Are the old horses losing their shine?

Nigel Siziba, Sunday Life Reporter

IT is said the old will attract the younger generation but sometimes they might well prove tougher than the older generation. Talking of new generation overtaking the old horses, this seems to be a reality in the local music industry as the so called veterans are now starting to lose their shine they had in the yesteryears.

Looking at the fall of events the likes of Oliver Mtukudzi and Thomas Mapfumo used to attract big crowds whenever they performed and no orginiser would stage a show the same day when these veterans will be performing.

Last Saturday Bulawayo was a place to be as it hosted three events at the same night. Killer T was with Mzoe7 at the Vista where they pulled a stellar of performance backed by fully packed fans till 6am the next day, and it was the same scenario at club Venus where ExQ and ASAPH lived up to billing in muddy white party.

While it was all good for younger artists it was a different fairy-tale at Bulawayo City Hall as Mukanya failed to pull more than 300 fans, this was after his flop in Gweru at Golf club which was caused by technical problems.

Bulawayo is proving not to be a fortress for the music legends as recently Oliver Mtukudzi failed to attract more than 300 people despite that his show was graced by high-riding South African-based singers, Bekezela Nkomo and Mr Prince.

Not taking anything away from Mtukudzi and Mukanya, their failure to pull large numbers ofalte can be attributed to unfriendly economic conditions as their shows cost arm and a leg and mostly young people will prefer affordable ones.

The other factor that could have contributed to the low turnout of people was poor advertising or marketing of the show as they were few posters around the city compared to the Allstar party that even had cars scribbled about the show that sent people at frenzy before the day of the show.

@_sizibanigel