There’s power in unity

T is always good to see one of us make great strides across borders.

Thus, we would like to congratulate Zimbabwe-born Munyaradzi Chanetsa for being appointed the new Artiste and Repertoire (A&R) manager at Sony/ ATV Music Publishing South Africa.

This certainly is sweet news for local showbiz, particularly music aficionados.

It might be a personal achievement for the veteran South Africa-based music executive, but we hope he will use his new influence to create an easy link between our local artistes and international markets.

We have a lot of talented musicians and composers that are sadly failing to reach their full potential due to lack of exposure, especially across borders. And this is where Chanetsa should come in. His new role includes finding new talent throughout the African continent, promoting songwriters’ copyright and careers, and connecting them (local talent) to bigger opportunities.

The piece of cake (local showbiz) is too small to feed many artistes at any given time.

For instance, the heavyweights in music, three or four of them, get huge chunks of the cake while the majority have to make do with crumbs.

In simple words, only a handful of artistes can claim to be sitting pretty through music or any other form of art.

And the frustration is easily noticeable in casual conversations among musicians.

They try to find solace in their predicament or vent their ire by dissing each other’s show crowds, albeit in private settings.

Just recently, one struggling but swanky singer almost clobbered his counterpart.

This was after the colleague made fun of his show held just before the lockdown, which attracted less than 15 patrons, among them band members, fellow artistes and staff at the venue.

The singer was livid and fumed profusely. He argued his audit the following day proved he had at least 28 paying revellers and his colleague “had no right to tarnish his image by downplaying the figure”.

This is how dire the situation is.

We hope Chanetsa will create fresh and lucrative avenues for this lot.

Going forward, The Hedonist notes with dismay a simmering war among local music promoters. A battle of supremacy is at play.

If you thought power struggles are only limited to politicians, well, think again! The newly -formed Music Promoters Association is on the brink of breaking into at least three parts before it even creates the first steps in the journey of the proverbial “thousand miles”.

The Hedonist is told jealous, greed and massive gossip are threatening the association.

The tussle is between two erstwhile friends (males) that both claim to be the spine of the association.

However, another sassy female promoter is dismissing both of them and is equally threatening to form a rival union.

It is our hope the promoters do not copy the MDC circus. We are not in the habit of making political comparisons, but frankly, this is the route they seem to be taking.

Hope it ends well!

I