Hill's know-it-alls muck up jazz fest

Cape Town International Jazz Festival organisers laid the blame for Lauryn Hill's sound glitches squarely on the singer and her sound technicians.

Embarrassingly, more than half of the fans who packed the popular Kippies venue to see Hill walked out because of the bad sound.

Hill maintained a fast tempo throughout her set, but her erratic vocals, reworked versions of popular songs and poor sound quality irritated many.

On more than 20 occasions, the former Fugees band member asked the crowd if the sound was up to standard.

"Can y'all hear me? Can y'all hear my voice! I want y'all to hear me. Andy, bring down the band some more," she would shout.

But ESP Afrika's Rashid Lombard said, despite organisers having "competent" sound technicians, Hill's management wanted to do it all themselves.

Lombard said straight after the show: "We have competent sound technicians and we know this venue well. But typically some people just want to take over. It's unfortunate, but what can you do?"

Though "pleased" with the sell-out crowd, Lombard must have rued that they missed out on Jill Scott, who cancelled at the last minute to focus on shooting for her new film. Scott's cancellation opened the door for Hill to travel to South Africa.

Hill missed her flight and did not fulfil her media commitments.

"When they got here, her management told us that she has not had an interview in five years. We then asked for a one-on-one, which we could then feed [to the media] and they agreed but they left us hanging."

Hill opened her set with a poppy-sounding Killing Me Softly as she wiped off sweat from her forehead with a face cloth.

In a multi-coloured dress, a leather jacket and a hat, Hill followed this with Everything is Everything, but she customised the first verse to "I wrote this song for South Africa, which struggles in its youth".

By the time she performed Superstar, which contains the phrase "Come on, baby, light my fire", it was too late to ignite her set.

She apologised: "I'm upset that y'all can't hear me. All it means is that we gotta come back."

There was a growing feeling during the weekend that the festival, which launched 13 years ago, has outgrown the Cape Town venue. Some ushers and security guards failed to direct fans to correct entrances.

Lombard said if there were another venue in the Mother City that had adequate facilities they could move the festival there.