Dreaming and making art out of vocation, talent and profession is the essence of what the Now Kids musical project revealed, created as part of Maputo Fast Forward, which took place for the second year running.

In three sessions, between 5 and 7 October, at the historic Avenida Theatre in Maputo, the five artists on stage tried to represent a whole vision and feeling of making art based on families, society and their personal commitment. Art starts from a dream, passing through the idea of a hobby until it becomes an unavoidable path in life.

The show lasted around 50 minutes, with drama running through the music and words loaded with messages that break the inclination towards the abstract. From the outset, the versatility and multi-faceted nature of the emerging artists, many of whom have the talent to handle music production software, voice capture, the use of sound effects, the transgression of standards when looking at different artistic genres, were the starting points for moulding things in their own way and in a way rarely seen in Maputo.

All the diversity connected by the staging made the audience experience a different kind of show. This musical experience is what the initiative, implemented by 16Neto, this year financed by the Sound Connects Fund and the Swiss Cooperation, is all about.

Not wanting to be purely musical, but also without being theatrical, lyrical or erudite, New Kids conveyed the lifestyle of the new generation of Mozambican musicians, which ranges from abstraction, art for art’s sake to satirising social dilemmas. But above all, the cast showed that the idea was to let the talent speak in the way it commands at the moment.

New Kids revealed to a wider audience that is unlikely to be familiar with the 16 Neto programme, where these artists have already had experience of performing, the talents who alone, only understood and helped by new technologies, make their music and the performance of their lives, sometimes misunderstood or simply without access to traditional channels of exposure. 

And the protagonists and their roles. First of all, the way the show opened, with Hyuta Cezar, a young Hip Hop artist, sitting on the edge of the stage, at a table with working instruments, a sound desk, a computer, like a conductor, conducting the show closed up in his world of gadgets that many young talents certainly have in their bedrooms. 

Ita das Dores, until then a relative unknown, played the lead role, with Samuel Menezes Jr, who centred the drama, being the main character in a story of drug addiction and family fatalities in which music and art are a balm.

PIZZAWPINEAPPLES (pseudonym of Bruno Saranga), who gave a performance that stood out in the collective. Mozambican singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound engineer, photographer and visual artist.  

Bassist Márcia Luisa F. Pascoal, who has some stage experience, having played in the band “As Marias”, a project linked to UEM’s School of Communication and Arts, and in other musical projects, was confident in her playing and musical interpretation.

The New Kids will now be able to take wing and fly to other venues. The Production team is studying possibilities to programme more performances so that more people can enjoy the musical experience.