Respected Musician Eric Wainaina Claps Back At Emotional Artistes Who Stormed Nation Center in Numbers Demanding 70% Airplay

Last week fired up artistes took to Nation Center protesting what they felt was their right taken away.

Their rights to airplay. They demanded 70% airplay as they felt that the foreigners ie.Naija and Bongo Music had hoarded all the airplay.

But Eric Wainanaina who has been in this game for long, has some wise words to tell these artistes:In an article posted on Okay Africa Eric writes this:

“…Is Kenya lagging behind in music? Our lawyers, bankers, brewers can compete with any of their colleagues globally. A Kenyan long distance runner need only beat his next-door neighbour to stand a chance at being the best in the world– recent culpability of doping notwithstanding. Naija music is brazen. It is not timid or full of angst. It walks into the club grabbing its crotch with its recreated sound of old turned over on its head, with easy lines and catchy hooks shotgunned by a thumping, ear-whomping, pulsating four-to-the-floor kick drum that grabs you, shoves a beer down your throat and promises you that tonight you will get lucky. And it comes with all its friends. When a Naija song plays, it’s charging at you through the speakers riding on the reputations of all of Nigerian Highlife, Fela, King Sunny Ade, Majek Fashek, and more recently P-Square, 2face and D’banj. Add to that the dizzying pace at which they release new material and you’ve got a tsunami. Maybe Kenya has suffered from not having an all-embracing identity genre that helps artists ride on each other’s shoulders. I’ve always been a proponent of diversity, but it can be argued that there’s not a single Jamaican Reggae, Ragga or Dub artist who’s not running on the steam of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and their contemporaries, wittingly or not. I mean when you’re waiting for the starting gun at the Boston Marathon, and the guy next to you is wearing a vest that says Kenya, even before you’ve run an inch you’re out of breath.

So when a group of Kenyan musicians march the streets of Nairobi saying they want more airplay, what they mean is that they just want more. Of everything. They want more access to great producers, more policies that favour growth not through airplay quotas (who wants to force appreciation?) but through education, more damn money from airplay, more prosecution for content aggregators who don’t remit royalties. More space– not protectionism– to be heard. With the same care and attention that a farmer would pay to a seedling. They’re just taking it out on the Nigerians and Tanzanians because right now they seem to be getting all the love. This misdirected energy is not new. It would be better spent writing songs, though. Songs that come out punching at your heart or your dancing shoes.” he writes on okayafrica