Imagine
being a Malawian musician and your music videos being on YouTube for years but
escaping your knowledge because you are merely under a ‘spell’ of computer
ineptness.
And
believe you me; this is the case with Lawrence Mbenjele and Joseph Nkasa as was
discovered recently.
You
see, the Musicians Association of Malawi (Mam) organised an online music
workshop for the musicians two weeks ago, to school them on the new phenomenon
of selling their products on line.
Apparently,
it was clear that we are lagging behind when it was established that some of
our most popular artists, by our standards, like Mbenjele and Nkasa, did not
even realise that their music videos and songs have been on line for some time
now.
Of
course many questions would be asked as to who exactly is responsible for
uploading Mbenjele or Nkasa’s music on YouTube for example? I mean the owners
do not even know?
MAM
President Rev. Chimwemwe Mhango who is really making an effort to keep me in the
loop on the happenings at Mam says at least a journey has started and they
would want our musicians to be at par with any other forward movement of the
technologies that international musicians have embraced.
The
musicians were told to make sure that they are computer savvy if they are
really to be amongst the counted. They were even asked to create Facebook
pages, even owning twitter accounts. At least I know that most urban artists
have these and it cannot hurt that much if the rest of our musicians are able
to promote themselves through such pages.
There
is just a lot that fans want to communicate with their musicians but
unfortunately they are just nowhere to be reached. And now that we have
companies like the Malawi-music.com that are helping in promotion and selling
of Malawi music online there is just need to be there to keep tabs on how the
sales are going on and all other related issues.
It
is not like the efforts means Mama is trying to reinvent the wheel to come up
with a Malawi way of doing and achieving it, but it is merely grabbing the
available opportunity with both hands.
Musicians in Malawi are
abused through the normal mediocre marketing system and there is always this
unexplained fear that exposing them more will even badly position them as they
will be exploited more.
But there is one other
aspect which I think has not been widely explored.
I wrote here before that the only time the country has
ever tried to connect tourism and music is when some Britons decided to start
the Lake of Stars now changed to City of Stars or some whatever name.
However, the structural, technical and organisational
arrangement of the event has benefited the organisers more than it has
exploited the local music and its artists.
I have also pointed out that the government, through all
its departments that are concerned with ensuring that art- music inclusive – is
getting the promotion it requires to shape out the country’s cultural identity
has no deliberate policy to enforce anything like this.
Imagine if we had bands playing in places like like
Mount Soche, Ryalls etc and these bands
being promoting themselves online as a tourist attraction, don’t you thing this
would be a double killing?
There is a closeness that can be exploited between local
music and tourism which can not only bring the much needed forex to the country
but uplifting the lives of artists as well.
Imagine if Agollosso was the resident artist for Mount
Soche and purely there to sing the Shire Valley Genre that he plays; If Mikoko
Brothers Band was a resident band at Capital Hotel and by extension Sunbird
Mzuzu Hotel enters an agreement with The Body Mind and Soul, a band that says
it plays a fusion of foreign genres and local beat to create what they call
voodjazz.
Say Hippo View Lodge had a band dishing out the Balaka
beat that we all know.
Taking advantage of the fact that music pulls and
attracts people and their world the tourism industry which sells our places out
there would intensify promotion of the varieties at their places.
The need to have resident music in hospitality
facilities that would be identified with a particular traditional genre would
drive someone from Australia to a specific hospitality place to listen to that
kind of music and also buy the music.
The tourism industry could then go home and promote the
music designated for what facility by producing MP3 samples of such tracks and
post them with their background through YouTube, on Malawi-Music.com or taking
advantage of any social networking pages like the Facebook and twitter
accounts.
With the digital demand in this era there is needed to
create an internet presence and even create MySpace music page.
Locally, there could also be promotion of such linkages
where everyone else visiting Hippo View
Lodge will know they will sample Balaka beat, likewise those that are
visiting Capital Hotel will know it is time to discover what other Malawi music
genre has to offer.
So we need to applaud MAM
for waking up and start taking technological steps.
Mobile: 0882233220
1 comment:
Talk about being late for the party!
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