For over a decade, Concerts SA, a live music initiative, played a pivotal role in helping musicians in South Africa organise gigs and tours. Concerts SA began out of wanting to foster a healthier and more supported ecosystem and has since evolved into a platform that aims at sustainably supporting artists. As of September 2024, Concerts SA is one of the partners in the Festival Enterprise Catalyst (FEC), as a collaborative partner joining other major arts South African festivals. The FEC is a match fund meaning all the festivals invested R10 million which was matched by the R10 million from the Jobs Fund, in order to fund art projects.
Concerts SA started in 2012 and received significant funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other smaller organisations like the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO). Current head of Concerts SA, Andre Le Roux explains,“There were two years of negotiation before Concert SA hit the ground, and then we ran a six month pilot. It was about live performance, touring circuits, supporting venues, supporting promoters, and the first decade was, how do we support artists to tour, not only in South Africa, but in the SADC region? How do we stabilize venues? How do we support and incentivize promoters? What can we do that’s catalytic? And how do we build this? So from theory, we developed models and grew what a lot of people thought worked.”
The project ran for 9 years, supporting over 9000 artists in over 2000 venues. Since 2020, Le Roux has been running it with an independent project management and research team. In July of 2020, despite being in the height of the Covid19 pandemic, the team developed Digital Futures – setting in motion a project centred on developing digital mobility- which resulted in supporting 354 projects during and since the pandemic, with the aid of funding from SAMRO and the Norwegian funders.
In 2022, the Concerts SA reached a halt due to the Norwegian funding coming to an end. But Le Roux’s good business skills meant he was able to find support to keep the initiative afloat. After he began to negotiate an engagement with the FEC, as a way to take the Digital Mobility Fund to physical mobility. “I also knew the festivals framework, because I’d been on the board of the KKNK for seven years and I was on the board of the Market theater for the past 7 years, so most people see me as a music person, but actually theatre was my first love”. The FEC required all partners to invest in order to build a fund that could support more artists, funding which Le Roux procured from the Swiss Arts donors through Pro Helvetia and SAMRO.
Concerts SA is the biggest singular partner investor of the FEC, besides the Jobs Fund matching contribution. Their intention with their involvement was to create space for a mobility fund that was physical, where artists could apply for R45,000 and tour either in the SADC region or in South Africa. As a result, over the last four months since February 2025, they supported 217 live concerts, 127 venues, in 7 provinces and 5 SADC regions. A small team works for Concerts SA and Le Roux describes the project as intense due to managing 61 projects during this time, as well as negotiating real-life situations like the Mozambican riots.
“With the Concerts SA, we were able to bring to the table the regularity of performance in venues. Now that’s not a festival, but we created work. So that was just in the last couple of months, the number of gigs increased. What we do is not funding, not sponsorship, but is a subsidy that needs to be catalytic. By catalytic, we say it’s a subsidy, and then some artists realize they can do more. For example, pianist Adam Glasser, did gigs and about four workshops.”
The result of the FEC partnership thus far has been the ability to support multiple musicians – especially musicians who may play in various bands. “That four month injection allowed there to be some continuity in the ecosystem, more than six gigs at Chiesa (Melville), a number of gigs at the Commons and two gigs at Youngblood (Cape Town), gigs in Swaziland,more than eight gigs in Tanzania and also the Sauti za Busara Festival. So the catalytic investment meant that we were able to grow.”
What does this look like for job creation? Le Roux, who previously worked in government says “Our sector is not based on jobs.The term the gig economy comes from our sector, which actually doesn’t mean jobs. It means work.” He adds, “For example, Sipho Mabuse doesn’t have a job, but he’s got this little number called Burnout, – a piece of work that generates income. That income means revenue which means wealth creation. That same work gets performed internationally and generates income. So in my paradigm, we reported on temporary jobs. But in my view, it’s about work and works.”
This work can look like an artist performing, session musicians, sound engineers, venue owners, booking agents, road managers, publicists, bar and waiting staff, “The direct jobs are the jobs that we created in terms of temporary work for artists themselves, that’s the priority. But that carries an ecosystem that generates more work, more revenue spent, and that work can grow in future. As Concerts SA, that’s how we look at the jobs paradigm.”
“When you talk about the gigs and the concerts, the ability of those works to tour generates something much more important; it generates consumption. Quite often in the arts, you apply to the NAC for money to stage something. The focus is on production. Even at festivals, the focus is on how good the production is. I turn around in a gig or a show, and I look at the audience, because if there’s consumption. Even when Concerts SA is gone, hopefully there’ll be more people visiting a venue.”
The importance is not only the touring of productions, but being catalytic with igniting new audiences to experience different music. This includes monitoring what draws audiences to a gig, or want to return to a venue or attend a festival. Le Roux says these are ideas Concerts SA is interested in exploring with the FEC partners. “I think that in some of the areas of collaborative thinking and work that the FEC would do, the main thing we have under the FEC term is not the ‘festival’ but ‘enterprise’ and ‘catalyst’. Every venue, every promoter, every artist, if they’re going to be in this business, they have to be an enterprise. Our funding is catalytic.”
These collaborations are important for bringing different levels of good productions that can tour in either circuit. “You suddenly have a very powerful network of collaborators, not only to produce work, but to cultivate consumption and new audiences.”
In this regard, Concerts SA encouraged artists to start applying to these festivals. An example is having artist Lefa Mosea perform at the Mandela Bay Arts Festival – a smaller festival run by the National Arts Festival. It was supported by Concerts SA which is why he could tour to Johannesburg. So this is how an ecosystem between festivals can work. “Then synergy doesn’t become a theoretical word, it becomes a real word. The other challenge, we realized, is to encourage audiences, you need to tell them what is going on? It’s about cultivating tastes, growing audiences, and that’s that aspect of the FEC that’s going to be very important for collaboration.”
Having the ability to invest, buys you a seat at the table of the FEC – as it currently stands. However there are instances like the production, Laatie Mettie Biscuits, produced by FEC money that ended up at The Market Theatre (a non-FEC partner), because it was polished and they contributed to the ecosystem of producing the work.
The big difference between Concerts SA and the rest of the festivals that form part of the FEC, is that the festivals solicit the work that they want and curate that work for their festival platform. On the other hand Concerts SA puts out an open call for applications, which receives hundreds of applicants, finally chosen by a board of adjudicators.
“It’ll never be fair to go to a gig and to say to an artist, ‘you must apply’, because then they think that they’re soliciting from me, or me soliciting them, and I make the decision, and I never make the decision. The decisions are made by the independent panel of adjudicators and an independent chair. There are times when we only have 50 grants and we have 400 applications. When we announce them, I make 50 friends and 350 enemies because the adjudicators don’t want their names known. And I take it on the chin, because those adjudicators are professionals.”
“The dream for me, for the FEC partners and Concerts SA, is to be able to lobby the South African economy through the Treasury to invest in the creative industries and the arts and music in particular, directly to create work and shift that paradigm. And if we do that, we will prove that the arts, culture, music, can actually generate income in this economy….If we build a pilot model, we generate more of an ability to tour, more of an ability for revenue, more of an ability for consumption, and more people will be able to sustain their careers in this sector.”
He iterates, “What do we want as Concerts SA? Within the FEC, to be the trusted partner, to lobby Treasury for direct support, and to be the trusted intermediary to do so, because I think we’ve proven that track record already.