Cosoma is guilty as charged

It all started immediately after Gospel songbird Grace Chinga died. Her music started suffering serious piracy that the family members had to plead with members of the public to stop pirating her new songs.

Brother to the fallen talented gospel singer and composer indicated that the pirated music was selling in some places.

There was a story in the media to that effect where Grace’s brother called Joseph, pleaded with pirates to stop because they were still in mourning and that Grace left behind children, who are still in school and will need support.

In the same story, Joseph disclosed they were working hard to put his sister’s unreleased albums on the market as soon as possible and that they were currently putting resources together.

At that same time also Khathwa Aligiza, who produced one of Grace’s albums through Alimoso Studio approached Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) to assist the family.

Fast forward to this year, now Grace’s children Steve and Miracle are crying foul as they implicated Grace’s brother, this one called Davie for producing and selling their mother’s music behind their backs.

They accused their uncle of getting all the proceeds from the DVD he released unto the market unbeknownst to the family.

Steve created a WhatsApp forum which he named Grace Chinga’s music and Cosoma in an attempt to seek help because after their mother passed they had decided to keep her music alive through Miracle.

The children went on to shoot a DVD which they registered with Cosoma (Mzuzu) as a copyright protection. Cosoma promised that DVD would be protected but only to notice that there were fake DVDs with Cosoma holograms being sold in almost all music outlets.

To their utter shock and discovery, Cosoma was dealing with their uncle Davie; selling him stickers in the process authorising him to be selling the DVDs.

We get back to the same reasons the brother gave in the first incident that Miracle and her younger brother Israel are still in school and have no-one to help them.

Musicians Union of Malawi (Mum) President called Cosoma which said they are still waiting to get instructions from the family.

Cosoma Senior Licensing Officer Rosario Kamanga told the media that with regards to royalties, artists are asked to fill Cosoma beneficiary forms in which they indicate how proceeds from their works would be shared. Late Grace Chinga did not complete such a form.

What I find funny is that Cosoma which is still waiting for the family to give them guidance has already started providing holograms to the so called Uncle Davie. What part of waiting for direction from the family did I miss?

Again they say Grace did not fill up the whole form. Wait a minute...If I am going to become part of an association and the process requires that I fill some form, how is such an association going to accept my membership if I hand in a half filled form?

The explanation from Cosoma in the whole story smacks of dishonesty to one extent and incompetence or utter carelessness on another extreme. It’s sad it has the mandate to protect artists from such characters like Uncle Davie, but can’t do a good job.

In this whole fiasco, Cosoma is guilty as it comes. If you follow the story, Aligiza and the children had already talked to Cosoma against disannulling the children from getting what is due to them, but Cosoma seems to have deaf ears.

Grace Chinga: A gain among angels

If you follow this column you will realise that it carved a special place of veneration for the fallen gospel music songstress Grace Chinga.

Unlike all and sundry who love to talk highly of people that have died, this column wove praises for her long before she took a leap into the Celestial Kingdom of Glory weeks ago.

Grace’s rare talent was that she was the most unique one amongst the many gospel artists that we have in the country. She was a gifted lyricist as she made writing lyrics for her songs a speciality.

Besides, she could also sing for which she became known in musical cycles as singer-lyricist.

There is also more to her in that she embodied the differentiation that exists between a singer-lyricist and singer-composer, who composes the song's melody.

In short, she was triply endowed as she was singer-lyricist-composer.  

Last time I pointed out that when you are a gospel artist you risk being dismissively given the rubbish tag that is cynical of every musical talent and endowment on display.

I have argued on the basis that every religious belief is a closed system and as a result it has its bedrock on a specific dogmatic belief. This is the reason one can neither question nor disagree with church authorities.

While the explanation is that God is Omnipotent, He was there and shall always be there looks like enough, it still has holes which fail to hold together even a child’s credulity.

This is where a belief will use its ‘closed system’ which simply shuts up you by saying it is the evil powers of Satan that drives you to ask such questions. This snaps any desire to ask more questions. This approach is what is usually looked at as a dogmatic slumber where you wake up at your own peril.

This frame is unfortunately one which most gospel musicians want to use. They sing very bad songs, which they are not even ashamed to put on CDs or tapes and call them albums, comfortable in the belief that no one will point a finger at their mediocrity because it is the Word of God.

Artists that are into gospel take it for granted that since it is gospel music then they could get away with murder.

No, as I have disputed before, I am not going to fall for that; this is a big blue lie.

God loves beauty, this is the reason even his creations are beautiful, including Lucifer himself although in believers’ depiction he is shown as a badly-horned looking creature!

Now for Grace, she carried her way into the musical journey so well that she even made her dismissing agitators appreciate her talent.

Grace underwent a very horrible divorce court battle in 2007 and many thought the end of her musical career was signed off and sealed.

A year earlier she had released ‘Thandizo Langa’ which despite registering onset success ended up being sneered at due to her divorce court case.

Many people never bothered to look at what Jesus was scribbling down and wanted to start stoning her and due to such condemnation she left for the United Kingdom in the hope that it would provide an asylum where she would be able to recharge her batteries.

She returned home and on 10th October 2010 Grace unveiled what have become hits songs in what as her third album ‘Udzayimba Nyimbo’.Whatever bad publicity that derided her inspired her to come up with tracks that carry pure musical touch like ‘Mundisungire Korona’.

It was a ringing response to the ridicule she suffered when things turned up solemn after her divorce. She exacted her attack back to those that derided with the kind of art that was uniquely created.

And at the launch of her album she never shied away from declaring that ‘Grace is Grace, Take it or leave it!’

When you listen to Grace’s music one thing that is clear is that the instrumentation is not the hurried kick-kick, rush-rush concoction that has crammed the gospel music market.

She took her time to make music that appeal, unlike most so-called gospel musicians that sing mediocrity in the hope that people will listen to it anyway because it is gospel after all.

From such tracks like Ndayalula, Tapulumuka, Anandigula to Absalom one would appreciate, not only the resilience that is a tool of a brilliant musician in a challenging market, but also the patience of taking time to compose and record music.

The piece of work that is Grace Chinga’s third album for example is one product that one rarely releases. It complicates the text book theories that prescribe what is the best mood, time, place, state of mind to compose music.

When one deeply listens to content of Grace’s music, you would but realize with veneration such an intelligent talented maker of music she was.

I know that while her departure is a loss to the local music fraternity, it is a gain amongst the angels.