2025 has been quite the eventful year on the Zimbabwe entertainment scene. Several events have come out with some high-quality and diverse options for the countries festival and live show goers. Over the years different events have sprung up and established themselves as main states on the entertainment calendar all of these events, especially the outdoor ones, as much as they might not admit it have one thing in common: they are all children of Unplugged.
By VaMandava
The year 2017. The sun is shining, the vibes are immaculate, the baddies are outside, drinks are flowing and the live music is banging. Camp chairs and blankets are strewn all over the field as the sunset looms over the beautiful family friendly set up. Some of the best live performers are on stage and we go deeper into the night, it seems to just get better and better.
Through the euphoria induced haze and as the effects of your favorite happy substance increase in intensity, you can’t help but think “surely life can’t get any better than this”. But it does, at the next Unplugged, because one thing that kept happening is that they seemed to find a new peak with every edition of the event.
After a few years of absence, Unplugged is back and boy are they back for real. Unplugged announced their December edition, which is going to be held at the First Capital Bank Sports Club on the 21st of December 2025.
Speaking of things that are back in 2025 the festival is headlined by South African duo Liquideep. After a 11 year hiatus during which they pursued solo careers, Liquideep announced their reunion, and the Unplugged stage will be their first performance in Zimbabwe since they came back together.
They will share the stage with a host of local acts including Saintfloew, the new school king Sane Wav (you can tell I’m a big fan), Sylent Nqo, Saiiren, Delroy Shewe and Melyssa. The lineup, which is heavily biased towards local talent, shows Unplugged’s return to its roots, which focused on bringing local talents to the fore.
Now here comes the parts where I talk about the entire reason why I’m even making a comeback in 2025 to write about the return of Unplugged. First, I have to get the Riddims and Raps editorial team off my back. They’ve been pressing me to get back to writing and so, here we are.
Secondly, I had the privilege of having a conversation with the new management of the festival (because I know people and maface angu for real).
In this conversation, we spoke about what Unplugged means to them and why they felt there is a need for the festival to make a comeback, especially given that we already have other festivals that are making waves on the Zimbabwean entertainment scene. But do not let what I’m about to tell you fool you. I am writing this so that you guys know that I know the people running the show.
The first thing they emphasized was that they want to return Unplugged to its original concept of being a family centric event set up to actually cater to the needs of all family members. If you’ve been following the posts on their social media pages, you will know that they have come back with a fully dedicated kids’ zone that not only has different activities for kids of all different ages, but also has childminders who are there to watch over your children while you have your customary drunk argument about Arsenal’s potential to win the Premier league title.
Besides the dedicated kids’ zone, Unplugged will also have a full-size arcade (which means your old ass can go there and play Street Fighter like you used to paKuwadzana 2 shops), the usual inflatables for kids, carnival style rides, and gaming consoles and TVs for those that would rather play FIFA than mingle with the baddies. So finally, we can have an event that says, bring your children and actually caters to the needs of said children.
More often than not, parents end up having to babysit the whole day which defeats the purpose of being ‘outside’ as the modern youth like to call it.
The second thing that the festival is keen on focusing on is the aforementioned focus on local music. Just for clarity this is not to say that local acts currently do not get stage time at the other festivals/shows that take place in this country. However, there has been a heavy reliance on International acts as headliners and crowd pullers.
I understand that maybe the numbers say the people want those international acts but I believe that some of the acts that cross borders to perform in this country genuinely do not have as much pull power as some of the local artists that we have. I was a little tempted to name names, but I do not want to come across as critical of the people that have brought these acts into the country.
If we invest (we being festival organizers, media, patrons etc) in the live acts that we have locally, I believe that they will rise to an international standard of performing on the very stages that we purport they are not ready for. We listen to the music in our homes, in our cars, in the kombis and mushikashikas as they fly along our highways, and every time we are with our people but suddenly they can’t give us a good live performance? Someone is lying.
As my boy Arnold (SoProfound to you common folk) says, “zvinototangira kumaraini kwedu”. If we can’t fully support these acts in practice, we are doing ourselves a major disservice. Let’s see just how committed Unplugged is to giving local acts a consistent platform.
I was also curious to know just how back we are talking about when we say Unplugged is back. Back in the day Unplugged grew so big that it transitioned from being an event you would go to monthly, to being a quarterly event and later into an annual event. The new management (another reminder kuti muface wangu) says that they want to return unplugged to being a quarterly event on the same scale that caters to entire families.
The event set up will remain the same throughout, so that your kids are still able to enjoy the Unplugged experience and it’s kids’ zone at every edition. If all goes according to plan, this kid zone will see constant expansion with more options added for the little ones, and those of us that want to relieve our childhoods.
This is my official petition to Unplugged to ensure that the things they add to the kids’ zone are able to accommodate adults. Hapana asingade kukwira maswings.
Here’s a few essential things you need to know if you’re going to attend the upcoming edition of Unplugged:
- Cooler boxes have free entry before 4pm. After 4pm, each cooler box will be charged a corkage fee of $10.
- The kids zone is open from 12pm to 5pm, with child minders present to take care of the little ones. Kids under 12 years of age pay $5 at the gate and those 13 years onwards should get their tickets online as adults.
- Reentry is allowed at Unplugged. You can go in and out as many times as you would like. Just make sure you get your tag scanned at the exit points as you’ll only be able to be scanned back in if you’ve followed the proper exit procedure.
- Tickets for the event are only available online at https://hypenation.co.zw/tickets. There will not be any physical tickets available at the gate.
