Sauti Sol are now ready to take on the world
Saying Sauti Sol have been all over social media recently, would be a huge understatement. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
They credit their campaign success to their manager, Marek Fuchs.
“Our manager is an extremely sharp guy. We wouldn’t have created such a rippling campaign if it was not for Marek. Without him, that campaign would have been a myth.
“There’s nothing as good as working with a friend. To get the best out of human beings, you don’t just deal with them professionally."
Saying Sauti Sol have been all over social media recently, would be a huge understatement.
The team set up a campaign machine that can only be rivalled by our political campaigns, minus the defacing street posters and horrid television adverts.
And as a result, they beat Davido from Nigeria, Goldfish from South Africa, Diamond from neighbouring Tanzania, and rap duo Toofan from Togo to to walk away with the MTV EMA Best African Act.
I sat down with the band members to discuss this latest accolade that has been bestowed on them.
Willis Austin Chimano, Bien Aime Alusa Baraza, Mudigi Savara aka Savara Africa and Polycarp Otieno (who unfortunately was not present during the interview due to a foot injury he is nursing) credit their eventual win to everything they have been working on as Sauti Sol — the business.
Explains Bien, “MTV looks at the overall progress of an artiste or band, how you’re performing in your region, your releases and the impact of your music on society; everyone who was nominated was a very strong act.”
“We didn’t have an automatic entry. We started out in the wild card pool with the likes of Mafikizolo, Sarkodie, and Tiwa Savage, so our fans had to vote for us to even get into the nominations of Best African Act.” Chimano stressed.
They credit their campaign success to their manager, Marek Fuchs.
“Our manager is an extremely sharp guy. We wouldn’t have created such a rippling campaign if it was not for Marek. Without him, that campaign would have been a myth.
“There’s nothing as good as working with a friend. To get the best out of human beings, you don’t just deal with them professionally.
We used to see Marek at events and he became a friend of the band for the longest time, even before he started managing the band.
He had interacted with each one of us, he knew what we stand for and the more we hang out with him, the more we all realised our goals and dreams are aligned; so why don’t we do this together? It was so organic,” says Savara.
Chimano chimes in: “As an artiste there’s only so far your thoughts can go, as to the level you consider yourself to be in, so you need someone who will push you and make sure the get the best out of you.
When we got this nomination we didn’t think we were going to win, but Marek egged us on saying ‘we’re going to have a campaign and we’re going to win this’.”
Bien points out that a well-connected tweet can get you noticed.
Tweeted
“The thing that really made us win the wildcard was when the president tweeted in favour of us; Marek got to him and made him tweet. Once the president tweeted, Kenya being very political driven, people saw it as something legit and started voting for us,” he says
Chimano continues: “Once fans nominated us from the wild card into the category Best African Act, we each had an assignment to think of ways and strategies as to how we can make this thing big and work for us.
The following day we met up and Marek gave us the idea for #iaintgottimeigottovote (I ain’t got time, I got to vote).”
“The beauty about this campaign is that people started shooting their own webisodes besides the six we did; in their offices and different places.
I have never felt more love in life than right now, because that voting was done by the fans. That’s the one vote in this country that did not require you to be from a certain community; we met families, people from different races and tribes and even kids.”
He explains that even politicians who don’t agree politically all voted for Sauti Sol, across the political divide.
“The biggest thing was to see cohesion in the country based on us, says Chimano. Bien agrees, “When we won, the only gift we had for our fans then was Sura Yako remix video with Iyanya, which we weren’t supposed to release, but we felt we needed to reward them with a product that could reach everyone individually.”
Says Chimano “In line with our new strategies and new album, the release is going to be really epic; I can’t wait. We have a lot of things in store for our fans that, I feel, will be game changing.”
Savara promises, though cryptically, that fans should expect more than just music from Sauti Sol from now henceforth.
“We are going to give them an experience that they will call themselves the “Sol Generation”. We want to give them a piece of Sauti Sol by letting them be able to contribute to our music and be a part of “Africa”; being epic human beings. People will understand once we start doing it.”
Bien, the communicator in the group, explains their strategy.
“We have a PR team that consists of the four of us, a manager, a publicist with three interns, a production company we were working with that shot the campaigns, a web designer who we just discovered lives in Nakuru,”
He explains that most of it is built on goodwill.
Payroll
“The people we work with are not on a huge payroll. It’s not hard for Sura Yako to become a hit, but for it to have longevity, that needs a team. We don’t have a huge budget or music label pushing us, so we invest our money to push our products,” he says.
“When starting a company and it’s still small, you have to do the dirty work yourself. So Sauti Sol is in that stage right now.
We know every single income and expenditure to the company, and the more the company grows, the bigger the Sauti Sol team becomes.
We have contract photographers and a company car that distributes our posters. Music is almost 10 per cent of the success story, the rest is just the business end of it and being able to plan your stuff to the right timing,” Savara says.
Without a doubt, their live performances have revolutionised the live music scene in Kenya and Savara explains why;
“We started out as acoustic band with Polycarp and Bien on the guitar, Chimano playing the saxophone and I playing the djembe or drums. As we got bigger, we added on more session musicians like professional drummer, guitarist and keyboardist.
Now most of the shows we do are full band, with like eight to nine people on stage, but we can play half band or acoustic also.”
Bien is optimistic about their future.
“We are already prepared for our acts. We have a new album coming out and we are gearing towards making our set accommodate that, and then brewing that set to become the best it can be.
“It’s rather unfortunate right now where we are in Africa we can’t have a lot of theatrics — set designs, fireworks, above the line kind of stuff that a band of this magnitude should have — but we work with what we have. The most important part is the goodwill from fellow artistes who perform with the band; they do it because they feel our music, not for the money,” he says
According to Bien, Sauti Sol never give less than 100 per cent each time. “A show is the only place a fan can interact with the musician on a one-to-one basis.
You don’t create super fans by having hit songs, but once you watch an artiste’s performance live and their connection with you is amazing, then you automatically become a super fan; you’re drawn to them more. Then you can spend on their product.”
The group is also excited about the buzz that has been created around the Lipala Dance.
“Social media has made it possible for people to interact. Our music is not for just listening, it’s to impact social change. Nishike’s video had guys going to the gym wanting to look like “Nishike boys”, it’s just an example of how music can be used to impact society.
We are getting calls from South African labels wanting to know what we’re about,” says Bien.
“There’s nothing as good as having something your fans can do with you; something they can do in the house, but still connect with your music and share it with the world.
With Lipala, we even have people in Sweden, Nigerians and South Africa recording and sending videos to us; having our fans relate to us in that capacity is what we live for,” he attests.
“It’s about time dance was taken seriously in music in Kenya.
The west and southern Africans have done that for a long time.
There used to be a time in our younger years where we used to have the helicopter, kuku dance and slide and they were popular dances, I don’t know why they stopped being cool and became dances for the obs. Lipala is being danced by everybody: mothers, kids and so on.
With our next releases we just want to create dances that can be celebrated by everybody.”
What band members have to say about each other
Chimano on Bien
Big nose, his voice sounds like molten gold, he is good at portraying his thoughts verbally, the Nishike boy because of that 0:49, he is so concerned about the band he sometimes forgets about himself.
Savara on Chimano
He used to be quiet then all of a sudden all of this came out, he is the face of the band, the man with the bass, an item collector, band stylist, calm even in stressful situations, when he’s quiet you’ll know something’s wrong, he contributes a lot to the directions our songs take, he is the superstar of the band, the only person with international appeal.
Bien on Polycarp
He’s the super voice of reason, an amazing producer and guitarist with the lamest jokes in the world.
It’s peculiar; you have to understand him to understand the jokes and laugh.
Bien on Savara
He is all business, the voice of reason in cutting deals, the future of Sauti Sol, his sound is what made Sura Yako, has produced all Sauti Sol’s songs besides Nishike, he is crazy, can come out as stuck up which he’s not, he doesn’t know “can’t”, a lot of Sauti Sol is riding on his brain, he was an “A” student in high school.
