LESSONS FROM EARLY 2000s MUSIC ICONS.

There is something about the Old artistes who dominated the music industry in the early 2000s. The likes of Juliana Kanyomozi, Navio, Cindy Sanyu that makes them different when they hit the stages today and here are the key facts that the artistes of this era need to know.

Back in the day promoters and producers were strict on bringing talents on board. For any Producer to produce your song you had to have the talent. The environment for artistes back in the day was harsh and you had to have the vocals or talent to pick a microphone and sing or record a tune in a studio.

Equipment back in the day was not as revolutionized as it is today so you had to have the talent, other than that, there was no great auto tune that could refine your voice, there was no system to align your vocals and rub out the flatting, so you had to have the talent and that was a nonnegotiable.

The music industry then was built on live stage performances, and many back in the day preferred live bands to this studio produced music and this meant that any management building an artiste had to ensure that their artiste had the ability to give a live performance above all else.

Many of the vocally talented artistes we see today, started as back up singers. Many spent years backing up other top artistes for example, Rema Namakula revealed that she was once Bebe Cool’s back up artiste for a very long time until time reached and she requested to feature in one of his songs not as a back up artiste and that is how she broke out from the back up stage.

Today Rema Namakula is one of the female artistes with a rich vocal ability. The likes of Juliana Kanyomozi were naturally talented and were really good and from day 1 they broke out and not to forget the fact that they were among the first famous female artistes in Uganda to penetrate the market.

Most of these were nurtured with discipline in the music industry, it is no wonder that they don’t just show up on certain stages, they were nurtured in strict environments Their quality of work was always uncompromised, no room for making mistakes and no room for fixing a flirting artistes, practice was like a life duty and this is what makes them really good.

In addition to this PR was part of their nurturing, they were trained by their managements how to handle media and unlike the petty battles of today, back in the day battles were more detrimental to one’s self esteem than they are today. As an artiste you wouldn’t just come to social media and comment on every viral conversation or show up for every interview to make comments unless it’s about music.

This explains why most of their content on their social media pages is about their music and not social opinions. One might even think that they have become irrelevant but that’s not the case, they just know when to speak and when to just play music.

As an artiste of this generation, it is important to have these skills before you embarrass yourself on our tabloids.