The Sunday News
Mbongeni Msimanga and Ngqwele Dube
A NEW player in the city’s music industry, Afro Platinum Music (APM) has set its sights on reviving Bulawayo’s waning music fortunes through grooming musicians and producing music they hope will hit the right note.
The Bulawayo music industry has been described as being in the intensive care unit with many artistes struggling.
This slump has seen many foreign acts taking advantage and wooing huge crowds to their shows, but APM intends producing audience orientated tunes that will see the dance floors of Bulawayo never empty.
In an interview with Sunday Leisure, chief executive officer for Afro-Platinum, Reason Rizzila Sibanda said they have created a platform, Bulawayo Urban Music (BUM), which will see Bulawayo musicians contributing singles that will be compiled to form an album.
“The compilation album is not a once off project; our aim is to move artistes from the periphery of the music industry into the core of the music business not only in the city but also nationally.
“Most of the paying shows within the city are youthful urban music genres but ironically these are not headlined by any local artistes. We have a lot of kwaito, house, hip-hop and Afro Pop artistes in Bulawayo who are producing high standard songs which go to waste without getting a platform to be exposed to the local and national market,” he said.
Rizzla said musicians should understand their audience first and then come up with music genres that appeal to the young and outgoing.
“We feel that music genres such as kwaito, hip-hop and house music have been left out,” Rizzla said.
He added that they would hold a series of workshops to promote local artistes and empower them with knowledge on how they can reach out to their audience.
The BUM compilation is expected to feature top drawer songs that will draw revellers to the dance floors this festive season and also propel artistes to prominence.
Musicians are currently submitting their tracks to Afro Platinum.
He said they would be taking advantage of social media platforms, which are used by many of their potential young audiences, to market their music.
“We are looking at platforms such as Soundcloud, YouTube, social sites — WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter while we can pursue digital sales through Traxsource and Itunes among others but we are not forgetting that we have to connect physically with our audiences and we would be going out to various places of entertainment and promoting the compilation,” he said.
