Making Music for the love of it! A vision I’ll nerver regret!

In 2000 I helped set-up a music publication and a communication media in Soweto- called Samablue Music Times. My vision was to organize a team of guys and girls to structure the local music industry in preparation to create exportable quality music. Complacency and lack of originality has always stifled the potential to export our music products overseas, instead we rely on the current dying small local SA market and complain about the unprecedented piracy of our music by Chinese and Nigerian syndicates.

Well! The project did not last long enough to reach its fruition, simply because some of the members of my association and talent scout wanted a quick fix and the instant gratification, the glamour and glory that go with being a music celebrity. Beyond this plan we made a mistake of not involving our local radio DJ’s and to appoint a qualified and experienced or an influential spokes-person to sell our vision. Besides we were not business-smart and matured enough to understand the dynamic power of political games of the music industry at that time. Racism and contracts manipulation was prevalent and rife more than one could ever imagine.

Along the way we encountered hurdles and stumbling blocks, although, I personally invested a lot of emotion, intellectual, money and time on the project, I knew that if I slipped up I had a greater chance to lose out more than anyone else in the project. In the same vein if we win I would be very successful too in retrospect. As fate would have it, I was project director, financier and print publication editor and distributor of “Samablue Music Times” communications.

As an investor, entrepreneur and risk taker my colleagues had a different agenda and were despondent towards immediate realization of result of this vision as if this was a short-term plan, and I held the magic wand to change circumstance around this mist. First and foremost to make good solid music is a lifetime commitment, putting together a team of pioneering talented composers is a mission, but being a newspaper publisher and owner is a nightmare, doing all of the above is suicidal.
I laid the foundation to invite and form a team of music collaborators i.e. composers, musicians of calibre, lyricists, poets and arrangers whose jobs were to create music and build a database of music scores so that professional and qualified artists, musicians and bands with integrity can simply choose a song to record the music and publishers will takeover from there.

This is how simple and fundamental the concept was, although in between quality assurance standards and assessment were in place to ensure the product complied with the international consumer validation and acceptance. It was therefore measures against international standards emulating the likes of musicians, producers and composers like Quincy Jones, Smoky Robinson, Burt Bacharach and Lamont Dozier to name just a few.

The idea was to create a “music-lab-creation-warehouse” for all aspiring local stars and the emerging talent to take advantage of this resource; and also to raise the stakes of our consciousness in music creation by participating and entering into international music competitions against overseas stars to inspire confidence and integrity to produce our high quality end-products.

I signed up my first band “Blue J. Band” their stint lived for a short while after “Ghost 5” was born and showed promise to launch an awesome album. Ghost 5 band members had personality issues and they also vanished from the scene without completing their assignment. Challenges went from bad to worse none of these artists wanted to apply their minds and soul into productive and worthwhile hard work towards a realization of a long-term goal. They came and left as if we were running a “brothel–cum-beauty contest” and these models were only hungry for quick-cash-fame and media publicity without a product to show-off to their audiences.

It soon came to my realization that the new MIDI-Music computer generated technology was going to take over the job of musicians and bands, because a music producer could go into a studio, lay tracks and sample his composition using a software and within a day or weeks a song and an album is recorded and completed; “just like that”.

So! Our potential candidates in my project jump ship to land on this new found technology because they have finally found a quick fix solution to their get rich and famous quick scheme. Kwaito music was in its inception and every Dick-Tom-Harry joined the bandwagon. No one took cognisant what quality of music and its arrangements, lyrics, or if singers can maintain high standards, but lyrics and melodies left a lot to be desired. The industry suddenly caught fire of the “Local is Lekker” fever waves.

By the end June 2001, I saw the demise of one side of my vision collapse, I held on to the other half, which was to see the end-result of exporting our local music to overseas markets and striving for quality and integrity in our productions. The last people to dis me were my loyal team of composers in the MLCW –lab i.e. “music-lab-creation-warehouse.” I could not keep them besides I could not afford to pay them either anymore. My cash was drying up and my competition hijacked all my advertisers including my staff to form the opposition publication I suffered huge loses.

I lost all my lifetime investment but gained more experience and wisdom in handling matters of conflicting interest. One of the songs which reminisce this experience is on the introductory track of the Video on this blog called – Durban Zulu Kingdom. I wanted to prove to the world that South Africans and local musicians have potential and can also create good stuff – I guess I was wrong but it is a vision I’ll never regret.