Finally the 2015 African Muzik Magazine Awards (AFRIMMA) was concluded this weekend and unfortunately our Uganda artistes failed to impress again on the international stage!
Despite the various nominations which include Artist of the Year (Eddy Kenzo), East African Male Artist (Eddy Kenzo and Bebe Cool), East African Female Artist (Juliana Kanyomozi and Irene Ntale) Most inspirational song (Bwerere by Jose Chameleone, Be Happy Eddy Kenzo and Woman by Juliana), Best Dancehall artist (Mc Norman and Jose Chameleone), Best Producer (Nash wonder), Best DJ (DJ Shiru) and Best Video (Woman by Juliana Kanyomozi and Love you every day by Bebe Cool), All these nominations yielded nothing.
Also Read: Full List of Winners At The AFRIMMA Awards 2015.
Ugandan’s just watched the awards heading to our neighbors Kenya and Tanzania plus other African countries especially Nigeria.
This will again raise the same common question as far as international awards are concerned: “Ani aloga Uganda?” (Who is bewitching Ugandan music industry?). Of course blame games have to come up again!
Apparently, Uganda Music Industry was subjected to all sorts of mockery statements over the weekend. As many social media users made it a laughing stock and a spectacular failure in many aspects. We can’t blame the fans; they are emotional which is normal for any human being.
However, they claim the problem with our artists is that they spend a lot of time yapping instead of producing good music. They go ahead to say that Ugandan artists always engage in stupid wars on social media like they were grasshoppers in the polythene bag!
Some furious music fans say: - for years, locally famed musicians have failed to shine on the global stage and that every time you listen to the locally produced music, one thing is so disturbingly vivid: the sketchy lyrics and ambiguous, incoherent, and heartbreaking music themes to make quick money from ‘one song concerts’.
This brings us to the definition of music. Many music scholars will define music as ‘vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion’.
I would stupidly ask, do Ugandan artists have really good music to celebrate according to the definition of music?
My answer is ….
Sadly, modern-day Uganda music (a great deal of it), can only be defined as a set of organized noise. Why? It irritates the ear, lacks substantial content and in many cases, the motivation is solely skewed ambitions of making a kill overnight or becoming a celebrity within a fortnight.
And I can confess, that as Ugandans especially musicians, we have failed to create a unique sound that will define us! What we are proud of is the western and Nigerian sounds! This is a problem.
Music is poetry, thus the theme is critical to make one unique, but a crop of our modern-day musicians have since forgotten. If you have that in mind, then it becomes easier to come up with a video concept to push your audio!
Meanwhile, Ugandan music producers have tried to produce fair audios…however; our videos are still very poor which makes us miss good air play on these big music channels like MTV to compete fairly!
One of the music fans had this to say;
“An Upcoming artist like Patoranking with not even an album yet.… puts much effort in doing good music; but Chameleone who claims to have money can’t have a single song to compare to Patoranking songs… trust me Chameleone looks a kid musically now. His ego keeps telling him, he is good but the music industry is moving at faster rate. Am being honest, putting patriotism aside!”
“Our musicians should wake up from their comfort zones and don’t take the music industry as professional for the Unemployed and Drug Abusers”, furious music fans think.
Meanwhile, other fans think the biggest reason as to why Ugandans will take long to win these international awards is the selfishness amongst themselves. Apparently everyone wants to be number one, and in so doing they create divisions with “Divide and Rule method” where by fans are divided in various small groups to the extent that they can’t unite for a common goal.
Nigeria has a population of about 183 million people and Uganda has a population of 36 million people! So if you created divisions in Ugandan music fans, will you ever beat any Nigerian artist in any Category?
Ugandan music industry is very unpredictable….anything can happen. But the question will always remain. Who is to blame?
NB: All the views expressed in this article are for the fans and the writer! They are not for Howwe.biz as a company!
