adminMelissa Mpofu and Simbarashe Mutizwa
BULAWAYO producer and music promoter Biko-Maximus-Maphosa who started a protest march from Bulawayo to Harare last week Friday against what is perceived to be unfair treatment of Bulawayo artistes, has received support from fellow artistes.
The unsung producer who embarked on the 444km journey on foot with his brother, is said to have passed Kadoma yesterday and is expected in Harare later this week.
He has been accommodated along the way by DJ Stavo who offered him accommodation in Kwekwe and BaShupi who bought him lunch in Gweru and supplied him with a case of water and an umbrella.
ZiFM host Gibson Ncube, who has been in constant touch with the artiste, said Biko was protesting against the little mileage Bulawayo artistes get on national radio stations compared to other artistes, especially those from Harare.
“When I talked to him on the phone, he told me that among other issues, he was protesting against limited airplay for Bulawayo artistes’ songs on national radio stations.
“He’s also protesting against the fact that there’s no connection between Harare and Bulawayo hip hop artistes as they never have exchange shows,” Ncube said.
He said Biko who has been widely publicised for marching against Bulawayo artistes’ exclusion at the Zimbabwe Hip Hop awards and failure by the organisers to provide them with transport to Harare for the awards, had been misquoted in some sections of the media. Ncube said the protest march only coincided with the hip hop awards taking place in Harare tonight.
“As far as the Zimbabwe Hip Hop awards are concerned, Biko was questioning why this year’s nominees were the same from the last editions of the awards ceremony.”
But the Zimbabwe Hip Hop Awards organiser, Beefy, yesterday had no kind words for Biko.
“Regarding Biko, I think he’s a bit misled, he doesn’t have facts and is misleading people. We don’t want to see him at our awards. In the event he attends, we’ll get him arrested because we’re afraid he’ll disturb our proceedings.
“I think artistes, before making a statement and trying to make things known, need to do a little bit of research,” said Beefy, responding to a story published by one of the dailies where Biko alleged that Zim Hip Hop award organisers had not done their research in Bulawayo.
“We’ve artistes nominated from all over Zimbabwe – Masvingo, Kadoma and Bulawayo. I read a statement from him talking about how we didn’t do research in Bulawayo. We’ve people like Mark Vusani who were nominated for best promoter because he does Bigger than hip hop.
“He also talks about marginalisation when in actual fact, people are not following our nomination criteria. I think he’s very wrong and needs to go back, look at our nominees and check his facts,” Beefy said.
Ncube however defended Biko saying his grievance as far as the awards were concerned was the fact that there were few artistes who made it to the nominees list while there were a lot of hip hop artistes in Bulawayo. Nominated artistes from Bulawayo include POY, Vusani, P2daoh, Calvin and Klap.
He also praised Biko saying he had proved that he is a hero in the Zimbabwe music industry as he was fighting for his rights.
“Bulawayo has a lot of cry babies who expect things to be handed to them on a silver platter,” said Ncube.
Efforts to speak to Biko were fruitless as his mobile phone was unreachable.
Online Reporter