15 May 2014

Music lovers will, on May 16-17, get a taste of local artistes’ music as they will be performing at the Maitisong Outdoor Shows for free.

Speaking in an interview, Puna Moremi of Maitisong said the first show will be at the bus rank from 4pm to 7pm and the second show will be at Old Naledi from 2pm to 10pm.

This is the 18th year that Maitisong has been staging the show. The first free show was staged at Old Naledi in 1996. She said the only change for this year’s show is that it would only be local artistes, unlike previous years when there were artistes from outside Botswana.

“It is not that we do not want artistes from outside,” she said. “The fact of the matter is that we are restrained by our budget.” Moremi said the objective of the show was to give locals communities such as Bontleng and Old Naledi a chance to see Batswana artistes on stage for free during the day.

“The young and the old who are not able to attend shows at night are the reason this show started,” she said, indicating that the other reason is to give upcoming and unrecorded artistes a chance to interact with big stars and also perform to large audiences.

With the line-up including veterans such as Franco, Jeff Matheatau, Slizer, and more than 20 others, it is a mixture of the old and the new.  Asked how Maitising selected the artistes, Moremi explained that the performers registered with her organisation.

“Reports that we selected our favourites are not true,” she added. “Artistes came to us and registered to perform.” The shows are sponsored by the Department of Arts and Culture. ENDS