By Henry Ssali
On Tuesday evening I visited Maurice Kirya’s new venture, The Sound Cup, a coffee shop at Garden City and I applauded him for setting up the place.
We chatted about artistes not investing their money and how much they would make if they did, just because of their big names. I admitted to him that it would take me a lot of money in marketing such a place to achieve the response he got – a full house of customers with just one tweet! That’s the power of a brand name.
It takes us a lot more to create our own brands like the Asylum bars yet it could take a big artiste just a Facebook post.
I think Maurice showed a good example and it is high time our celebrities put their money and big names to good use before they lose the fame.
One of the websites I usually visit for a good laugh about American celebrities is bossip.com. They irregularly run column titled “When the checks stop coming in.” (Forgive their American English, it’s supposed to be “When the CHEQUES stop coming in.”) They usually show the desperate measures celebrities undertake to keep earning a living when they are no longer relevant to us.
“When the cheques stop coming in,” is something Ugandan artistes should consider more seriously than the Americans, after all the Americans can live off royalties from record sales and endorsements even when their music isn’t topping the charts. In Uganda you are only as good as your hit song because musicians earn from performances. When you fade off the charts we are quick to ask “Ani Akumanyi (who knows you)?”
The good thing is that any Ugandan artiste who gets a hit song can make a quick buck. You shoot up from earning Shs100,000 per gig to Shs1,000,000 a gig in just a matter of weeks. But unfortunately, the faster you get up, the quicker you fall, so we might be shouting your name today and a few months later, you are a laughing stock. Red Banton knows this too well and he put it in a verse … “Buli Omu yawananga Banton (everyone used to praise Banton) … Kati abantu bevuma Banton (now the name Banton is an insult) … You look like Red Banton.”
So what happens when the cheques stop coming in? It is a question every musician should ask themselves when they start earning out of their career. Jose Chameleone and Bebe Cool got a second lease of life after being confined to wheel chairs and they are now back on their feet. When Chameleone broke his legs, he had to disobey doctors’ directives and kept performing in a wheel chair. Bebe Cool also kept performing in a wheel chair when he was shot at. It is because their cheques largely come from performances that they kept performing. Imagine they had got injured to a point where they would no longer be able to sing (God forbid), the cheques would stop coming in! That should be a big lesson to them and other musicians.
The beauty of the Ugandan music industry is that when you have a hit song, you earn get a lot of money in a short period of time. On average, a fairly good Ugandan artiste can earn about Shs1.5m every week from various gigs. That’s the monthly pay of many of the corporate guys in air conditioned offices. This is good capital to start several business ventures. Unfortunately all the artistes think about is spending … mostly on things they are not yet able to afford. They will buy a sleek ride, spend on the most expensive alcohol with their hanger-ons (crew) and date high maintenance groupies who will all run on to the next hitting artiste when the money and fame goes. If P-Square and Akon sing about how they don’t care some girl “chopping their money” and you also don’t care, you are forgetting that these guys can earn from a single show, what you might never earn in a lifetime and Akon is involved in the diamond business!
It’s about time our celebs thought about preparing for the time when the cheques stop coming in by turning their brands into income generating activities. The Western artistes we look up to like Jay-Z and P-Diddy are moguls and most of their money doesn’t come off their music (especially P-Diddy), but off their brand. An artiste’s name is a big income generating item. That is why companies use artistes to endorse their products.
It’s about time artistes started investing the big money they earn from shows because they might not earn it forever.
Musicians like Bobi Wine are investing and they wouldn’t lose sleep over a dry spell when there is no show because they can still collect rent from tenants.
Some musicians claim they have investments, but it defeats the purpose of a celebrity having an investment if we don’t know it. Your star power is supposed to be your biggest advert so we are supposed to know your investment. If a company pays you to endorse their product, why don’t you endorse your own product?
If you still prefer a sleek Mercedes to an investment, look two of the big stars of the 90s. We had Shanks Vividee and Steve Jean from the Perfect Generations. When Steve Jean’s music, leather outfits and braids got outdated, he only got richer because his Fenon Records grew from a music recording studio to a big multi-media company, producing many of the adverts of the big corporate companies on top managing big events. Meanwhile Shanks thinks he can still produce a hit song and go back to the Kakolo days of 1994 (almost 20 years ago).
Artistes who we don’t consider among the top five are paid Shs20m or more by promoters like Balaam for album launch concerts. A few weeks later they have a new car! Please take off sometime and think about what life will be like when the cheques stop coming in.
“[katogoaward]”