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Our Story
Search Festival began many years ago as a fun little experiment to reimagine the tired trope that is New Year’s Eve. That snapshot in time, attended mainly by close friends, sparked the framework for the long-running project lovingly referred to as Search. Through word of mouth, hard work, plenty of goodwill and some high quality support from high quality attendees, Search has managed to keep growing over the years. Our community acts as a sort of mental pilgrimage for many, manifesting into something tangible by the people who want it most. It magnetically attracts the brightest and kindest minds to form one challengingly beautiful, mind-altering formation that’s just a joy to observe and a treasure to hold on to.
Time marches on and the world’s changed many times over. But reality is multifuck, and the core originating idea of Search applies to everything – what are we even doing here? Hard to answer that question without a healthy dollop of care and enthusiasm for the human condition, so we keep Search an independent affair that defies easy categorisation. It stands instead for curiosity, sincerity, friendship, care, anarchy and love, keeping the vibe crisp and the music surprising.
You can argue that to Search is many things – a verb, a movement, a history, the future, a state of mind, an awareness or a discovery. On a practical level, Search is a South African music festival that pushes adventurous sounds and participant collaboration while trying to make New Year’s Eve(nts) better. Over the course of ten years, it has helped shape a resilience in independent music culture and created an empowering environment for those lucky enough to find it. If you decide to engage with it, plant your feet in it, take responsibility for it and befriend it, you might just be the secret ingredient that people love about it. Keep searching! We’ll find it eventually.
