SandFest unveils headliner
Organisers of Sand Music Festival have announced that Nigerian star Mr P will headline this year’s festival at Nkopola in Mangochi.
Speaking during a press conference at Sunbird Mount Soche in Blantyre on Thursday, Sandfest head of marketing Nkhwachi Mhango said Mr P will be supported by several local and international acts.
He also announced other changes in the execution of the event from this year.
Mhango said they have transitioned to digital system of selling tickets; hence, festival goers will no longer buy tickets at the entry points.
He also announced a new format of performances which will have at least one headliner for each day of the festival. This is a departure from having headliners perform on Saturday.
This year’s event is scheduled for October 1 to 3 and will have two big stages. This is an attempt to avoid the setbacks they faced last year when the equipment on the main stage was damaged three times due to power failure and a storm.
Mhango said: “We realise that our biggest stakeholders are the people who do come to our festival. We have listened to the feedback that they have been sending to us. We are not a Saturday festival, but a three day festival.
“And it didn’t make sense to have all the cream concentrated on one day. Again, the issue of paying at the gate gives room for negotiations and conversations which eventually leads to delays in the processes.”
The early bird tickets are pegged at K30 000 while regular ones are at K35 000.
Mhango said they are hopeful that by the time of the festival, the Covid-19 third wave will have subsided.
“We believe in science, we believe in the vaccine, we believe that by October the threat that we are currently experiencing will be over,” he said.
Mr P is a successful Nigerian musician better known as one half of the defunct P Square. His first solo album, The Prodigal, was released in April 2021 and has hits such as Just Like That and Follow My Lead. Other songs he did while with P Square include E No Easy, Beautiful Onyinye, Bank Alert and No One Be Like You.
He left P Square in 2017, a move which disappointed many of their fans across Africa.
