Booze and free music show?

Good people, a shunned show sponsored by the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) brought to mind a schoolboy definition of ‘savanna’.

I remembered my good ole teacher, clad in his faded stripped suit, milky spectacles and threadbare shoes, pacing across a crammed classroom to pick a pupil to distinguish a savanna from a rainforest.

“What is a savanna?” he would yell with hissing forcefulness, yet a savanna is just thick grassland with trees here and there”.

Substitute ‘trees’ with ‘drunks’ and you will have a fair picture of the music show DPP elites organised in a futile attempt to counter Vice-President Saulos Chilima’s rally at Njamba Freedom Park.

The mislabelled music party to ruin a rival’s rally was a day of small things, an empty ground dotted with drinkers of free booze standing far apart.

It appears DPP executives will stop at nothing in their agenda to create a drunken generation high on handouts and subsidies instead of ‘sweet for sweat’.

The party’s youth wing, branded Blue League, would have done better.

But this was not the first time their party was dishing out liquor to young citizens who need skills development and jobs more than intoxicating substances.

Even their leader, President Peter Mutharika, treated college students to an open bar when he bussed them to Sanjika Palace to speak against the youthful Saulos he loves to hate.

Well, it appears no one, not even a hurricane of sense, will prevent the President’s lieutenants from doing as much?

Enough of politics and all its ugly jazz!

These pages of straight talk shall not glorify the so-called dirty game, but take sides with artists’ power-hungry politicians’ abuse willy-nilly.

The sham of a show has earned international glow as a dark day scheming politicians in Malawi bought beer to ruin their new archrival’s rally.

In public entertainment, terms and conditions apply. One of them is integrity, a world President Peter Mutharika parrots more frequently that Standard Three pupils at Ukwe Primary School once recited Cats Sleep Anywhere.

This is why it was shocking when posters went public, bearing names of Umakwana hitmaker Piksy, Dear Jah Jah’s Fredokiss, Cholapitsa star Phyzix and Divorce singer Janta who admittedly had no idea about the show and its divisive agenda.

Piksy publicly distanced himself from everything about it. Phyzix preferred to be in the House of the Lord in Lilongwe, not at the drunken gig. Fredo graced Gwamba’s traditional wedding among the Vendas of South Africa and Janta opted to stay home instead of using his creative genius to prop up an undemocratic agenda.

Artists worth their salt know when to say NO. Desperate ones say yes, yes, yes.

Joseph Nkasa, Dan Lu and Nepman said yes and got whatever they wanted.

But this politics of using artists’ names without their express permission does not add any glory to the party in power. It has to take the lead in giving artists a fair deal, playing by laws of the game and protecting artists’ rights.

So, it appears the organisers of the show, where the youth signed loan forms without any address,  were so desperate to pull off their undemocratic mission at all cost and did not care about integrity.

If this was really about offering the youth business opportunities, the graphic designer who put together posters littered with names of artists who were not consulted in the first place got a disgraceful job to forget.

But the rest of the show, which got a better crowd after the end of Chilima’s speech, was a sham that earned DPP deserved ridicule.

Politics, like music, is a game of numbers. The treeless ‘savanna’ that was the beery show conceal protect the youth from intoxicating substances was utterly shunned for what it really was-abuse of artists (except some were willing to be used like condoms ostensibly because pennilessness does not add any glory to the jobless ).

It was an affront to democracy and use of creative minds.

But every goat has a price. The artists who accept what choosers declined with a straight face named their price.

Yet artists who glorify causes that objectify artists as politicians’ toys and vessels of propaganda only edify enemies of their art. n