July 2020

This year’s National Arts Festival was a virtual celebration of the South African arts and featured local Ceres band, Basic Aim, who joined performing artists from around the country on the online platform. With funding from Perdekraal East Wind Farm this group of talented musicians, were able to add their performance to the virtual festival platform.

Speaking on behalf of the band, Julian Hails explained how they had to contend with practice sessions during COVID-19 lockdown, but despite all the challenges and upheaval, they thrilled to have made it onto the prestigious event and hope that next year they will get to perform to a live audience.

“Despite all the challenges, it was and still is an awesome experience to be part of our country’s first ever virtual festival and we are grateful for the support from Perdekraal East Wind Farm and everyone else that has supported us,” said Julian Hails, manager of Basic Aim.

The pre-recorded work of the band has been loaded on the National Arts Festival Website. The vFringe is a pay-per-view video on-demand platform where artists can show pre-recorded work on the Festival’s website. NAF developed this platform to help artists generate an income from work that is presented online. There is no registration fee to use the platform and artists will receive 90% of the income generated by their ticket sales. All content will be pre-moderated by the NAF team, guided by universal online publication guidelines. Content presented on the vFringe platform will be secured and protected from being downloaded, copied, or shared.

Tickets are R40 and can be purchased here: https://nationalartsfestival.co.za/show/country-quarintine/