Zimbabwe hasn't found its music or its anything yet!
Most African countries are known for something when it comes to their music, their way of life or foods, but what is Zimbabwe known for?
These are just some African thoughts!
I have been listening to music from Ghana for a while now, I must say, they are doing pretty good up there.
While I listen to different artists all the time I find some commonness in their music, you can tell this is music from Ghana, whether its some Hip Hop or dancehall.
Although it still mostly sounds like Naija music (I don’t know who copied who, but Ghana and Nigeria have a lot in common too) I can tell they are finding their ground in the continent.
When I come back home to Zimbabwe, its just a sad story really!
Its sad because it still seems like we haven’t found our ground yet, we have an identity crisis when it comes to our music, or anything for that matter.
Trust me there are lot of artists I like from back home, but honestly most of them you can’t tell what genre they sing. One day we are trying the Naija thang and tomorrow we are Americans.
If Africa is ever gonna want to put an ear to our music, we have to find our ground.
Back in the days we had Sungura, not the most popular genre in Africa, but at least we tried to create a sound. Now Sungura is gone (yes it is! When its left for the old, its gone!) we need to create a sound that we can own. That is whats gonna make other African countries turn an ear to us.
Kudos to the guys doing well in the local music industry, but I want to tell you, if you really want to go regional, you may want to ditch the genre you are singing.
OhMyGot! I have gone mad! This is some good madness here. Why I tell you to do that is loyalty to a genre is a b*tch sometimes.
Good music these days is creativity not genre, ask most people around you, they no longer loyal to a genre. We are loyal to good music, period.
So what I am saying is maybe the Zimbabwean sound will be genre-less, the Naija sound is genre-less though artists claim their different genres. The fact that we can hear it in almost all songs means there is no genre.
When you start killing the genre in your music, it starts to cross many platforms, people of different tastes will give you an ear.
The sooner you realize that Africa is so divided, we are large as one Africa, but small as individual countries, the sooner you realize you need to spread your wings and your music needs to too.
If you sing music good enough for Zimbabweans, say Zim-Dancehall and yet among Zimbos we all have different tastes, you already know you have lost among Zimbos and you ain't gonna do well abroad.
Simplified: African musicians don’t have as much advantage as Western musicians, if you are from Down South you've gotta work hard to create music that cuts across many cultures and genres to make it!
Pheeww! You haven’t got that?
Zimbabwe my challenge is that lets create a genre-less sound that does all the above (cut across all genre) if we really want our music to make it.
Its a big world, there are lots of opportunities, are we getting ready to do what needs to be done?
If you liked this post put some ❤️ on it!
