Moshito: Festival in The Desert & Comrade Fatso

Everyone wants to go to the Festival In The Desert. Mani, the festival producer, glides through our desire to get free tickets with alacrity. The people who have been (mostly journalists) make it clear that this is not a day on the grass before going home to the jacuzzi. "Two months later you’re still getting sand out of your ears," says Daniel from French radio. Somehow that makes it sound more desirable. Mani says that about 10,000 people attend, transported for two hours from the airport across the desert in 4x4s. They stay in tents and use makeshift toilets and rudimentary showers. We’re making plans, people from Berlin, London, Johannesburg, wondering if we can get the kids out of school for a week, whether we have the money. What a global village we’ve become when we can say, and mean it, "See you in Timbuctoo next January".

Mani at work.

The musical event of the week is Comrade Fatso and Chabvondoka. Fatso is a white Zimbabwean with dreadlocks to his waist. He bounds on to the stage and immediately wants to hear some noise from the crowd. He’s charismatic, energetic and has no fear. He is not fat. Chabvondoka is a trio: a drummer who plays like a percussionist, a six-string bass player that rumbles like Bootsy and builds complex rhythms that don’t do what basslines are meant to do, and a guitarist who does that Zimbabwean thing of playing guitar like he’s playing an mbira.


Fatso raps about hunger, identity, the struggle. As he warns us, even the love song sounds like a political rap. I’ve never before thought about what it’s like to be a white underground agitator in Zimbabwe and I bet you haven’t either. I’m guessing he ducks and dives on a daily basis. He has a great line in hardbitten humour: "We didn’t come here to do a gig. We came to shop for groceries. If you go to the shops tomorrow and the shelves are empty, that’s us!" He looks down at the guy videoing the performance. "I hope your good, because there’s no authorisation." He looks up at us. "In my country if you don’t have authorisation to make videos you’re taken away and beaten up." He looks down at the cameraman again with a hard look. "So. Do you have authorisation?" The band kick off the next song.


The music is stunning – loud, aggressive, fun, full of delicious beats. As the songs keep pouring off the stage it just gets better and better. At one point I’m thinking, "I’ve never heard this sound before."

On the dancefloor the cameraman starts dancing with a delicious woman with a great line in booty bouncing. Another man steps in and in West Side Story choreography fights off the cameraman, who steps away with his hands in the air in defeat. After bumping hips with the woman the victor leaves her and steps across the floor to further threaten the cameraman, who’s back is turned, hands in the air, shaking his head in meekness. But then he turns and struts across the floor, muscles in between the couple and rotates around until the three are shaking and strutting as one unit to the rumbling bass and percussion.

When Fatso announces that CDs are for sale at the door I’m straight up there. It doesn’t sound urgent the way it did on stage, but I dig it. There’s a lot of love and attention in it and it deserves your love and attention as well.

You can buy it off their Web site. You won’t be disappointed.

http://www.comradefatso.com