From Then to Now: An Insight into Events Through Time.
Goodluck Msuya
I aspire to be a man who wakes up and loves what he does for a living every day. Travels often, spiritually secure, and financially stable.
On a typical Friday evening, I decided to hang out with some friends on our normal meeting place as we like to call it “Kijiweni”. If you are a young vibrant youth, chances are you have heard of this term before. If you are of age, the term mostly used would be “Kahawani”, but correct me if I’m wrong.
The most thing I love about going to this place is that I get to learn different good stuffs from my peers and get a different perspective on matters other than my own perspective.
On this specific day, I happened to come across an Instagram story from a musician who made music years back, as they call them now Legends of Bongo Flava and this was non other than Marlaw. This guy really graced us with good music. The type of music that lived to-date which is why I decided to open my Spotify app and search him because I couldn’t get enough from the Instagram story.
I’m glad I did that because it brought up and interesting topic while I was in the middle of the second song in his album.?
Then and now!!!! What happened to the music industry?
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We are used to have conversations around Diamond Platnumz and Ali Kiba, both great musicians from Tanzania, but this one was unexpected. Today was about Diamond Platnumz and Marlaw. A good one, right?
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I think many would agree with me when I say there is something wrong with the current music industry. The type of music that current artist put out there is kind of embarrassing to listen to especially in the presence of people you respect.
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The conversation we were having was how did we go from making music that gave meaning to life to the kind of music that doesn’t (I like to say the music that sucks life away from your soul).
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To prove this right, just a month ago we saw a Kenyan rapper Khaligraph Jones bulling Tanzania artists, the same artists he was inspired by to make great music. According to Khaligraph, Tanzanian music has been dormant for a while now just like our beloved Mountain Kilimanjaro. He called out the rapping industry moguls and youngsters to wake up and bring back the hip-hop culture alive. Thank you Bhuda, I think you did a great thing.
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Back to Bongo-Flava, a guy asked “Is Nyegezi really the best that our artist can come up with?”. Why do artist have to sing nonsense now and then which eventually leads them to be in dispute with BASATA? Can’t we make music like Binti Kiziwi, Usiende Mbali Nami, Zali la Mentali, Starehe and many more other that had a clear message, a message that taught kids and adults a great lesson.
Unless we start asking ourselves this kind of questions, we will keep allowing our ears to be entertained with noises.