MAGAZINE
Struggling African Artists
By Linda A. Annan 
They are disseminated all over myspace.com like seeds trying to find fertile soils to land on; these artists are making all the noise they can to be heard through their music and perhaps get a break. Some have managed to establish record labels and are struggling to crush the invisible bar hindering them from penetrating Western markets.
They rap, sing, and make music about their homelands; reminiscing on childhood experiences in their various African countries while screaming about the injustices of society today. These up and coming African artists are not crowing about living in privileged countries, instead they're creating and finding ways to reach out to both their people living in the diaspora and Africa. Their eye for humanitarian deeds are evident in their lyrics, most of them looking forward to going back home someday and become a part of a solution. The question is, how are we helping our brothers and sisters move beyond this Western lead of a bar blocking them from making it in the music industry?
Most Africans would rather buy CDs by Western artists because they sound “better” than that of African artists. Some even go to the extent of prejudging music by African artists before they get the chance to listen to it. We often fail to see that we're a bit of a key to these artists' success and probably the ones to help them gain the publicity they need until they get their breakthroughs.
Artists such as Beanie Man, Sean Paul and Buju Banton have been able to make it worldwide not only because of their talent but also due to support from their Caribbean families in the diaspora. How do you think Shakira and Daddy Yankee were able to get to where they are now? I would say partly because of the same reasons. What I admire about these artists is that they have been able to preserve their individual styles and with determination have pushed for a worldwide acceptance of their cultural music even though they are a bit scraped by Western influence.
I wonder how much longer it'll take for Africans to get there. Yes, there has been Akon who broke the U.S. market with one song dedicated to his people and some might say it is a tweak of progress. But considering the number of underground African artists there are it is not enough, at least not in the U.S. Europe seems to be doing well in acknowledging some of the African artists. For example, Nigerian native singer/rapper 2Face, won Best African Act at the 2005 MTV Europe Awards and a Special Recognition Award at the 2006 Hip- Hop World Awards. K' naan gets some video play on MTV 2 , so does Blitz with his new video “A Road Less Traveled” which he directed and produced.
You would think as Africans we'll be inspired and motivated by the other cultures to do the same for ours, instead we gravitate toward those cultures and sometimes abandon ours altogether. Not to say there's anything wrong with embracing other cultures, I believe we need to cultivate our own partly by spurring on our brothers and sisters in the industry to get our cultures out there like others are doing theirs.
Comment: