Celebrating, sustaining African narratives

In a bid to celebrate the African culture, a group that promotes African values, Bantu held a show at Kwa Haraba Art Gallery and Café in Blantyre on a Wednesday night whose theme was ‘Sustaining African narrative’.

Paintings of African women on the stage blended perfectly with the dim lights, the atmosphere and the theme of the show.

The mood was jovial and exciting as poets and musicians went on stage and used their skills and talents to tell African stories in line with theme of the show.

In an interview, Bantu founder and activities coordinator at Vilipanganga Poetry Movement, William Shumba, said Bantu is a platform that has been created to share African stories.

He said the concept seeks to accommodate all African countries and aims at sharing cultures, learning and growing from each other.

Shumba said: “We are slowly forgetting our pure African stories which are very powerful in the social and economic development of our nations. The idea is to bring light to this section which is slowly dying.

“We want to learn from our forefathers how they were handling numerous issues. They had good health, and the agricultural concepts were very impressive, they had very good relationships in their communities. We would like to embrace such.”

One of the performers at the show, Viwemie Thondoya, whose voice attracted the attention of the audience when she did a cover of Oliver Mtukudzi’s song Nelia, said she was excited to be part of the show.

“Tonight was really amazing. I should say that I really loved the theme. It was really amazing how we present ourselves in terms of dressing and the stories that people told in their poems and in the music,” she said.

Another performer, Aisha Kylie Edward, who spoke on the role of women in Africa, urged Malawians to create many platforms for artists who do spoken word poetry and recognise the upcoming poets in the field.

She said: “We have a lot of talents that our country does not embrace and the Vilipanganga Poetry Movement creates a good platform that enables talented poets to showcase their talents.”

Shumba said people should expect more levents of this nature which will create a platform where they are going to dress, eat, dance and behave African.