adminUrban Beats with Nkosilathi Sibanda
IT will sound like a cliché. But like most things common to man, music is inevitable. Imaginable! That is the best word I could find. One cannot, out of the blue, pledge to live without the singers and players of instruments. How would humankind have expressed thought and feeling if instruments and the voice were not in existence? From where life starts, our music shall be heard. Had we not voices, what would have become of our songs and stories?
Here is nature’s finest achievement, the voice, reclaiming the lost tradition of story-telling.
Telling a story is an endowment. This is a rare gift. If you can give a tale in a rhythm, what can we call you?
Is not that a point when every news crew asks the usual question: How do you do that? Tell me of a musician who is not inspired by their community?
Amongst ourselves, art lovers and rude critics, all we are good at is to analyse and conclude. The best we make is to destroy the artiste.
Is there a legacy to ponder in days to come? Here is a time when all who are reading this can only wish it had not happened in their lifetime. Lay, as many of us are, thinking in our living that opinion is all that matters, forgetting where our music comes from.
Here are the big sharks, clad in formal apparel, telling the ‘rich’ culture where to go. Who defines culture and identity is rhetoric, only to be answered by the Jah Prayzah is in Bulawayo for the umpteenth time. Last Friday the craziest of fans woke up to a weekend to tell a story about the Harare artiste.
So many musicians, some genuine and others trying to make a mark, have come to the City of Kings. Interestingly, promoters are still making money in Bulawayo. That is not literally. The fact is thread bare, Bulawayo rocks! In the glorification of visitations by artistes from other cities, we cannot help but complain of the effect of their ‘invasion’. Music in its universal nature has to be checked-not to harm the listener.
Of course, music being universal, an artiste would still need to be defined by their background, where you come from.
This is for all the promoters who take advantage of communities. Bring artistes that are loved by people. The festive season is upon all to enjoy and the artistes have to maintain the mood. Where are the big boys of Bulawayo who used to pamper the music lover with as many concerts in December?
Sadly, that is a question I would be forced to answer; the city’s musicians have gone broke – financially and mentally too. Promoters have dumped them for the attractive ones that ply their trade in Harare.
Such is the Bambazonke syndrome. It is either you play in Harare or you are dead.
This space cannot allow a list of the musicians who have willingly surrendered to the competition that comes from the capital.
Why not turn to money making issues since we are dancing in the twelfth month of the year?
Now that it is December-the month all awaited. We have been talking since the first month of the year, that, when December comes something ought to change in the industry. We envisage a time, this December, where one of Bulawayo’s artistes would have formed a company. Not just a company but a viable one that contributes to the growth of the entertainment sector.
Young artistes have often complained saying that they do not make enough money from their craft. Many say they are shortchanged by promoters who are not ready to give them their dues but only want to pay them with transport money or a few bottles of alcohol.
In most shows that they have been asked to perform, be it curtain raising for a foreign act or a high profile local one, they are usually performing in hope that the spotlight that big artistes possess will momentarily shine on them.
Local promoters do not have the financial muscle to pay all the artistes that come forward to perform and indeed there is usually an understanding between them and unheralded young artistes before a show. Usually many try to pass off local promoters as money grabbers only out to exploit them while they hog all the profits for well attended shows. This may be true sometimes, as generally promoters are only willing to let young artistes perform for a pittance or for free. The official line from promoters and young artistes themselves is that they are performing for “exposure”. In most big shows that are held in the city, it is the young artistes who prop up the event and keeping the city’s notoriously hard to please music lovers company before the big name act makes his appearance.
The exposure that they perform for in most cases guarantees them exposure for more shows where they are going to perform for more exposure again. Needless to say the exposure business does not, in most cases, seem to have an end, with most artistes doing the same routine over and over again without visible progress.
Here I am forced to put in examples of musicians, outside Bulawayo. If one compares this to Progress Chipfumo who in past years took giant strides after being a curtain raiser for sungura kingpin Alick Macheso in most of his shows, there is a difference. While Chipfumo was also seeking and ultimately got exposure, most up and coming artistes have got little reward for the stellar performances that they put up in shows.
During a 2013 gig that featured Zahara and Winky Dee, Nashie wowed all and sundry with his skill on the night.
The success that he has gone on to enjoy owes little to the performance that he gave on the afternoon in question. Instead his own personal hard work and talent has got him where he is in his career today.
Young artistes performing in big shows see and marvel at the big crowds and immediately believe that they also deserve a piece of the cake. While this may be true, young artistes have not done themselves any favours when it comes to the negotiation for better conditions themselves.
Most young artistes do not have people that are fighting for their rights when it comes to what they get financially from their performances.
Instead they deal with promoters individually and thus they usually get less than they would have bargained for. Promoters, in most instances, are experienced negotiators that are unwilling to part with their money to pay people who they consider novices. It would be better for young artistes to negotiate collectively – in this way it would help them go some way in preventing promoters from exploiting them.
Young artistes should also solicit help from those that have experience of the industry. One has to be aware that they are not the first to be a young artiste. It is a road that all that have achieved success have travelled and listening to the advice of those that have made it in their careers would help them deal better with event organisers.
The perpetuated illusion of performing for exposure must be stopped in its tracks. One way of doing this would be to make sure that they are united in demanding what they want. It would be no use to have a few calling for better treatment from organisers while others will still be prepared to perform under the same conditions without much complaint. In most cases if one is not prepared to perform under the conditions proposed by promoters others are willing to do the same under the magic name of “exposure”. It is time for up and coming young artistes to put up a more united front if they are to get what their hard work justly deserves.
Online Reporter