UNITED STATES-BASED Zimbabwean comedian, Alfred Kainga says the current lockdown brought by the global COVID-19 pandemic has given him time to rediscover himself and explore his other artistic side.
BY WINSTONE ANTONIO
Kainga told NewsDay Life & Style from his Dallas, United States base yesterday that he has been producing some music clips while doing some self-introspection.
“I have been doing a lot of reading, self-introspection and just calming down, creating more material and a lot of people have been surprised that I have done a couple of music clips that I have released on my social media pages,” he said.
Kainga, who also plays the piano, said although he developed a love for music at 13 during which time he used to sing in church, he had never seriously pursued music over the years as he focused on jest.
“Now I have picked it up, singing and playing again, something that I had never shown to the world before, but now because of this lockdown, I have been able to start playing and releasing them,” he said.
The jest master said he has had to cancel a lot of engagements, something he described as a huge blow to his career, following the COVID-19 outbreak.
“As a performer, I travel all over the world doing my stand-up comedy and I had so many dates lined up. Of course, those have been cancelled and postponed, which you know is devastating, but at the same time if you have the right frame of mind you don’t get down,” he said. “So I was not really disappointed as much, I miss it, it is my work, but I believe everything happens for a reason as there is no such thing as coincidence.”
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The Mbare-bred stand-up comedian said he was using the lockdown period to meditate and rediscover himself. “I have never thought I would experience the times like this where you see many people in the country just dying and you see numbers going up. We have been asked to quarantine, they call it shelter in place and they have closed non-essential business just like the same thing happening across the world,” he said.
Kainga, however, ruled out the possibility of professionally recording the music.
He, however, urged artistes to keep people’s spirits up as there was “a lot of stress in the world right now”.
Kainga, who returned home after 16 years to perform for the first time before his home crowd in 2017 after venturing onto the Dallas Comedy Scene in 2006 and turning professional in 2010, is optimistic for another show in the country soon after the COVID-19 dust settles.
With over a decade on the comedy circuit, Kainga has performed on major stages and elite comedy clubs such as the Improv Comedy Clubs across the States, World Famous Laugh Factory in Los Angeles and many others.
He has also said the stage with African internationally-acclaimed American comedy superstar Basketmouth and has also worked with several other great names including Mark Curry from Hanging with Mr Cooper and Showtime at the Apollo host Rudy Rush.
