By Kennedy Nyavaya
For crowd-pulling musician Jah Prayzah and his team, the recent announcement of a stiffer national lockdown to curb the spread of a Covid-19 third wave, days before the release of his latest album titled Gwara came as an ugly deja-vu, a rare case of lighting striking the same place twice.
Last year, the Mukwasha singer’s plans of traditionally hosting a physical concert to officially launch the Hokoyo project suffered a similar fate.
“It (ban on gatherings) is painful because the energy we feed on the stage comes from the fans and the other way round. So, we are on a tight spot because you can only feel that you have put on a show based on the people you see scream and dance,” Jah Prayzah said in an interview on his Facebook page earlier last week.
“I have not seen my fans dance to some of my songs (from the last album) and do not how they would react but it is the past album and now it is on to another.”
However, despite the unfavorable reality his camp has quickly resorted to a digital release scheduled for later today on the Gateway Stream Music application.
“We are still in a pandemic and when we were planning we knew we could not have a really solid plan because things are ever-changing and it turns out we were right so we are now settling for plan B, which is digital,” the musician’s manager Keen Mushapaidze told Standard Style on Friday.
“It is sad that we will not have people physically attending the launch, but our business entails more than just making money from gatherings, rather it is also about keeping fans happy and safe.”
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Music lovers will need to download the Gateway Stream Music app to exclusively access for free the revered artiste’s 11th album over the next week.
“Gateway is a local platform, we have had other similar ones which vanished because they were not being supported so we decided to support in a mutually beneficial deal, which we think is the best compared to foreign ones who might not necessarily prioritize us on their platforms,” said Mushapaidze.
According to Mushapaidze, things “have not been the same in the Covid-19 era” that has seen lose some of their music-related income stream and they have had to be innovative as well as diverse to stay afloat as a brand.
The much-anticipated 16-track album was produced by a collection of local and international artistes, including Victor Stot, Rodney Beats, Young DLC and Lizer (Tanzania).
