COVID-19:10 African musicians, 7 producers to participate in AMFEST music project – Official
President of KAM Africa Ltd., a music promoting company, Kayode Adebayo, says 10 African musicians and seven music playing are ready to participate in a virtual bootcamp organised to educate Africans on how to protect themselves from contracting COVID-19.
Adebayo spoke in Ibadan on Sunday in a virtual conference with newsmen.
He said that the virtual bootcamp tagged, “AMFEST Music Incubation Project” was an offshoot from the successes recorded in the “Music vs Virus Africa Challenge” held recently.
Adebayo said that the resulting Music EP project from the incubation named “LAVA the EP” was initiated to showcase fresh but talented music producers, songwriters, music artistes from Anglophone, Francophone, Arabia and Lusophone Africa.
He noted that the collaborative EP project that would feature the shortlisted candidates, would also birth a short film and documentary that would show the making of the whole project from the strategies employed in discovering artists to creation of the album, all by leveraging technology.
Adebayo stated that the online singing and rapping challenge across Africa was powered by “AMFEST creative and Arts Foundation”.
He said that it was initially a means of creating messages with music in local and understandable dialect that would be understood by grassroots across Africa in protecting themselves in the global spread of the COVID-19.
He noted that the choice of musical messages was also to serve as a means of uplifting Africans from possible fear, depression and from mental issues that might ensue due to the effect of COVID-19.
“All the entries that came in for the music challenge were rendered in French, English, Portuguese, Local dialect or mixed.
“Our target is to have 40 million online impressions.
“This is a journey to curate the beautiful differences in culture, language and uniqueness that makes Africa.
“The LAVA EP is a story of how creativity was able to escape and heal Africans in spite of the global lockdown through leveraging technology,” Adebayo said.
He said that the album was projected to be released by autumn 2020, noting that a three-day virtual training process would begin from June 26 and June 28.
“This will bring all qualified musicians, songwriters and producers together to inform them about the basic workings of the music industry business locally and globally.
“The training will have the best minds from the music business value chain, coming to share their knowledge and experiences with the candidates during this period before they commence their production of LAVA The EP.
“This is a project to further grant them visibility in their ambition of becoming big successes in the music industry.
“We have reached out to a few reputable digital services like Empawa Africa to partner in digital distribution and monetisation of the project,” he said.
Adebayo said that the project had a lot of collaborators who had used their resources and talents to support upcoming talented musicians in Africa.
He added that their contributions were well appreciated.
He expressed his passion for the growth of African creative economy and the determination to continue with AMFEST EXPO Project.
Adebayo said that the project had partnered extensively with the private and public sector, the academia, African creative industry practitioners and the media in seeking for strategies to properly organise the sector.
“An organised creative sector will commercially engage a huge number of African youths; such engagements will deliver social and economic impact to the continent,” he said.
Adebayo said that his company was geared towards engineering a new content business ecosystem that leveraged technology.
He further said that an ecosystem would allow African creative industry professionals in nusic, film, fashion, culinary, arts and technology to properly receive financial and economic rewards for their creations as obtained in other climes.
“We built these regional, international AMFEST conferences and trainings with the purpose of educating creative industry professionals about the business behind their talents.
“These conferences and meetings help them network locally and internationally for their business growth.
“It is also to give them local and international showcase opportunities that will grow patronage for their enterprises.
“These meetings have grown from local meetings and showcases into four meetings annually in three different regions of Africa.
“It has been hosted in Accra, Lagos, Rwanda, Dubai, before the COVID-19 situation plans were underway with different local partners to host a music concert in each city where the AMFEST EXPO conferences will be held in 2020 thus making it four concerts annually.
“This is to allow African music artistes to tour four different countries from 2020.
“The benefit is that it will help them gain a fanbase across Africa, and make it easy for them to monetise their music across different regions and cultures,” he said
An EP album is one that doesn’t go full length; between five and eight songs instead of the typical more than 12 songs as a full album.(NAN)
