Are Zimbabweans really consuming local content or there is the mirage that the vast expanse of the Zimbabwean populace consumes local art?
This is deep rhetoric considering how the majority of households, if not all have satellite dishes which means they either have Open View decoders and DSTV which usually have non-Zimbabwean content.
ZBC has has the sole responsibility of providing content, but unfortunately for the greater part of the 2000s to date it has been focused more on the propaganda aspect which has led to a decreased viewership and less credence on the type of content that they provide.
Measuring the type of content provided by ZBC it seems there is a tendency to promote more Harare and Mashonaland-based artists with a select few of Bulawayo or Matabeleland creatives being put on the spotlight.
Or maybe some of the local artists who feel marginalised have not been submitting their content to local stations such as ZBC.
Most people in Bulawayo watch foreign stations and content from South Africa, India or America.
The good thing about ZBC is that its news bulletins are done in most of the 16 languages recognised in the constitution. However, there is little regional and international content in its news bulletins.
Some Bulawayo artists have their content played on South African radio stations, although very few of them have achieved this.
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For example, Afro-jazz artist Berita from Bulawayo has had success in South Africa where she is now based.
Going back to my point, what has gone wrong is that we have never really appreciated our own local productions and this is something that has even stemmed from the clothing labels we wear and the choice of food we eat.
We have seen the rich mbingas bragging about wearing Gucci and Prada, which are Italian labels and they shun local designers.
This translates to the taste of musical and artistic content as we prefer to pay more to see a foreign artist than to value our own local artists. The few local artists that are valued are usually because of politically influenced factors, or due to them being pushed by influential individuals or social media pages and bloggers with a huge following.
All this affects the growth and the promotion of local art within the context of Zimbabwe as it does not create equality of artistic opportunity for every artist to have a space to showcase their potential in their artistic field.
Zimbabwean art audiences have shunned and “blue ticked local artists”. This tells us a lot about the type of local audiences which only support an artist that has had a moment of breakthrough or has been endorsed by a big brand.
Art audiences also have the tendency to support an artist when they are well known yet they would have shunned them at their infancy stage. It is hypocrisy.
People also always prefer to subscribe to foreign content and are of the view that locally-produced art is of low quality.
This relates to the dictum of how a prophet is never accepted by his own place of origin, especially in Bulawayo.
Well, at least in Harare they do support their artists as their shows are usually full houses and the artists from there have also performed for audiences outside of Zimbabwe, though it seems these are mostly Zimbabweans in the diaspora.
This means that they do make some form of living and also get to travel and increase their networks which is a good opportunity.
An international reach also means that there is the ability to produce art which is exportable to not only a nostalgic Zimbabwean audience, but a paying international audience that has the potential of enhancing the growth of the artist and putting the country on the map.
But the culture of plagiarism in the arts sector has ravaged the context of Zimbabwe where there is inculcation of borrowed elements from music which is produced in other countries such as USA, Jamaica, Nigeria, Congo and our neighbouring South Africa.
This results in artists not sounding like themselves, but end up taking the identity of another artist. For example, in Bulawayo there is a classical example of artists that try to sound like Sjava or Mlindo the Vocalist which takes away the idea and potency of their originality.
Rather than trying to sound original, many artists in the context of Zimbabwe sound more and more foreign which I guess is not exportable to the international market, and inherently turns off the local audience as they will prefer to listen to the originator of the sound.
The “Zimdancehall” vibe to me is also in need of revamping so that it has a touch of cultural related aesthetics which infuse use of traditional instruments and going back to the roots of “mangoma” unto which the genre is rooted on.
There is also the need to re-adopt and put into focus the relevance of the Chigiyo sound and how it represents the originality of Zimbabwean reggae music. For now our Zimbabwean artistic space is a conundrum of “wanna bes” and gate keepers”. What is needed is the feel of Zimbabwe in the sound which is a taste of the essence of originality.
I remember a time when I was still a child and people in Zimbabwe used to like local music and dance to it at parties and weddings. What caused the problem was the culture of gate keeping and the monopoly in broadcasting and the monotonous airplay given to the artists that afford “payola” which has made us be glued and be appetised by a select few artists shrouding the rest into obscurity.
Well there is now the inculcation of the local new community radio stations, which is good but also bad because these many radio stations like Sky Metro and Khulumani FM, for example, have no wide national reach. This lack of wide national reach thus inhibits the exposure of artists to a wider audience, with those being played on rotation in the station with a huge band width being the ones in a state of advantage.
It is important to note that many of the new channels from Zimbabwe are now available on DSTv which has also opened a variance to the monopoly by ZBC. The thing is people have self doubts, they have fear and they are scared of dominance which makes them to not celebrate themselves, and I think this is a toxic culture that has been affected by the volatile political environment and socio-economic crisis.
The need to support an artist or the arts sector has become a luxury considering the level of expense of the cost of living. We may complain of few likes but how many people also afford the expensive data, and let alone meeting the everyday bread and butter issues. This is food for thought on what has gone wrong on the local arts scene.
*Raymond Millagre Langa is musician, poet, orator, independent researcher and founder of Indebo edutainment Trust. You can follow on Face Book @Millagre Ray Langa, on Twitter you can follow on #Millagre Langa, email. [email protected] or [email protected].
