SOUTH AFRICA – Some things should never be forgotten, and to commemorate the 1976 Soweto Uprising, the 16th June, also known as Youth Day, is a public holiday in South Africa. Events aimed at young South Africans are held across the country and this year a draw card was a concert by Zakes Bantwini held at the Durban ICC on Friday, 14th June.
Zakes Bantwini returned to his home province for the Upfront with Zakes Bantwini live concert. The show was brought to fans by the Ethekwini Municipality and Mayonie Productions. Black Coffee was commissioned to provide the full technical for the event.
“The only challenge was getting in on that morning – actually at midnight – to set up and be ready for the rehearsals at 2pm,” commented Llewellyn Pieters from Black Coffee. “But we planned crew shifts and it all worked out. The gear worked very well and everything was pre-addressed at the workshop and labelled for rigging.”
Among the lights, stood the Clay Paky Sharpy, which traced the air with their luminous colorful and super concentrated rays.
Black Coffee’s Simon Hampton designed the stage and set and was also the lighting designer and operator for the event. Well done also to Bradly Elipan who took care of the FOH sound.
Pieters is quick to mention a few other companies who assisted him to make the concert run as smoothly as it did. An LED screen and D&B Sound System was supplied by Hirezone. Neil Campbell and his team from Siyabonga were responsible for the camera work, vision mixing and DVD recording of the concert in HD. The graphics was by Cape Town based Craig Shackleton. Kerry Wood was responsible for the rigging and Gearhouse Durban assisted with the hire of two ton motors.