When people get
to criticising the Malawi music scene the first thing they begin to attack are
the most obvious things like production, and well, the actual lack of talent
itself.
Alot of Malawian
music out there truly is plain bad. It’s evident in a lot of songs out here.
The instrumental’s disorganized,
unmusical, weak half hearted instruments lacking punch. Vocals with noise. As
if that’s not enough, we have over ambitious overly self confident wannabe
rappers copping their style and content
right off of Lil Wayne or Drake (Some even holler out ‘YMCMB’..yes believe it). If it’s not that it’s the bad English, alternating
of R’s and L’s or forced rhymes (Some can’t even rhyme!). What really annoys me
is that some of these guys feel they are really killing it. However, I am not
here to discourage aspiring artists, quite the contrary you will see.
Not every
Malawian artist is wack. Not every Malawian song is bad, we do have some of the
greates talent here. Sometimes, certain of artists have so much talent and
content than certain famous artists out there! Believe it. I don’t put the
blame of this bad stuff on air on producers..I blame the media! They have the
power to expose/to not expose this music!
The blame of all
this bad music is usually put on the rising growth of ‘home studios’ and readily
available studio software. They say you can’t just wake up one day and decide
your going to make music, or you can’t dub yourself the next hit producer on
the block just because you have a cracked version of FL Studio, a condensed
microphone and your own pirated version of Adobe Audition and you think you are
good to go. This is wrong thinking; most producers anywhere started like this
anyhow. Given our lack of resources in Malawi and Africa, I say big up to you bedroom
producers making it though thick and thin are against you. I blame the media!
Home studios
exist everywhere around the globe. You need to only go check out the plenty
unexposed talent on social music sites like reverbnation and soundcloud. Some
of the songs there are worse than our very own in every sense. Our enemy is not
the home studio. Also some of the greatest hits, artists and producers (in and out the country) are made from these
home studios!
What then is our
problem? Simple; Organisation. We lack bodies to actually control music that is
allowed to be played on air. We need to have a body that actually regulates
what can be played on air. I am talking quality control. One reason why
Malawi’s music industry is handicapped is that it lacks professional control
and/or governing bodies. Malawian DJ’s if you oil their palms real well they‘ll
play your half baked trashed anyday all the time. If DJ X has good connections
with artist from studio Y then they get more airplay. If DJ X’s relative produces
at his home studio GumbaGumba Studios in Manja, Blantyre where he also stays.
He’ll make sure trash from GumbaGumba studios has a lions share of airplay on
his show…and to add insult to injury he will hype them up big time. Y’all make
radio too personal. At the end of the day Malawians are exposed to that, since
its trash that hogs up 60% of the limelight anyway. Some accept it as it is,
and are so proud of us Malawian artists,
and some (those who know better ) won’t even buy it. The latter usually goes ahead
and assumes that’s just the nature of urban music here. The real talent, crème
de la crème, is left under exposed and
left to rot in flash disk music collector’s hell. Malawians learns to accept
mediocrity amongst ourselves, (R’s and L’s, forced rhymes, no rhyme rappers,
off key singers etc) but the guys we hope to one day face off with (the
international scene, artists) just laugh our trash off, and some are indeed too
kind to say we are wack. And there goes the big headed producer/artist thinking
he is all that since ‘amongst ourselves’ we have given him/her some
recognition.
…..TO FINISH UP
We need a body
that will regulate just what is allowed to be played on air. Instead of bashing
at home studios, (which you can not get rid of) why not control the airwaves
instead? What is allowed to be played should be filtered, this will at the end
of the day, make producers pull up their socks anyway, in the hopes of having
their music publically accepted. This will give them more room to also grow.
OTHER THINGS I WANT TO SAY
-We need to
define our music scene and actual genres available…maybe even create new ones! What’s the difference
between a ‘lokolo’ artist and a local
R&B singer?get my point I hope…
-We need
objective media and music critics (not critics that are really promoting their
cousins album or critics with a an axe to grind).. Or the homepage of famous
artist A giving positive reviews for his own mixtape on his own site for that
matter
-And We, the
music community, need to form our own body. This body can act as a pressure
group towards the media, and government. Also we can have conventions (not
radio talks, twitter convos or blogs )..but real meetings that can discuss how we can improve and market our
own music. Also a good place to meet other artists you share interest with btw!
That is all.
