EDITORIAL COMMENT: It’s time to celebrate, promote local talent

Jamaican musician Chris Martin is in the country and there is so much excitement in Harare about his tour. Such euphoria is common whenever an international musician visits the country. It seems local showbiz followers have an obsession with these foreign artists regardless of the musicians’ capability to deliver on stage. It is every music follower’s wish to see their foreign icon on home soil, but sometimes the stars that we are made to revere through seductive portrayal on international television stations, turn to be not-so-bright when they grace our stages.

The imagination of being in the same physical space with celebrities that make headlines in celebrated showbiz magazines apparently overwhelms local fans to the extent of having inflated pride in attending an international musician’s show.

Consequently, local music promoters capitalise on this shared fascination and bring international artistes almost every month. Most of them make massive profits through overcharging local fans that are prepared to part with huge sums of money to attend such shows. The promoters charge exorbitant entrance fees that make our international shows more expensive than regional rates.

For instance, American musician Mariah Carey is currently on tour of South Africa and the most expensive ticket — for the VVIP section — is going for about $90, but if she is to have a date with Zimbabwe the figures skyrocket to as much as $200 for the same section.

The foreign artistes have also realised that Zimbabwe is a fertile hunting ground for profiteering and they also charge more when signed to perform here. This deplorable culture came with the country’s adoption of the multi-currency system. The artistes, like many other players in various sectors, now treat Zimbabwe as an easy source of United States dollars.

Most local music promoters are no longer concerned with the promotion part of their mandate. They mainly focus on making money and have become cunning business people. Unfortunately, the trend works negatively for our local artistes. During international shows our musicians are reduced to pawns in a huge-figure money game.

Ironically these local musicians often outshine their international counterparts at the shows and some are made to perform for longer hours than the visitors for paltry returns. Winky D is one artiste who has a reputation of outclassing international musicians yet he still gets the ‘supporting act’ role at such shows and goes home with a ridiculous percentage of the ‘main’ act’s remuneration.

Some international musicians just come to disappoint and get money. It happened at Sean Kingston’s show and it was also the same case with D’Banj’s tour. The most recent case involved Nigerian musician, Wizkid, who did not even go on stage at his scheduled show although he was in the country.

Promoters paid for his travel and upkeep in the country, but he pulled a no-show in unclear circumstances. The question then becomes: Why don’t we support and empower our local musicians when the foreign acts can bring so much disappointment at huge costs?

There is nothing bad in having one or two good artistes from the international scene coming to grace our stages for historic shows periodically. It becomes unfair when unprofessional and poor artistes come here to collect huge sums of money and leave trails of disappointments.

It also becomes unreasonable to have international musicians congesting our showbiz calendar and getting preferential treatment when we have so much talent locally. Instead, the promoters should be competing to uplift our local musicians and marketing them to the international community so that we also export talent constantly.

The sad reality is that, besides Oliver Mtukudzi and a few other mbira musicians, our local singers go on international tours to perform for Zimbabweans in the Diaspora for meagre returns.

Music fans are the most important component of this matrix. It defeats logic for a fan to part with $100 to see a foreign artiste that only has two or three hits performing for one hour and refuse to pay $10 to watch a local artiste with a rich discography in an all-night show.

When Jive Zimbabwe held a ‘Celebrate Local’ concert at HICC with local artistes, the show was a flop because fans did not value their own talent. Before the current craze, international shows were reasonably spaced and promoters handled the tours professionally. The coming of a foreign artiste was a big event that was well-planned and could not happen every month.

In this era of discourse about empowerment of indigenous players in various industries and efforts towards that goal through Zim-Asset and Buy Zimbabwe initiatives, people must celebrate and promote local talent.

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