Thebe Mabanga in your ear The complaint that local music does not receive sufficient airplay is so old it has moral fatigue. The call has been made at various platforms by everyone in the music industry and an attempt to improve the situation has led to initiatives like South African Music Week (August 28 to September 2). In radio, the source of the problem is a failure to realise that, like cutting taxes, playing more local music requires political courage. There is a tendency to argue that African-language stations play local music. This is a dangerous misconception. Firstly, these public service broadcasters have a vast pool to draw from. The bulk of local music they play is niche genres such as their respective traditional sounds and gospel – to exploit the guilt of those who no longer go to church. The volume of local music output is definitely not a problem. The problem is that it is packaged in compact slots, such as three solid hours on a Sunday morning, and nothing for the rest of the day.
This approach satisfies any quota set by regulatory authorities, but you can listen to a station for half a day without hearing a song by a South African artist. The requirement set by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is that 20% of the music stations play – between 5am and 11pm every day – must be of South African origin. A lot of broadcasters fulfil the quota, with a few niche stations (such as a Chinese community radio station) encountering problems. Listen to your favourite station and check whether this is the case. If it is true then maybe I listen to the wrong stations, or at the wrong time. Maybe the quota should be raised to 30% after the release of the local-content report at the end of October.
Also, from my listening experience, broadcasters refuse to look beyond the first single on an album they are asked to promote. The popular argument is that “if listeners hear all the songs, they will not be inclined to buy the CD”. When one looks at projects like Skeem’s Ozwa and Chiskop’s Ghetto 2000, one really feels radio does them an injustice by taking such a limited approach. Yet radio people rightly ask why record companies do not commission videos and more high- profile promotional tours for their artists. However, the biggest stumbling block for local music is quality. There are still a lot of releases that are unforgivably mediocre. They are bereft of creative inspiration and entertainment value and give no hint of any effort being put into the process. These should stay off our airwaves.
Last week in Schmidtsdrif, Northern Cape, a new radio station was launched. X-K FM is the first station to broadcast in a San language, catering for the !Xu and Khwe communities. It is radio touching people and changing lives. Last week, former Yfm and Metro FM newsreader Nandipha Strydom was tragically killed in a car accident. Later in the weekend musician Wendy Mseleku passed away as a result of post-natal complications. At 26, both the breakfast show co-anchor and the talented vocalist had barely scratched the surface in an attempt to deliver on the potential they had shown. Cheers ladies. Nandi, the news sounds a bit different without you. As for Wendy, the music week will be dedicated to your memory.