This year's Barleycorn Music Festival at the Maynardville Open Air Theatre will once again showcase some of Cape Town’s finest musicians.

Musician’s performing at this year’s Barleycorn Music Festival include Pebbleman Project, Black South Easter, Tatum, Crimson House Blues, Margaret’s Daughter, Natasha Meister, James Harvey & James Hall, Lucy Kruger, Roger Lucey, Caroline & Julie Blundell and Emma Rycroft.

The Barleycorn Music Club started back in 1975, when a bunch of musicians started meeting regularly to jam together, learn from one another & consume beer. Over these past 35 years, the Barleycorn has met almost every week to make what is now a Cape Town tradition & valuable musical resource.

In the early years the music was mostly ‘traditional folk’, with a smattering of Blues, Bluegrass, Country music & Olde English & Irish material containing toxic levels of screeching fiddles. Yes, Bob Dylan covers & political protest songs did appear fairly often, but the Club rapidly developed a reputation as a place where home-grown original material by local composers & performers found a receptive audience, and it is these who have gradually formed the focus of the Club.

By 1977, the Barleycorn had become formalised, with a Constitution, paid membership, a member-elected committee and the commitment that whatever funds were accumulated would be held in trust for the furtherance & promotion of local musical talent. And what better way to achieve this than by staging an annual Festival? The Club would carry all expenses & all income would be split amongst those performing!

The inaugural Festival was held on 12th April 1980, at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre, packed to capacity to hear 20 acts perform over 9 hours. The undoubted star of that, our first venture, was the then unknown David Kramer, whose songs, red veldskoen & pork-pie hat captivated absolutely everyone, including members of the press who gave his career a massive kick-start!

And thus the Barleycorn Festival become an annual event.

Visitors to the Barleycorn Music Festival can bring blankets, umbrellas and picnics or enjoy food an soft drinks available at venue. Activities for kids include jumping castle, face painting and more.

The 2013 Barleycorn Music Festival takes place at the Maynardville Open Air Theatre in Wynberg on Saturday 23 March from2:00pm to 8:00pm

Tickets for the Barleycorn Music Festival are adults R60, members R50, students / scholars / pensioners R40, under 12’s free and are available at the weekly Barleycorn gig, Villager FC, 11 Lansdowne Rd, Claremont on any Monday night from 8pm, or at the festival. Contact Martin on 082-493-1564 for more info.