The Nigerian music scene is one of the most vibrant music scenes in the world. It has produced timeless voices. It has also produced young men and women who are telling the Outside world the story of positivity, hence, the realistic plunge into its promotion to the World.
Entrepreneurship in Africa among young people isn’t always about ‘start-ups’ and ‘incubators.’ There is a general idea to generate revenues from simple means. However, the tendency to ignore the business of music management has completely crucified the implementation of structure in the system. A situation where there are functioning record labels and management companies, on the move to recruit artistes and properly handle them, there is a notable flow in the creativity of these young people. For once, music is money. Big money. Even though we know that a lot of music promoters have failed in the process of trying to invest in artistes and not realizing anything, what one should realize is that the taste of music isn’t about the artiste, but about the music and how it is presented.
Few months ago, I started work on a project, called OutofAfrica Concert. At the initial stage, it started as collaboration with an entertainment company, Angloheritage, based in Lisbon, Portugal. Slowly, it worked itself into an entity that might just serve the entire African communities in Europe and Asia. The whole idea of this project is to take African performing artistes to Europe and Asia and let them perform at clubs and do road shows.
The show will parade such artistes as Bez Idakula, Jeremiah Gyang, Edge, Gt da Guitarman, Beautiful Nubia, Christine Ben-Ameh and other artistes who indicate interest to tour Europe and Asia with the crew. Proceedings from these shows will go to the clubs playing host to us and also to Blues & Hills to continue promoting the music of the continent, hence, you have a growing enterprise that will completely invest in the promotion of Nigerian music.
It is not easy to avoid loss. It is the typical omniscient approach towards risk-taking. Most of the times, it is either that we borrow money to fly these bands and end up not getting what we want or we encounter challenges at the embassies, for the most part that the embassies doubt the credibility of these events we are taking to their countries. The politics of the whole thing is to involve local sponsorships, which basically, is non-financial.
Things like this are very difficult to be done here. If we created music and let it journey itself, then the music and creative entrepreneurships that we glorify everyday have no dealings with us. With self-less passion, one can easily try to mobilize these musicians and have an agreement on the kind of stuff you expect to happen in Europe and fix these things. With a sense of revolving space, the idea is to present these key passions to the embassies, on the platter of collaborations to genuinely take Nigerian music to Europe, have these artistes presented to the tiny audience they may be struggling to impress in Europe and make them become the next African exports to Europe, which apparently, is the dream of every emerging act.
This is difficult, just like maths, but with the detailed contacts you have, this is a small dream. For details on the Europe and Asia concert visit www.bluesandhills.com or contact:
CEO: Onyeka Nwelue Email: onyeka.nwelue@bluesandhills.com Twitter: @bluesandhills
Project driector: Ezedike Oliver Email: ezedikeoliver@gmail.com or project@bluesandhills.com. Mobile: +2348136541996 Twitter: @wizzietizzie
Onyeka Nwelue is the Founder/CEO of Blues & Hills Consultancy and author of the bestselling novel, The Abyssinian Boy.
