Gugulethu Jazz Music Festival cancelled

Loyiso Langeni

02 November 2013

The Gugulethu Jazz Festival 2013 has been cancelled amidst frustration from members of the public who bought tickets and no official word from the event organisers.

One of the Bush Radio presenters, Sive Msolo who was at the venue where the festival is supposed to take place said he was told by Platmedia management that they are experiencing problems with sound equipment are the venue. They would only know within two hours if the event would go ahead or not. This was at 5pm and the event was scheduled to start at 10am.

The unnamed Platmedia Management official also said that they are not aware of artists pulling out of the event as speculated by the media in the last week. Artists, like Zahara, Thandiswa Mazwai and Simphiwe Dana who names where on the bill organised by Platmedia Management said on the social media network, twitter that they were not performing or had not be paid to perform at the event.

Bush Radio was a media sponsor for the festival and according to the station's Managing Director Brenda Leonard they were approached to do a competition, giving away tickets and give some airtime to promote the artists.

"We are not the organisers of the concert. The organisers are PLATMEDIA Group (Pty) Ltd and people who paid for tickets should contact them.

We would like to apologise to our listeners that won tickets via the competition we ran, and by wasting their time by going to an unorganised festival,” Leonard added.

The station tried several times to contact Platmedia group, Managing Director, Shaun Sishuba for comment by as yet he has not returned the station's calls.