Musicians challenged on social media

Unless local music artists embrace strategies to network with the global community, they should forget about succeeding in the highly competitive music trade.

No wonder, local music icons Fumbi Jazz Band have decided to embrace technology to stay on top of the game.

Briefing musicians at a training workshop organised by Lake of Stars at the Polytechnic in Blantyre, Annelie de Bruine of Master Your Ability, noted that one has to put a lot of effort to become rich or influential in music.

According to de Bruine, it is against this background that Lake of Stars (LoS) embarked on the media workshop for local artists in order to prepare them for a fulfilling music career.

“What we are saying is that Malawian artists are really good and they just need effective strategies to amp their game and start visualising music as business,” said de Bruise.

However, most artists in Malawi still operate in a vacuum when it comes to issues of networking and social marketing.

While de Bruine praised the impressive online presence of many urban artists in the country, she challenged them to think of art as a business when managing themselves and their forums.

A random check by The Nation revealed that most artists in Malawi had personal, rather than business pages on different social platforms.

Worse still, players of traditional music, despite their steamy and enduring art, hardly have a presence on the social media.

The media workshop covered the areas of media usage, music industry, networking and social media. It had also a practical session where artists had an opportunity to create business pages using the wordpress.

Fumbi Jazz Band, Lady Pace, Rina, Trappa and Bucci were some of the artists that attended the Blantyre workshop.

Fumbi Jazz Band’s Charles Mtembenuza described the workshop as an eye opener.

“We are grateful for this meeting because it has opened our minds in terms of networking and social marketing. From today, our manager will create a page for Fumbi Jazz Band to increase our presence online because we now understand that technology is the way to go,” said Mtembenuza.

All the participants of the workshop will perform at the Lake of Stars Festival which takes place on September 25 to 27 at Sunbird Nkopola Lodge in Mangochi. n