Cry, Beloved SA Music

Sean Burke reports that a cultural genocide is being perpetuated in South Africa today.

When injustice, racism, and tyranny is inflicted on a people, we tend to give it a voice, a persona like a Hector Peterson, who would forever symbolise a struggle against persecution. As our forgotten music heroes are laid to rest in their pauper's coffin's, I wonder who will arise and be immortalised as the hero of the struggle facing South African musicians.

Not so long ago, Africa was indecently assaulted and brutalised by the then imperialistic policies of European countries. They have since reluctantly returned our land, but we have not yet liberated our colonised minds. We still believe that music and art is obviously better if it is imported from the West, we become slaves to their fashions and rhythms, idolise their celebrities and grieve when their beloved idols perish. They may have deserted their last outpost, but they have managed to shackle us with their culture and control our minds from thousands of miles away.

How else could one explain the absurd phenomenon of South African Music Week, where, for one week in a year we grant ourselves the luxury of focusing attention on our homegrown music talent. One has to question how this anomaly could be allowed in our country, and unfortunately, blame has to be apportioned.

During the recent SA Music Week, I was astounded by the abundance of local talent on the radio - from the kwaito, to the jazz, and to the rock musicians. I was also pleasantly surprised to hear the quality of South African music production. Before, radio stations could argue that there was not enough good South African material to fill the airwaves, but I'm afraid that argument does not hold water anymore.

There are still forces inside the broadcast industry who are hell bent on preserving the status quo, who seek to marginalise the local product in favour of the imported one.

We are awaiting a legislated quota of 30% local content in the broadcast industry, but I have to take issue regarding this measly pittance handed out to local musicians. For the benefit of the uninformed, royalty monies are paid to all these overseas artists, composers and their publishers when their songs are played on the air and their CDs are sold.

Section 22 companies such as SARRAL (South African Recording Rights Association LTD) and SAMRO (South African Music Rights Association LTD) have the task of distributing these royalties to their overseas beneficiaries. What is even more disturbing is that these royalty payouts have to be converted to US dollars and pounds, which makes the amounts even more astronomical.

In this manner, a river of money has been flowing out of our country for years, and, like a leaking tap, millions are wasted each year. If we were to import, for example, cheaper blankets for the poor, this would be different because we would be spending money on something tangible and useful. From an economic point of view, I cannot understand how our government, and in particular, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Arts and Culture, and the Minister of Communications can allow this to happen.

If the money, however, stayed within the local industry, millions of rands are ploughed back into the economy and local record companies can create employment for their artists, who, in turn, feed their families. One does not need an economics degree to realise that this makes complete economic sense.
The problems facing local artists are further polarised by the business practices of the big multi-national "McDonalds" record companies who have entrenched themselves in this country. For the uninformed, record companies make the bulk of their profits from archive material that they regurgitate in the form of, for example, The Best of The Beatles. The production costs are low because the songs have already been recorded and these albums usually sell themselves. With modern day pop icons, their brands have been marketed overseas already and the marketing machine inevitably engulfs the "colonies", so not much work has to be done.

The birth of local labels such as 999 and Kalawa are a direct consequence of the reluctance of those multinationals to invest heavily in homegrown talent. They simply act as the middlemen for their big parent companies abroad, making sure that the plunder of our country's monetary resources are optimised. They maximise the exposure of their artists on radio and television, where one finds that a local artist has to struggle to get airplay because preference is given to imported music. "Payola" is alive and well in the South African broadcast industry, where rumours abound of expensive gifts and overseas trips to persons responsible for playlisting. On top of this, the local artists have to compete with million-dollar imported music videos, million pound album productions, with no costs spared on marketing campaigns for these imported artists.

In Nigeria, the same problem partially resulted in the collapse of their local music and video industry, where they are still finding ways to deepen the level of local content in programming for radio, television and cable television. In 1998, their programming quota already stood at a minimum of 60% local broadcast content, and a maximum of 40% foreign content for open broadcast radio and television stations.
Love 'em or hate 'em, the Australians, who are also as geographically isolated globally as we are, have been successful in music and sport because they have an inculcated belief that they are good enough to take on the world. Their track record speaks for itself (Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, The Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, Kylie, Sydney 2000, rugby, cricket, swimming, etc). In South Africa we are still stuck in this colonial mentality where everything overseas is always bigger and better. We, for example, get a song from Britain or the States and it is accepted as being good enough without subjecting it to the rigid criteria our program managers set for local music. We apply alarming degrees of self-censorship where fellow South Africans, with the power to make or break careers, decide that they have to protect the public from a local artist. As if the public cannot decide for themselves. Many artists are sitting with completed albums with good music, which they cannot even get playlisted on the graveyard shifts at the radio stations.

An artist like Mandoza has managed to successfully cross over to a predominantly white audience at 5FM because his song 'Nkalakatha' was playlisted on that particular station. 5FM claim that they support local music, but when you submit an album for playlisting, all you receive is a blunt rejection, with no explanation given.
This has happened in the case of two of my label's albums that have been submitted for playlisting, including one that was positively reviewed by this newspaper on 31 July 2001. In essence, they are saying to me that, from a total of 25 tracks on the two albums, not one track was good enough to even warrant playlisting in the graveyard shifts.
At the radio stations, they just play the overseas artist without thinking twice about the content of the songs, but because a song is locally produced, it gives them the right to strip it down and debate the artistic merits thereof.

The biggest tragedy in this country is that you have to make it big overseas before you are respected in your own country. One has to pity the South African rock bands and jazz artists because they are labeled from the outset, and don't get the respect here that they deserve. Their royalty payouts speak for themselves.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) were to have held public hearings in the first quarter of 2001. The Authority will then publish a Position Paper and new Regulations will thereafter be gazetted. According to The Authority's Monitoring and Complaints Unit (MCU) report, a process of monitoring was conducted by a monitoring and complaints unit on the SA music content quotas. Regulations require that local content must account for 20% of radio broadcast content. The unit found that Lotus FM and 5FM were not complying with the regulations, broadcasting an average of 15%-18% local music.

The African language public service stations and the Afrikaans public service station, Radio Sonder Grense were found to be playing over 40%, in some cases as much as 80%, local music. Similarly, community stations targeting African listeners tended to exceed the quota. We have to name and shame these stations that do not comply with these minimum requirements, and we have to question their motives.

The Authority's Monitoring and Complaints Unit (MCU) has designed a logging system by which broadcasters' compliance with the regulations is measured. Radio stations submit regular logs detailing all the music broadcast on a daily basis during the performance period (05h00 - 23h00). Commercial stations are required to submit their logs on a three-monthly basis; public stations are on a monthly basis; and community stations send simpler weekly reports. During the year, the MCU conducts spot checks on each station, comparing the station logs with its own data. The biggest deficiency of the system is the requirement that the information be collected manually. The high volume of paper makes efficient monitoring a problem. In addition, since the scope of the spot checks is limited, the system relies on the honesty of broadcasters' logs and is therefore open to abuse. Many DJs also do not adhere to playlists and further promote non-compliance to the quota by playing their own selection.

The Authority has investigated certain electronic monitoring systems, but in addition to budgetary limitations, the systems have yet to capture the full repertoire of music being broadcast. It is possible that an electronic monitoring system could fail to capture certain music works and thus prejudice broadcasters who are complying with the quota.

During the hearings of the Music Industry Task Team (MITT), an independent inquiry into the music industry conducted by DACST, three perceptions were repeatedly articulated:

· The Authority is not accurately and effectively monitoring local content compliance;

· Some broadcasters are not complying with the local content quota; and

· The Authority is not enforcing compliance.

We, as South African musicians, should be satisfied with the crumbs which are thrown our way, and we have to rally the masses behind the cause to be treated with a degree of respect in our own country.

Lest we forget, when another Mathlatini dies penniless, we must ensure that those who perform their postmortems and weep at the funeral are not the very ones with the blood of the deceased on their hands.

Sean Burke is a music producer and a partner in the local independent label,
Amorfous Music.