It is true. We have all been hit hard by the deadly pandemic-coronavirus. Coronavirus is the reason why some of us last year almost dumped our lucrative careers down, to leap into the streets of Kampala to beg from the then privileged few who were feeding the rest of the world. It was really a tough year.
I am happy to be here alive, in the new year. We never saw these things coming. We were thumped really hard by this unpredictable world in the year 2020.
It is ridiculous to see a man or woman who hustled in rain and sun for years, to become as famous as he is to today be among the herd of fearful men and women who think a country, as important as this one, can be owned by a small section of men and women who were poor less than forty years ago.
Buganda voting for opposition during January polls was a message strongly delivered to the incumbent candidate representing the ruling party.
A tear dropped is enough to convince one who is swollen-headed that the common man in the street is in need of something.
In the first quarter of last year, due to the outbreak of coronavirus in the country, musicians were banned from working. This music industry employs thousands of youth in the country.
I am told by the people often near to upcoming and established musicians that becoming a notable artiste is as hard as becoming a followed writer.
I am now sure a musician, like a writer, hustles to get there. We hustled for years to access the dining table where this cake here is shared by less than three percent of this country’s population. It is more than a full year now. Musicians are unemployed! It is shocking.
We don’t know how they are surviving at the moment. No one is following up. They are like sheep without a shepherd. No organized leadership. No figure in the country has even ever wasted his limited time fighting for the mentioned vulnerable poor (artistes in the country).
Keeping quiet is the way a coward can take to avoid perceived problems. No one has currently come out to boldly say that more than five former musicians have gone mad already. I the other day found a gaunt and desperate musician at Rabongo Art Village in Makindye, on Salama road. I wondered. He looked so thin and regretting why he sought for employment in the music sector.
Metanik Rabongo is among the few youthful artistes in the country who have seen to it that at least posho is available at his home to be feasted upon by needy youth in the ghetto during these hard times. We vote people to authority because of their capacity to feel what the voiceless majority are feeling.
I was shocked late last year when I saw more than a dozen of able and learned musicians dumping the music industry.
Like an undirected foolish man thinks, musicians in Uganda thought coronavirus had come to cripple and subsequently bury their then profitable sector, of Music. Someone should say something, on behalf of the now shepherd less artistes in Uganda.
An awkwardly excited man or woman who thinks politics is better than the industry of music is either misinformed or ignorant.
I am an inspirational writer, who is ever busy at work, sometimes saying the sourest truth to thieving politicians in Africa. Who is next? I have spoken.
Both young and tested musicians are seriously starving. Authorities should do something.
Many of them have become incredibly vulnerable, more than they were early last year. They are in their rented houses in the slums of Kampala moaning and silently grumbling.
But how would these people survive in a sector different from that of music? Majority of them grew up in poverty. They were told that their countries belonged to small cliques of highly loaded and educated men.
It is actually not true that whoever peacefully demonstrates in Uganda is shot to death.
It takes money, perseverance and persistence to become a twinkling star in a third world country. What are we going to do for this sector, of music?
On whose behalf are these people (really) being punished? Like teachers, musicians are right to be angry with government. It would be a miracle if a musician became president of this country succeeding shrewd and tested Museveni. Every accurate thinker knows that.
Both famous musicians and upcoming ones are financially struggling at the moment. The answer to a man’s problems is not keeping quiet.
A country whose youth are as poor and miserable as our former super stars are today is a country in need of prayers.
The music industry is sinking like a stone. Authoririties in Uganda should do something. It is more than a year now.
We beg the people concerned to, in their hearts, know what these people in the once vibrant industry are facing. I am sorry. Important people in the country are coward to this extent. Oh!
