Total discord in the local music industry

After a month-long training programme in the UK and Switzerland, music producer George “Jojo” Ouma Onyango of Jojo Productions is back with both good and bad news for players in the music industry.

Onyango, a director of the Music Copyright Society of Kenya, says the good news is  that Kenya enjoys enormous goodwill abroad, and the bad is that the country will not benefit from this goodwill until it streamlines its chaotic music industry.

The producer said that during the course on copyright and related rights at the World Intellectual Property Organisation Academy in Geneva, Switzerland, which was followed practicals at the British Copyright Council in association with the UK Intellectual Property Office in London, he learnt just how badly the local music industry is doing.

Speaking during an interview with Weekend, Onyango lauded WIPO for the initiative, which was aimed at instilling good management in the music industry, but pointed out that such  knowledge is only applicable in an orderly environment.

Said Onyango: “I now realise just how chaotic our industry is, and  most of  what I learnt through the  bodies that collect royalties overseas can only be applied in a much more disciplined environment — and  Kenya is far from that.”

Indeed, the chaos is pervasive, and is evident in the licensing of music for public broadcast, distribution of  royalties, quality of the music, right through to its production and retailing, all of which point to a sector in need of a major overhaul for  the business to grow and  the art to flourish.

No genuine structure

Asked whether Kenya has a genuine structure to produce and market music, he said it did not, adding that this discouraged potential investors. “They  would not understand how we function and they would not want to invest in a situation that is as messy as ours,” he observed.

The government has been constantly blamed for its indifference to issues related to music and the arts in general, especially the infringement of copyright laws, which continue unabated — and with impunity.

This has  contributed to the mayhem that has  turned the  Kenyan music scene into a  jungle where the basic rules  of the art and its  standard business practice have been breached at  will,  effectively killing both the spirit of good conduct and ethics that the sector requires in order to  grow.

During his training overseas, Onyango  also learnt that the way the local royalty collecting body classifies people in the chain of production is flawed, leading to a situation where people who do not deserve any money get paid.

For instance, there has been  no distinction between the roles of a producer and  an executive  producer. The former is merely an investor who pays the studio bill while the latter guides production in artistic terms and is  more instrumental  in the success of a  recording.

Consequently, a producer’ s royalties may sometimes be higher than those of  the recording artiste.

Onyango said local executive producers  are  happy  with the  current mix-up because it  gives them money they do not deserve.

He also cited the cases of  artistes who have  recorded cover versions and have been paid money that should rightfully have gone to the composers and arrangers. In such cases, their due was only as performers. “Both anomalies  will now have to be corrected,” he said.

He  also  agreed with those saying the licence fees paid by music consumers is  too low and does not adequately compensate the artistes for use of their music. “We have to revise the rates and decide on a  more appropriate level,” he asserted.

Low standards

But the real challenge lies in the quality of  the music, which has fallen so low that it is not really exportable  as a finished product.