Jaco Jana, the new Nyimbo Music Company sign-up has stormed the music scene with an undertaking; he will sing about everyday life and bring hope to the hopeless.
According to his yet to be released 12 track album, Waiting for Someday, the 23-year-old musician tackles the struggles of people keeping on waiting for a better day.
To be unveiled this month, the title track of the album talks of four people waiting for a day when their struggles will come to an end.
Not that the day is going to come any sooner but that people should just anticipate that day because sooner or later, a day is going to come when dreams are going to turn into reality and all problems will go away.
“The song Waiting for Someday is a story of four people, I as the narrator waiting for a day when my life will be complete and I will have a life I have always wanted and secondly a girl who stays with an uncle who wants to take advantage of paying her school fees and wants to sexually molest her.
“The other two people are a street kid whose only hope is a car passing by and he is waiting for a day all this is going to end and lastly, it talks about a man who is seriously in love with a woman who doesn’t care about him at all and how he is waiting for a day the woman will realise all this,” says Jaco.
In the meantime, he has the better part of the airwaves with his two singles which are up for promotion, Maso Patsogolo and Tiye kwa Makolo. The first one being yet another song that talks of hope. The song sings about how no matter how hard things seem to be in life, it is good to stay focused because everything is going to be alright in the end.
While Tiye Kwa Makolo, is a story of love which ends prematurely because of early pregnancies and misunderstandings.
Other tracks that resonate on love are We Were Meant To Be, Mountain Peak, Ndinakonda Jaco Jana and Can’t You Feel My Love.
The song Ndinakonda Jaco Jana is a love song in which a girl is telling to the whole world of the man she loves and any girl is free to replace his name with the name of any person.
The album also contains a dedication to his young niece Lungile Banda, a daughter to his late sister who brought him up and used to inspire him in so many ways.
Jaco says he carries his sister’s spirit with him everywhere he goes because she was the one person who saw the artist in him and made sure it sprouted and did not die in its infancy.
The up-and-coming musician who lost his parents between 1996 and 1997 says music is like a religion but he refused to say whether he has come to stay or not.
“All I can say is, just as music is part of my life and I have got to live so I will continue to sing till the time allows me,” he says.
The Lunzu based artist who has been associated with Allan Namoko says the only reason that is so is because of his using a guitar just as the legend was doing but apart from that, his music is nothing like Namoko’s.
Apart from being a musician, Jaco is a guitarist and a visual artist. He has worked at visual artist Elson Kambalu’s art gallery.
“Kambalu is the first guy who inspired me to grow my love for music because though his trade is strictly visual arts, he allowed me to be taking his guitar to play during free times,” says Jaco.
During his time with Kambalu, the person he describes as not just being his superior but also his brother, he recorded a song that was used as background track for the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust documentary on which Kambalu was working.
Jaco also teaches guitar and art of drawing lessons at the newly opened Blantyre Arts Club in Sunnyside.
