Classroom lesson · Music · 🇸🇿 Eswatini

Bushfire Festival

Eswatini's famous music and arts festival that lights up the valley

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Bushfire is an annual music and arts festival held in Eswatini every May. It brings together musicians, performers and artists from Eswatini, across Africa and around the world for three days of live music, dance, storytelling, craft markets and celebration. It is one of the most loved music festivals in southern Africa.

Tell me more

The festival takes place on the grounds of a farm in the Ezulwini Valley, surrounded by green hills. Multiple stages are set up across the site, and music plays from morning until late at night. Audiences can wander between stages, discovering new artists from jazz, Afrobeat, reggae, folk and many other styles of music.

Bushfire has a strong heart of African music at its core. Many of the headline acts are celebrated musicians from across the African continent, and local Swazi artists perform alongside international stars. It is a chance for the world to hear sounds and styles they might never encounter anywhere else.

Beyond music, Bushfire celebrates arts and crafts too. A large market area is filled with handmade goods — jewellery, paintings, sculptures, woven baskets and clothing. Local food stalls offer traditional Swazi dishes alongside foods from many other countries, making the festival a feast for all the senses.

Bushfire has a strong commitment to being kind to the environment. Organisers encourage festival-goers to recycle, avoid single-use plastics, and reduce waste. The festival has won international awards for its sustainability practices, showing that a big, joyful celebration can also be gentle on the planet.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why do music festivals bring people together? What is it about live music that feels different from listening alone?
  2. 02How can a big festival still try to be kind to the environment? What steps might organisers take?
  3. 03What kinds of music and art from your own country or culture would you want the world to discover?
  4. 04If you were putting on a school arts festival, what would you include and why?
Try this

Classroom activity

Plan your own class mini-festival. Decide on a theme, choose three 'acts' (which could be songs, dances, poems or art displays), design a poster advertising the event, and write one rule for keeping the festival eco-friendly. Share your festival plan with the class.