Take a look at the arts industry with a bias towards Film, Music and Theater, we have interesting Ugandans that push the envelope way deeper and others that just do things to finish, make a quick buck.
There’s little professionalism in all those fields and those who try to be professional are ridiculed, like whatever they are trying to do is completely non Ugandan.
In all these industries, the media uses one statement while passing a critique on Ugandan productions; ‘Judging by Ugandan standards’, in there they get to praise poorly done films, poorly mastered audios and poorly produced concerts because they are Ugandan and we can’t compare them to what we see on TV.
At the Wale Wale concert held on Friday at Kyadondo Rugby grounds, the mediocre mentality came out to play – and it showed up in unplanned measures.
From the onset, show production, media and time management, backstage policy, show scheduling – the scanty behavior of being poor at doing things and thus anything goes, reigned supreme.
And to many of these, the answer was one; “this is how things are done in Uganda.”
The ridiculous upcoming artistes
It was a personal show where we were we were going to celebrate the man and his music, at least that’s what we thought, only to get hijacked by a number of upcoming dreadlocked people whose music all sounded alike.
Seriously in an age of social media, you wonder why these so called upcoming acts are still looking at concerts as the only way to get their music heard.
Now the most annoying thing about upcoming artistes is a fact that they all look up to Chameleone, Bebe Cool and Bobi Wine for inspiration, in this way, they’ve created a small corridor that can’t accommodate all of them. They think they have a winning formula – release cheaply produced music, pretend to sing and never care about the lyrics – this is more of a suicide note.
During the show on Friday it was hard even celebrating any of the 20 plus upcoming artistes as talented – their music was stale and stereotypical – if it wasn’t about a woman singing about keeping a man, it was about a ragamuffin singing about penetrating a female, and this went on for four hours.
The MCs – for some reasons Ugandans believe an MC must throw all the ethics and become vulgar in the name of being funny, silly tired jokes of how rich people’s kids, dogs or maids cry and moan are not funny, they suck.
Chameleone featuring the flag bearer
Then Chameleon’s performance, - for some reason since I first attended a Chameleone concert in 2006, he been bringing useless flag bearers with him on stage and this show was no different.
Seriously if this antic is happening at a gig outside Uganda, we can understand but flag bearers of Ugandan flags at a Kampala concert, is this a revolution concert or?
And the vocally lame backup, a forced and terribly sick collaboration with Irene Ntale and Leilah Kayondo, who I actually think is better off as background vocalist than a standalone artiste.
This show creatively and musically had only two highlights, The Wale Wale performance – this was clearly the only rehearsed and choreographed parts of the show and a really toned down tribute to his fallen young brother.
Besides that, the rest was music played from the same template, it was hard knowing that they are now playing Badilisha or Fugga bbi, they all sounded alike, yet at the end of it all, someone claimed this was the best live concert they’ve ever seen and the media was taking an whole different angle – the turn up.
I hear Chameleone has always had the best concerts because many people turn up, way more than those that have been attracted by Sisqo, Konsens, Bebe Cool and Bobi Wine at the same venue..Eehhhh
But no one killed it like the presenter that decided to talk about the concert on radio; “By Ugandan stardards, this is the best concert I’ve attended,” such a mediocre way of looking at things.
Dude, when local artistes go out to perform and they are a mess, no one will say “in Uganda that would have been an awesome performance”…..The world judges on the same level and if our artists generally want to make it, they should stop planning and working by Ugandan standards.
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