adminMelissa Mpofu in Harare
Jamaican dancehall artiste, Konshens’ debut performance in Harare on Saturday evening was marred by many sound and power cuts.
The disturbances during his set at Old Georgians Sports Club tested his patience as each time he tried to share a message with fans; his sound would be cut, leaving him agitated.
While other artistes experienced similar cuts which were caused by an unreliable generator among other technical faults at the Castle @120 celebrations, Konshens was worst affected as he started his set without one of his lead guitarists after his guitar failed to connect.
Considering that his performance heavily relied on the lead guitarist’s sound, Konshens had to resort to backtracking for a couple of tracks while he waited for the guitarist to be connected. Being the experienced performer he is, the Kingston-based artiste managed to keep his cool, ensuring fans were not affected by the interruptions, by keeping them on their feet with his danceable tunes.
Eventually, the guitarist was connected and the band went live.
After performing a couple of tracks, the band was dealt another major blow as they had to cut short their act as the generator which had been used for the greater part of the day was said to be running out of fuel and would soon switch off.
Visibly disturbed, Konshens said: “I’ve just been told to wind up as the generator no more has fuel.”
He left the stage in a huff for his vehicle which already had its engine running.
As he was being whisked away his fans chanted: “One more, one more, one more.”
He complied, sang one more track and headed back to the vehicle. It was at that point when die-hard fans who had gained access backstage mobbed Konshens vehicle, asking to take pictures with him.
Clearly not wanting to be driven away from his fans, Konshens kept stepping out of the car, as if wanting to go back to the stage. In no time, local security had been beefed up with many telling him to get into the car and go. He eventually left.
Despite the glitches, Konshens lived up to his billing, leaving female fans screaming for him. He belted out hits, Do Sum’n, Gal A Bubble, Thank God Fi Di Gal Dem, Pull it to the bump as well as hits from fellow dancehall artistes Tarrus Riley and Busy Signal.
With a live band, the artiste hit the right chords as he seemed to be in sync with the audience.
Winky D who raised the curtain for Konshens, as usual, gave a spirited performance with a mixture of his old and new songs to captivate the audience. While he was also affected by the sound technicalities, his manager had him sorted as he quickly came up with an alternative plan to evade the glitches.
“Sound is a very technical thing; you may never know when things will go wrong. When our lead instrumentation was compromised, we’d to switch to make the keyboard take over. It’s done in a way that the audience won’t notice the change,” Winky D’s manager, Jonathan Banda said.
One of the organisers of the event who preferred anonymity said: “The Old Georgians generator we were using seemed to have been overwhelmed considering that we relied on it from morning till late in the day as there was no power. Sound check by artistes seemed not to have been done thoroughly hence the loss of connection for some of their equipment.”
Castle drinkers were spoilt during the celebrations as a beer shower was conducted in the afternoon when beer was sprayed for consumers to imbibe. They spent the better part of the afternoon playing five aside soccer.
Online Reporter