know a city well. But as life has turned out, I've moved
around quite a lot. I'm proud of the fact that I'm flexible
and able to move to different places and learn from them and absorb
different ideas.
Why
Piano?
It was always the piano for me. Very early on I started to pester
my parents that I wanted to learn piano; that I wanted to be a pianist.
They of course thought what is with this crazy child of ours! What
I found out very quickly is that they were supportive of creativity
in both their kids, Maria as well. I was sent to lessons with an
old lady around the corner and it immediately became my special
thing. I loved it and I loved to show off, and my parents would
always make me show off to their friends. It was a lovely new thing
for me to have as a young boy growing up in Zimbabwe, and a very
different thing from a lot of kids who were more interested in sport.
Listen
As a
classically trained pianist what would you say has been your most
memorable performance?
There was a wonderful performance in Harare, many years ago. I was
already studying in London. I was very happy and doing well in competitions.
I was a very cocky nineteen year old, terribly confident and felt
certain that I had something incredible to offer, and that fame
and fortune were right round the corner for me. I came back to Zimbabwe
to do a big concert with a large choir - it was Beethoven's
Choral Fantasy. Sometimes when you're performing you get nervous
and you get worried about details, but for some reason, that night
I just knew that it was significant for me and I thought ‘how
lucky am I to be doing this' and I must enjoy it because this
was a unique experience. I remember it very clearly. Someone posted
parts of it on You Tube. Recently it was a great joy to look at
this old recording of a concert that I did many years ago. It was
a very happy time when the classical music scene was thriving in
Zimbabwe, but, more importantly I think that there was this sense
that there were many opportunities that would present themselves
over the next few years as a result of all the connections made
and that would eventually lead to the start of HIFA in 1999.
It seems
to me that you are inspired by the idea of an idea. In coming up
with themes for each Festival, do you hope that HIFA then becomes
a catalyst for the formation of new ideas?
I do hope that. The Festival, for me, has always been a springboard
for other things. I do think in terms of ideas and sparking things.
I think the Festival, on the practical side, has acted as a springboard
for many other initiatives. In terms of the theme and other ideas
around the Festival, I hope they create debate. In an environment
where people are struggling for survival, they're struggling
to feed their families, they're struggling to find jobs, sometimes
its difficult to justify to oneself why an arts Festival is important.
These themes around the Festival aim to be an acknowledgement of
the fact that we're living in an incredibly complex environment
and that perhaps the Festival itself will be at least provide some
answers to the question of whether the arts are important. My own
belief is that the arts are crucial. Having the existence of something
that's celebratory, that's optimistic, that's
forward looking, that's connected to the arts where there
so many ideas and questions can be expressed in a different way
and ideas can be communicated that may not be communicated in any
other forum - that seems to me a very important aspect of this Festival,
and has been embraced by Zimbabwean artists over the last five years
or so.
Listen
Critics
of the Festival have said that it is elitist and not within the
reach of the average Zimbabwean. What are your thoughts in regard
to this?
This is something that we have thought about a great deal. I think
its true in a sense, in terms of access for the majority of Zimbabweans.
The truth is as soon as you charge any amount of entrance fee; you're
already narrowing your audience enormously. There are many Zimbabweans
who do not have any disposable income. How do we justify that to
ourselves? My belief is that the future of the arts in Zimbabwe
relies on a ticket buying public who will support the artistic community,
who will continue to make the artistic community vibrant in Zimbabwe.
That is the audience who are the future of the Zimbabwean arts scene.
If we don't get them to put their money towards the arts,
our artists won't have a life or a livelihood.
Listen
In terms of
elitism, I think sometimes an emphasis on the quality of presentation
of an event can sometimes be mistaken for elitism. We unashamedly
make this Festival as bold and as brassy and as glossy and as beautifully
designed as we can. The other thing about the Festival is that we
try and present as much variety as we can, so there are things that
are unashamedly esoteric; things that have a niche audience. A Festival
that presents an Opera Gala where people drink champagne, next to
a community theatre project where there has been enormous struggle
to actually put that performance on stage . . . it seems to me that
presenting all of that work without judgement, without any particular
prioritisation, is really important at this time in Zimbabwe.
Listen
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