Moke to grace HIFA closure

Thanks to the Royal Netherlands Embassy, this Amsterdam-based group of Brit-pop Indie musicians will be teaming up with “strong woman”, Chiwoniso Maraire, whose musical background ranges from reggae and rock to the quintessential spiritual songs and mbira music underlying Shona culture.
The Dutch are renowned for their fine painters and artistes, but although they have many musical traditions and are an international centre for electronic music such as Trance, they are not overly famous for producing rock bands. Some fans may remember Golden Earring, a band that was started up in The Hague in 1961 by teenagers, Kooymans and Gerritsen, and achieved considerable fame, but in general, rock groups were few and far between until the advent of Moke in 2005.
In six short years, Moke’s success has grown and the band have played to huge audiences in Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium, England, Germany and America. In Holland they are said to be so popular that shows are always sold out and the crowd goes wild. 
Songwriter, vocalist and guitarist, Felix Maginn, says that his guitar-based band performs differently from anything ever heard before. With Phil Tilli on guitar, Marcin Felis on bass, Rob Klerx on drums and Eddy Steeneken on keyboards, Moke have come up with a unique sound that is soon to captivate Zimbabwean audiences.
Having grown up in Northern Ireland, Felix Maginn is no stranger to sectarian violence and understands better than many musicians how crossing borders can change your life.
Moke’s highly successful album The Long and Dangerous Sea recalls a time of famine in 19th Century Ireland, when the Irish were faced with the choice of facing starvation at home or undertaking a perilous sea voyage to a strange country, to look for work.
Maginn has been quoted as saying that “writing songs is always like crying a lot, and seeing what comes out of it”, which partly explains why music and song have such potential to move us.
Moke could not have chosen a better base than the culturally liberal and tolerant Netherlands in which to develop their artistic process, and when the band arrives from Holland as an ambassador of freedom, the message will come from the heart.
Besides performing at the closing show of HIFA, Moke will also run an outreach programme at lunch hour in Harare’s busy First Street Mall. In addition, it’s hoped that like Johnny Cash, who visited Folsom Prison in California in 1968, Moke will be able to hold a concert and inspire the inmates of at least one of Harare’s prisons.
Anyone intrigued by the notion of a Dutch band performing Brit-pop with an Irish singer, will definitely join the Engagement Party at HIFA this year.