Carl Joshua Ncube re-introducing busking in the city

AFTER collaborating with Carne Casa, celebrity chef and comedian Carl Joshua Ncube has already embarked on a drive to make the restaurant more appealing through various means of pushing the local tourism drive.

Carne Casa is a steak house which gives patrons a fine dining world-class Brazilian experience in Bulawayo.

From all the interesting initiatives that Ncube has lined up on his stay at Carne Casa is the buskers' corner, a concept that is of interest in promoting local artistes' visibility in the city and to the world.

Busking is the act or practice done all over the world of performing in public places for gratuities in the form of tips, donations and small tokens of appreciation.

This concept was done by local artistes' way back in the 80s and 90s.

However, new age artistes shunned busking as they believe it is done by poorer artistes including Bulawayo's Don Williams, the blind man Tafi Dube.

As a way of giving artistes a great platform to showcase their talent either in singing, freestyle ball juggling, instrument playing and comedy, Carne Casa has given for free the open space on their premises for artistes to perform.

As it may sound as good as performing for peanuts, it remains a fact that the busking concept comes at a time when artistes are fresh from the Covid-19 lockdown which affected their from performances.

Besides, busking has created a lot of world stars including Tracey Chapman, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, The Passenger, Rod Steward and South Africa multi-award jazz sensation Zahara, to mention a few.

Looking at the clientele affiliated with Carne Casa, a star can be born anytime through this initiative.

Ncube will be at the background of all the activities done by artistes, assisting them on how they can market their craft to the rest of the world and also teaching them skills of managing their craft.

"Busking is not a new thing. Global artistes perform in high traffic areas and show off what they can do. With the advent of social media, an artiste on the street is more likely to go viral for doing something special.

"So, there is a certain way of doing this particular art form, it's not really about coming there and performing. It's about showcasing something that is relevant enough that will attract people to record you on the street," said Ncube.

He will be hands-on in assisting artistes.

"I will be in the background trying to teach artistes exactly how to make their art work for their social media space and how they can structure deals and get their craft from zero on the street level to being like super famous on a global scale.

"Look at Ed Sheeran and Justine Bieber, they are some of the buskers who went from the streets to becoming famous.

"These are the kinds of things that artistes should understand that the street is the stage which allows them to be known out there then later start adding activities on their social media that will eventually lead to them being superstars," said Ncube.

To make the concept even attractive, Ncube said they were engaging various sponsors to make the initiative beautiful and bring the carnival activities of the Brazilian streets to life in Bulawayo.