Saturday 24 February 2018

Setting up benchmarks for Malawi Music

In Malawi scenario or the rest of the world quality control in this case refers to letting our music pass some form of litmus test...

Most radio and TV stations complain that they receive an uncountable music compact disks or sometimes tapes brought by every Jack and Jill who say are musicians or singers in need of airplay.

Without trying to play a condescending card to the owners of music outlets, meaning those that have radio, TV stations or entertainment joints or public spaces like buses that play music, I think if we are to have quality music, then we need to set up standards.

Once singers and musicians bring their music, it must be passed through a rigorous due process where it has to pass all or 90 percent of the prerequisites drawn on the checklist.

The purpose of all this is to certify quality; some hints could be to look at the quality of sound i.e. is it filling the whole eardrum? On the other hand, is it trying to pull off the ear? Is it going to ‘infect’ the eardrum or just use it as a passage as it soothes the soul?

When listening to it are you feeling ashamed that the so called musician or singer only exposed their mediocrity?

Are the vocals showing that the one behind it was gasping for air? What about vocal variations, is it blending with the instrumentation? Is the music some common organised noise?

I know there could be many areas to look into before venturing into unknown terrain. At the end of the day standard and quality enforcement should be the order.

There are some operatives in the radio and TV stations, and even entertainment joints that, at the expense of their jobs, let gluttony scarlet red in the teeth.

Those that can be easily caught; you find every time this unexceptional artist comes to the premises they always demand to hand in their stuff to the very particular radio or TV presenter or the people who play music in entertainment joints.

This kind of greed is not motivational in the would be musician and it encourages them to go to a person who has a mixer placed in his dining room on his dining table linked with a ‘scraggy’ boom microphone.

Within two hours the so called musician will gurgle out noise, which the man owning the dining table and the mixer placed on it, will mix the panting sound with some computer programmes that will give it a drumbeat, accompanied by sounds of guitars and percussions.

All this will be happening on the back of an outcry that Malawi music has and still is struggling to get a place on the international market.

Some have been attributing this failure to lack of establishment of a unique music genre but this earns my disagreement because this happens because artists do not know what they want to achieve.

Our artists will rarely exercise measured patience when producing their music, even those that are nationally acclaimed, as our top musicians have no patience to take time before releasing anything and there for quality is always compromised.

Radio stations will always have no problems with this, as they will establish several programme specifically designed to ‘promote’ this kind of local music. If what is meant is to be achieved is really to promote, then I have a problem with the mediocrity they are championing.

If by accident or chance a member of an international music-promoting firm is visiting the country or any of the websites that have some of the local radios that are streaming online and catches the hurriedly prepared musical stuff, will they really be encouraged to come and promote it for the international market?

If we are to achieve quality as a country and promote local music, then local radio and TV stations and entertainment joints in collaboration with organisations dealing in and with music and musical artists have to set up benchmarks, which have to be used if music produced has to gain airplay.

These outlets need to critically look at the music videos produced other than broadcasting or playing anything they lay their hands on.

Even the news producers for all media platforms should not always carry stories for mediocre performers who just visit newsrooms, declare they are musicians, and get story space.

Entertainment writers have to listen to the music of an artist before they can start glorifying mediocrity. We can do better with quality control in the music Industry.


No comments:

Suffix & Faith show Boldness in tackling tribalism

The timing to issue the song Yobwata by Suffix and Faith Mussa would not have come at the right time considering that this is voting time a...