Culture
Kenyan musicians barely survive on their art

Misanet.com / IPS, 15 April - Kenya has a lot of talented musicians, but they barely make a living from their art. Local icons, like the hip hop group Kalamashaka, may get mobbed by screaming fans whenever they perform, but their popularity rarely translates into record sales.

There are few outlets selling music, distribution is poor and piracy is a major problem. Tedd Josiah, Kenya's most successful young music producer and studio owner, has had enough. 

At his Audiovault studio, 30-year-old Josiah runs a one-man show. "It's hard," he says. "I have to sit down and produce the music, then look for the finance. Go abroad, press the album. Come back, market the album, put the album in stores. Try and sell the album. Try and sell the artists. Try and get the media to respond to the artists. You're one human being. You can't do all that."

The last album Josiah produced, "GidiGidiMajiMaji's Ismarwa", sold less than 1,000 copies despite critical acclaim and the enduring popularity of the hip hop duo, who rap in the local Luo language. While the musicians earn some money from live performances around Kenya, Josiah feels understandably short-changed. "The pirates made more money than I did," he complains.

Josiah believes that he and his artistes deserve better. He's just putting the finishing touches to the debut album of Neccesary Noize, one of Nairobi's hottest new groups. He then plans to completely close down his studio to promote the album. "We'll use Neccesary Noize as a flagship of how to sell music," he says. "We're going to just shut shop for a couple of months and become vendors."

This might look like desperation, but Josiah insists it is the only way to beat the pirates. "We're going to take Neccesary Noize, as a product, on the road to create the market and service the market at the same time. When they're doing the concerts, you can have a small stall, sell the records. We'll also make sure the records are in the right music shops," he explains.

In an ideal world, Josiah says he would like to be left to do what he does best - compose music. "I love writing music. I want to be known as the person who composed 'Tafsiri Hii', 'Mungu Wangu Niokoe' or 'Songa Hapa'," - massive hits for Kalamashaka - "because that's what I love doing."

But composers do not get that recognition in Kenya. Nor the money that goes with it. "In the United States, composers make a heck of a lot of money," Josiah says. "They write the song. The record company likes it and buys it off you for 10,000 dollars up-front."

In Kenya, his work goes unrewarded. He takes the example of Shaz of Blak, which reached number four on the Spanish charts back in the 1990s. "I wrote all the music, all the lyrics. Then looked for two people who could sing and gave it to them and told them: 'Here's a product. Sing!' Within two weeks they sang it, but it took me a whole year to compose."

Before starting his own studio in 1999, Josiah worked as a producer at Nairobi's Sync Sound studios. He says the exploitation there was even worse. Josiah earned royalties of less than 200 dollars for producing four albums. 

Josiah says the problem lay in licensing the album with a foreign company. Kelele Records in Germany was responsible for selling the products world-wide, taking them to international trade exhibitions, monitoring sales and air-play and collecting royalties. For these services, they took a percentage and sent the remainder back to Kenya. "They made money. But we never saw any," says Josiah.

- I sat down and said: 'It's not worth my time. It's not worth the artistes' time. It's not worth anybody's effort, he continues. "The best thing to do is sit down and try and administer all these business decisions a bit more appropriately so we could all benefit." Unfortunately, the rest of Sync Sound didn't see it that way. Josiah resigned in frustration.

While Josiah now has control over the distribution of his products, there are some things he is still struggling to do - like persuade the local radio stations to support home-grown talent. "My vision has always been to have our airwaves playing our music, as opposed to our airwaves playing other people's music," he says. 

Nairobi's newest and most popular radio station, Kiss FM, plays almost exclusively US and European music. Josiah asked them to play more Kenyan music. He says they refused point blank. "I can't go to a radio station in New York, give them my CD and expect them to play it above some guy from New York because they're building New York, they're not building Nairobi," he says. "If I'm not part of the big picture, then I'm not there. But I fail to understand how Christina Aguilera's big picture affects small me in small Nairobi with my small radio station."

- Why don't we have stars in Kenya? Why isn't it selling? he asks. "Because Mr Kamau who's really talented is going to be shunned by the media. Michael Jackson is going to appear on the front cover. When Mr Kamau goes on radio, his music is going to be played three times a week, as opposed to the other artist from the West who is going to get a rotation of about four times a day. What are you going to buy? What comes at you consistently?" 

He says local artistes often have to bribe radio stations to play their music. "To get your articles in the national newspapers, as an underdog, you're going to have to pay those writers," he says. 

Josiah says it is time Kenyan journalists started supporting their own. "Media is like a mouthpiece for what is going on in the country. If the media, or the airwaves, are not giving you, the owner of that country, a chance to actually say what you feel, then it is doing you a disservice. It's bringing in other ideologies and flooding the market."

He says Kenyans need to have more pride in their own culture. "If we are all buying our own stuff, it is going to create an awareness around the world and then we are going to sell in a huge way," he says. 

By Katy Salmon, Misanet/IPS

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