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SPLASHY FEN MUSIC FESTIVAL

A great feather in C-Weed’s cap is the fact that it played a major role in the success of the iconic Splashy Fen Music Festival through a 17-year involvement with the event.

Established in 1990, Splashy Fen is the longest-running annual music festival in the country and is held on a farm by the same name in the Southern Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal.

C-Weed’s Pedro Carlo first got a taste for Splashy Fen in 1995 when Arapaho, a band that he managed on behalf of PolyGram, performed at the festival.   He was hooked!  In 1998 he joined the Splashy team as a stage and programme manager, going on to be appointed as general manager in 2003.  He later took over the running of Splashy in 2010 when the festival rights were leased to C-Weed.

After a wonderful run, notching up many milestones along the way, C-Weed decided to hang up its Splashy gumboots in June 2015.  A decision contributed to by the loss of festival founder and farm owner Peter Ferraz, who sadly passed away in October 2014.

When asked to share just two of his many Splashy Fen highlights, Pedro said:

“One of the festivals that stands out for me the most is 1998, when we first included some of the big rock bands of the time in the line-up – bands like Squeal, Just Jinjer, Sugardrive and BOO!  Sure, the move away from Splashy’s acoustic, folk roots was met with some controversy, but we ended up achieving a record attendance of over 12 000 festival-goers that year.”

“Another very special festival was Splashy’s quarter-century celebration in 2014, a huge achievement in anyone’s books!  Although we didn’t know it at the time, it was also Peter Ferraz’s last festival, and one he called a ‘truly wonderful event’, a ‘triumph’ and ‘one of the best ever’.”

Watch video footage here:

Splashy Fen 2012 / Splashy Fen 2011 / Splashy Fen 2010 / Splashy Fen 2009