Nothing is said about hip hop I hope this is not another battle we need to fight. I say this with all due respect but for every battle thats won it seems the youth need to also fight for their place.
In typical South Africa fashion we do the right thing and acknowledge the legends and at the same time do the wrong thing by not developing the youth. Its the same story you'll see in politics, its always the global companies that are eating and a few old people who in this case would be x comrades turned ministers and their alliances. The common factor with all this progress is that it never filters down to the bottom hence as a country we keep adopting global ideas to engage with the youth which are fronted by corporates that have black people for a BEE score.
What Mr Hlaudi or the SABC has done is monumental in our industry, its as big as the release of Mandela in jail... yeah I said it. Remember freedom is just a word and it only starts making a difference once it becomes a verb. In the local music industry freedom has always been a word that was dangled like a carrot and we really saw foreign countries take advantage of that freedom on our platforms. Hence you see 80% of the tv adverts that are trying to sell to our community using international music, how international concerts and artists get preference over our local acts and our stations pay hundreds of millions to overseas companies from royalties cause all they play is international music.
We don't hear enough of ourselves on our radio stations from the legends to the youth. The source of our respect will come from our broadcasters. If a foreigner comes into this country and tunes into our stations and hears local music he'll be more humble and show respect but all the time international acts land in South Africa and hear themselves we perpetuate their perception of superiority amongst us.
The power of acknowledging every age group will shed light to all South Africans cause culture is the mirror of the peoples hearts, desires and ambitions. If you dont understand let me explain. The musical Sarafina was so powerful when it was released yet today its merely a great piece of work but doesn't have the same resonance as it did then? This is because back then the youth were looking for freedom and Sarafina spoke to those desires,the same way today Cassper Nyovest,Black Coffee and AKA speak to a youth thats anxious, impressionable and sometimes unsure what the future holds until they see someone thats their age doing what they love and making a living of it they get inspired. Our music and musicians keep defining the times and the more we suppress these voices the more we put a mask on who we are and let international content represent us.
Please note today I say hip hop cause it the biggest representer of young people, tomorrow it could be a new genre that represents young people so the point I want to bring across is this.
South Africa when you move forward always look back and reach out to the youngins cause thats the first steps of industry development. You don't throw money on a bunch of people with no clue and hope for development you give it to people who are already in the forefront and then use your experience as a leader to help them build something beyond themselves.
The only challenge I foresee is preparation I've received intel from very good sources that none of the station managers or programmes new about this announcement until we all found out last night. Radio requires a lot of planning and there are shows like the weekend top 40's or the RNB classics that are predominately driven by international music and the listeners have grown to expect that. This could cause a lot of dissatisfaction from the listeners and turn this good initiative to a bad experience for the listeners. I just hope there's a plan to satisfy this and the programmers are given enough time to find the right local music if not this will be a cause with great intention but bad execution.
Right now we need to be optimistic and with that being said congratulations to Mr Hlaudi he'll make the history books for this and hopefully this 90% is inclusive of everything representative of South Africa even those Afrikaans cats that are still bitter.
Slikour
