Hosting a global music festival for the first time over three days in December in an open field in South Africa may sound absurd. Yet, crazy people are the ones who change the world, and that’s exactly what Glen21 Entertainment has achieved. With the inaugural Hey Neighbour Festival, Glen21 redefined music festivals and let the world know that there ain’t no festival like an African music festival.
Hey Neighbour Music Festival Redefines the Essence of African Music Festivals
The first day of the festival started with me in the quaint hotel room of the Hotel Perte. The hotel offered Hey Neighbour festival goers a special discount so that they didn’t have to worry about housing if they weren’t keen on the idea of camping.
Not only was the Hotel Perte option quite affordable, but it was also a few feet from the pick-up spot for the Park and Ride option. As the location of Hey Neighbour was a little out of the way, Hey Neighbour offered dedicated buses from various locations in Johannesburg and Pretoria straight to the festival. I purchased the 3-Day Park & Ride Pass and chose Monte Casino as my pick-up location.
I almost regretted the choice on the morning when there was confusion and a few concert-goers, including myself, found ourselves on the wrong bus. Thankfully, this was rectified by the Hey Neighbour team (including complementary free drinks), and I moved past the issue and was ready to get the day started.
After making a friend on the Park and Ride bus, we made our towards the entrance of the festival and entered the world of Hey Neighbour. The good news is that there were plenty of food stalls and drinks to keep us fed and hydrated — it was a cashless event, so we had to preload our festival accreditation tags with money).
I immediately regretted not wearing my Fitbit watch because the festival grounds were sprawling. We ended the day not being able to fully explore every corner because it was just so big and there was so much going on.
Funny enough, it was through these explorations that I got a glimpse of headlining artist Khalid, who was walking the festival grounds himself, and I even made him laugh by offering to hold his umbrella for him.
Day 1: Tyla Makes Us Sweat and Khalid Makes It Better
Anyway, after we explored the grounds, we made our way to one of the three festival stages, referred to as the Main Festival Stage, to enjoy our first performance of the day from the talented and gorgeous Tyla. Besides performing some of her new music, Tyla gave the crowd an amazing rendition of her global hit Water and let the crowd know that South Africa would always be home.
Following Tyla’s performance was some more home-grown talent as Nasty C took the stage. While I don’t know much of his music, I can see why he’s garnered such a huge following, and he was the best person to get us hyped up for the incredible Khalid.
I’m always nervous about international artists performing in Africa for the first time because their preconceived notions of the “motherland” may cause them to give us a lacklustre show. Thankfully, Khalid isn’t part of this ignorant class of artists, and he gave us energy, love, soul and just plain good music during his performance on the stage. It was so heartening to see how joyful he was to be in the country and to see how many people in South Africa love and respect his art.
The evening ended with the American electronic DJ duo The Chainsmokers. They set the stage alight with pyro, lasers and a lot of flashing lights and amazing beats that I thought that the Hey Neighbour stage had transformed into Tomorrowland — it was amazing.
As the introduction to the three-day event, day 1 was a great sign of what we were to expect over the next two days, and we were more than ready to get ready for days 2 and 3.
Hey Neighbour Recap
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