On April 30 around 4:22 PM, singer and musician Patience Namadingo decided to let the cat out of the bag when he vehemently declared, that he is not a gospel musician as the country has been led to believe ever since he cut his musical teeth back in the days.
This is exactly what he wrote on his Facebook page:
“For the very
last time the answer is "NO I am not a Gospel Musician. I am just
a Musician". It is my Job. I'm sure you also have jobs and they are not Gospel Jobs. I choose what to sing. The gospel is just another message I choose to share as I do my job. If you need a 100% Gospel Musician who only sings about Jesus in his Music then you have lots of them out there. I am not one of them. I also have other things I want to sing about. e.g. Love. Education. Girls & Boys Empowerment. Wealth creation. Good morals. People and all that contributes to the wellbeing of people in a society. If you are offended by such topics or u want a 100% gospel musician who mentions Jesus and God in every song he does. Then there are lots of them out there. I am not one of them. Make a screenshot. Tayankha Tayankha basi. Note: kwaofuna mtsutso monga mwanthawi zambili. your comment will not get our reply on this. #Not_A_GospelMusician.”
Many people
are arguing that Namandingo should have made his point without lacing it with
some arrogance and big headedness. Well, I think I have no problem in the way
he has elected to communicate it because there are just too many tags with
which we push down our celebrities. There is this feeling that we some how own
them and they must not operate as they please!
If you
have followed my musical columns from the Drumming Pen days, to date, you will
appreciate that this is one of the subjects that I have written about
extensively. In all instances, it is informed by my misperception on why others
have to be gospel musicians while others have to be grouped as belonging to a
secular genre.
But is
there a secular of a gospel genre?
I remember on these very pages, some
days past; I wrote about how people treated the late Geoffrey Zigoma unkindly. They
accused him of gluttony owing to his failure to make a between being gospel
musician and a secular musician.
Unlike Namadingo, I had argued them
that the problem that was killing Malawi’s nascent music industry was that
artists struggle to do something without knowing what they want to become.
Who is a Gospel musician? The one who
sings Gospel music or the one who lives his or her life according to the
Gospel?
Our musicians are often blinded by
the narratives generated by the societies they live in. The so-called Gospel
musicians are supposed to be pious in their conduct; thus, in what they say and
how they live.
This is where the problem emerges
from. If Namadingo decides today that he is not a Gospel musician, then the
whole population goes to town accusing him of losing it to devil, who now discourages
him from continuing with the ‘blessed’ missionary work.
I said exactly the same when I
mentioned here that the society has changed Gwamba. He has been made to behave ‘Gospellike’
and, in the process, he has lost his art, of course not entirely but enough to
be noticeable.
I am back to the very questions I ask
when I talk about this; would we say Nangalembe was not doing God’s work? Is
being secular pursuit of evil? Do we perhaps realize that God can try to change
a person to follow His ways by perfecting the person’s social being by using
music to do this? And obviously musicians would be involved to achieve this?
Billy Kaunda, Lucious Banda, Mlaka
Maliro and Skeffa Chimoto? Are these secular or gospel musicians? Are they any
better than Denis Kalimbe and his Ndirande Anglican Voice?
Do you
now understand why Patience Namadingo is angry?
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