
10 Years of Park Acoustics
When it comes to great South African festival bookers, very few are as revered as the mighty Henk Van Der Schyf.
Cutting his teeth at the notoriously wild Hotbox parties, to starting Park Acoustics, Gauteng’s most loved Sunday Festival, who can forget Mieliepop and of course his involvement in Tshwanefontein and all the magic going down at African Beer Emporium.
For years Henk was Mr Indie and broke more indie acts than anybody else I know. He still hasn’t lost that indie flare but now books a much wider array of acts and has a signature booking style which only knows one thing and that is a damn good time. Our bet is that Henk has made more PTA music lovers squeak tekkie than anybody else.
Here are some interesting stories behind Henk’s 10 Years of Park Acoustics playlist:
“One of my biggest inspirations and role models in the industry is Misha Loots(your business partner). As head of promotions and international booker for Oppikoppi and Hilltoplive, Misha helped us secure our headliner for our 5th birthday, US indie-synth band St. Lucia.
Pretoria progressive rock band, Isochronous were the first act to headline Park Acoustics back in May 2010 at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens. It was a warm autumn day and we surprisingly actually broke even and made a couple hundred bucks that day. As music promoters, that is often not the case and I remember being really excited about the future of Park Acoustics.
A 21 year old Henk somehow managed to score a MC job for Hilltop Live at Hatfield Carnival(Jool) in Feb 2010. Gang of Instrumentals performed on the stage I was MCing in Burnett street in front of Cool Runnings and they absolutely blew my mind. It was the year of the FIFA world cup and SA was really excited and positive and this band was a true symbol of unity. I booked them to perform at Park Acoustics on 11 Feb 2011. Except for the first event, Park Acoustics lost money for 9 shows in a row. I remember dealing with the bands manager and promising that we will pay them asap. I suspect the band wrote off the fee, but 7 months later I emailed the manager, apologised for the wait and announced that we managed to settle our debt. He in turn said he’ll work with us any day again.
August 2011 we made our first bit of money since we started in 2010 and the next month we lost it all with a big gamble doing “Freddy Mercury for a day” with Joseph Clark and Universal music. We lost more money than we ever imagend we could and was royaly fucked AGAIN. In October SA born, US based rock band, Kongos reached out to us and mentioned that they are touring SA in December and asked if they could perform at Park Acoustics. Their single “I’m Only Joking”; just broke on MK and they were everywhere on the radio leading to the event. We managed to sell over 2600 tickets for the event, pay off all our debt and for the first time really believed that Park Acoustics could be sustainable.
I absolutely love CTS, but this remix of Bra Hugh symbolizes the one that got away. I’m pretty satisfied with over 480 different acts performing on the Park Acoustics stage over 10 years. Unfortunately things never lined up in time to have the greatest SA musician of all time on our stage. RIP Bra Hugh Masekela.
Fokofpolisiekar are just phenomenal, they absolutely revolutionized the Afrikaans music industry and every time they play Park Acoustics I want to pinch myself to make sure it’s real. 14 year old myself is so proud of myself. I normally listen to all the albums all day during the week leading up to the event to get psyched!
Over the years it’s been amazing to have so much SA talent on the Park Acoustics stage who then went on to do incredible things overseas. Noteworthy mentions on this playlist includes Beatenberg touring with Mumford & Sons, BCUC dominating the European world music circuit, Alice Phoebe Lou, Nakhane, Yoav and till an certain extend John Wizards, Native Young and Diamond Thug. Thanks for tuning in, hope you enjoyed the playlist!”
Cheers Henky Boo Boo, we love you and thanks for taking us back to when Sundays were the greatest 🤙Long live Park Acoustics.
10 Years of Park Acoustics Playlist > https://cutt.ly/JydV6ob