EDITORIAL COMMENT: CELEBRITIES OUGHT TO LEAD BY EXAMPLE

MANY times Zimbabweans on social media have had arguments on how many of our celebrities deserve respect for being exemplary.

The basic definition of a celebrity is someone who is famous, especially in areas of entertainment such as films, music, writing, or sport.

Others say people become a celebrity when they are advertised and seen as being something better than the rest of normal people.

The dispute over who qualifies to be a celebrity in Zimbabwe is, at times, influenced by the high number of individuals who are producing stuff especially in music.

Previously it took a lot for a musician to break it into national platforms like radio stations as the few recording studios available then would take their time to screen budding artistes before they would allow them into their studios.

Getting an album or even a single released by these studios was a huge achievement and, at the time, it seemed as if the musicians would undergo some grooming lessons as they tried their best to present positive images in public.

There were very few ugly incidents in the public domain.

However, there were very few media products at that time and most of these musicians escaped bad publicity on the basis that only a few journalists followed their movements while there were no citizen journalists then.

Also there were very media platforms with newspapers and radio stations being the main sources of celebrity news, which tended to focus more on new albums.

These days things have changed.

Anyone can go behind a mic and produce music, which will also circulate on mass social media platforms like WhatsApp.

Grooming is no longer an essential element for any budding musician, there are too many backyard studios focusing on mass productions of music with little or no attention to the public image of the musicians themselves.

While in the past only a good public image guaranteed success as a musician, these days some even ride on bad publicity to achieve success.

A lot of them even deliberately play rogue just to be famous (for the wrong reasons) and try to cash in on that.

The Zim Hip Hop and Zim Dancehall genres are the most notorious for these rogue elements, who are unfortunately polluting the younger generations in society.

This weekend we had popular Zim Hip Hop artiste, Holy Ten going ballistic and insulting everyone who stood in his way.

He even insulted anyone who reported, correctly, that he fell during a performance at the showgrounds during Saturday night’s gig.

He was also lashing out at fellow artiste and former ally, Voltz JT, in what might be signs of a bitter split. It was one of the many examples where the new generation of celebrities who have very little or anything to be celebrated.