The rebranding of Lulu

The musical Lulu you have experienced in the past decade is now dead. Like a snake, he has scaled into a new and different artist as EPHRAIM NYONDO found out:

He has, in a decade, towered the musical scene like a giraffe.

In fact, even undisputed King of Pop, the departed Michael Jackson, could not match his scope of multi-talentedness.

Jackson, of course, dazzled the world for he could combine great singing, thoughtful compositions and that magical moon dance; but Lulu, yes Lawrence Khwisa, goes beyond Jackson’s triple genius.

The 30-year-old Mtima Wakana hit-maker, besides being a great dancer, composer and singer, can also, something Michael Jackson could not, play a guitar like the legendary Collen Ali of Kaligo Melodies.

Yet, despite being a great musical decade for him, Lulu, quite surprisingly, admits he achieved all this unexpectedly because he was not doing music as ‘serious businesses’.

He admits he has, in the past decade, been doing music as a ‘hobby’—something that, somehow, might have compromised his career ‘in one way or another’.

Today, everything musical that you knew about Lulu is about to go through a fundamental change, he says.

Lulu told On the Arts that he is rebranding his musical career—which, basically, means he will no longer be doing music as a ‘hobby’ but as ‘big business’.

“Rebranding the name Lulu means working professionally in terms of standard of music, performance and working relationships with people and companies,” he said.

He added that in the past decade doing music “has been more of free style where I could work with anything and anyhow, but now I am seriously taking off my career as a musician”.

Lulu, who has performed in various countries, says the rebranding will help him.

“I will now be able to get more business relations with serious people and companies and this will help put Malawi on a global musical market.

“If you read global music trends, you will note that arranging shows and documentations are normally handled by different people, not the musician. The rebranding is taking that route. I want to concentrate on music production and not documentations. I have given that to right people to do it in a right way,” he said.

In this journey, the Lilongwe-based music crooner said he is working with a great team, mostly from his Mathumela Band.

“As usual, dreams are sweet to share with those who are close, but not everyone around you will understand them. I have good people around and I love my team, but I still take this as my career and future,” he said.

Lulu explained that as part of symbolising the rebranding, there is a launch slated for September 5 at Chameleons in Lilongwe.

“It will be a musical night. I want to give people a different standard of sound and performance since what they know is someone has to come from outside to do that,” he said.