Long Live Busara!

New look, new feel, more to come: Zanzibar’s biggest music festival, Sauti za Busara 2026, proved a full success at a new venue.

After the festival is before the festival. Just when Sauti za Busara (Swahili for “Voices of Wisdom”) ended in February, the date for next year’s festival was announced for 11-14 March 2027. Simultaneously the dates for the second FuTopia, a community arts, wellness and music event, were fixed for August 8-9, 2026 (see box at the end).

“There is no going back”, commented DJ Yussuf, longtime festival director who was among the joyful crowd celebrating for four days at the new showground across the hospital Mnazi Mmoja in February. It had seemed unimaginable at first that Zanzibar’s annual music festival – one of the best and most respected in Africa  drawing more than international 10,000 music fans to Zanzibar – would move from the Old Fort, its familiar venue for 22 years. But with the ongoing modernisation of the fort with hundreds of years of Arab and Portuguese history, the music event had to seek a new home. It was to the merit of Busara Promotions director Lorenz Herrmann, festival director Journey Ramadhan and their team that the event with 26 bands from 15 African countries was smoothly shifted to the football ground in Kikwajuni, where they organised a complete new set-up for artists and crowd. Reactions were positive throughout: “Nearer to the sea, it was more breezy”, commented a regular visitor from Kenya. Jazz singer Pilanu Bubu from South Africa and The Ancestors from Togo got the crowd going on the second day. Even when Mali headliner Salif Keita cancelled his show due to illness, the festival mood remained upbeat. Good news: Busara’s survival was secured when CPS Africa, the developer of Fumba Town, and Busara Promotions signed a five-year extension of their co-operation.