We’re back in South Africa after our début international performance at the prestigious MIDEM festival in Cannes, France. A cosmopolitan group of music industry professionals and music aficionados from around Europe and the Americas were given a taste of some of the best South African groups at the IMEXSA South African showcase on Sunday the 7th of June at Espace Mimont in the heart of the trendy and taste-making city. We were billed alongside other established and up-and-coming South African talents: Bongi & Collin; Maxhoba; One People Band; Tsotso (Word-based productions); DJ Miza; Malondolo and Brenda Mhlongo. The result was a vibrant and uplifting showcase of quality music that spanned the entire range of everything good about South African music.

We opened the second set of the two hour performance, kicking off with stripped-down acoustic versions of “My Revolution” and “Silent Movie”. To end off the set, we introduced a new song to the audience, “It Comes to Nothing”. It was fun interacting with the audience, and we got them clapping along in the final a cappella chorus before launching into a jangling guitar and violin outro that left everyone tapping along.

All-in-all, we had a fantastic time at MIDEM. We met some great people and made several contacts who will help us share our passion for music with the rest of the world. We were also really impressed with the standard of the other artists we saw at the festival, particularly those in the new MIDEM Artist Accelerator programme. We want to send out a huge Thank You to IMEXSA and Christophe Chiappa from Reed MIDEM for their hard work in ensuring that these opportunities are available to performers.

About MIDEM:
Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale is organised annually in and around the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France. The trade show, which is billed as the leading international business event for the music ecosystem, has been held since 1967. In January 2013, Midem was attended by 6,400 delegates from 3,000 companies (out of which 1,350 had stands or pavilions of their own). The event was covered by 350 international journalists. Although there are attendees from all over the world, the majority of delegates have been from Western Europe and North America. Attendees include performers, journalists, publishers, producers, festival promoters, distributors, entertainment lawyers, industry thought leaders and music technology experts.