The Sunday Mail
Garikai Mazara – Leisure Editor
A phenomenon that has its roots in German culture is sinking fast into Harare’s social fabric and October, popular the world over as the month of drowning one’s sorrows comes to life as two beer festivals (and possibly more) hit town.
They might call it the Oktober Fest in Germany, slightly modified to the October Beer Festival here: a month of celebrating the summer and paying homage to the “wise waters”.
The first of the beer festivals, sponsored by listed conglomerate Delta Beverages and headlined by its Lion Lager brand, will see an international act performing.
Up till this past week, speculation has been rife that Busy Signal was top of the preferred artistes to perform. The confirmation of his coming, though, is pending completion of formalities.
Interestingly though, the current beer festival has diverted from the initial set-up where revellers were treated to a two-day binge in Harare’s Glamis Arena. Then it used to run under the Castle Lager brand and coincided with similar activities in the sub-region, where Castle brand enjoys much popularity .
The organisers shifted the brand from Castle to Lion Lager and from the two-day do to the current one-day shindig. The format in use features a top international musician (though Nigerian musician D’Banj was largely a disappointment last year) with most festivities centred around the evening musical performances.
The year before D’Banj came, the Nigerian twins P-Square were here and they had Hararians loving every moment of that beer festival. Before them was Beenie Man, who found Winky D at his peak and the jury is still out as to who carried that night.
Sensing that the Lion Lager beer festival might not be doing enough to quench Harare’s many thirsty throats — what, with temperatures likely to soar in October — another beer festival has emerged, this one modelled along the lines of “the original beer fest”.
Quite aptly, and perhaps predictably, it is called the October Beer Fest.
Beer will cost as little as USc20 per unit and in some instances as low as USc50 per pint (the famous “dollar-for-two”), and in other instances revellers will pay a token US$5 entry charge and drink as much as they can (on selected brands, that is).
“It is going to be more of a beer fair,” said one of the organisers, “and we will have the bars, night clubs and popular spots in Harare running an exhibition, giving imbibers a one-stop shop to discover what Harare can offer at night. We have decided to subsidise the beer at the fest so that it gets the real feel of a beer fest, that one can buy a unit of beer for as low as 20 cents or that with US$5 one can drink until the cows come home.”
Like similar international festivals, the October Beer Fest will have intermittent musical performances, with breaks to allow imbibers time to get down to what they would have come for — drinking. It will take place over October 24 and 25, with the Friday reserved for Zimdancehall, the latest craze in town.
“Dancehall will be the theme on the Friday, with performances starting around 10pm, rounding off as the sun rises Saturday morning, but with the beer fest continuing its business as the day gets warmer. Performances and drinking will be the order of the day till Sunday morning as the show closes down. That should be enough time for a beer fest. If the event gets the support that we hope it will get, then next year’s event will be bigger and better,” said a spokesperson.
This beer festival is to be held at the Sunset Arena, the open space bordered by Exhibition Park on the west, Rainbow Towers to the north, the Harare Magistrates’ Courts to the east and the Harare Fire Brigade Station to the south.
After successfully holding events like the recent dancehall show officially marking the close of the Harare Agricultural Show, Sunset Arena is fast becoming a popular spot for outdoor festivities.
Though a novel idea this side of the equator to celebrate summer, beer festivals are commonplace in other cultures, where beer-brewing is a tradition, heritage and economic activity to be proud of.
And the local brewing tradition is growing in stature, if the local industry is anything to go by.
Hopefully imbibers and visitors will be shown the various stages that the local brewing traditions have gone through over the years, so that they can leave with not just a satiated thirst — but also a bit of knowledge.
