Talk is cheap, try E-Wallet!

Music is a pivotal part of our societies. It beautifies happy moments such as weddings, makes lighter sad times such as funerals or helps us overcome the fear of a cold shower on a freezing winter morning.

Everyone wants to be part of it, somewhere, somehow, and it seems it does not matter how good one’s vocal chords are—we all want to sing!

This is why, even without a proper grasp of the lyrics or masterly of the pitch, most of us embark on ‘brave’ journeys exploring the verses and bridges our music gurus have ridden upon to glory.

Golden oldies remember Kalimba’s Sometimes I Wonder which, handled by ‘bathroom artists’, notoriously became Nsabwe Zawanda.

Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Till You get Enough evolved into Afuta kwaya, fudu kontena, ukampatse tselira!

 Back home, one thinks of the E-Wallet music competition that attracts names from far and wide. 

Both the talent and ‘talents’ go through rigorous sieving processes until the deserving get dully rewarded.

A few years back, I attended an E-Wallet audition in Blantyre and the fun was not only in seeing aspirants dressed like wild geese hunters, wanting their share of the microphone.

Well, here was this giant of a young man towering over the microphone, sporting almost a year’s worth of a beard that gave him a rough, harshly muscular appearance. From my little lip-reading experience, I noticed the judges exchange expectations, one of them so sure here was Malawi’s Luciano Paravotti about to take off on a splendid music journey.

But what escaped from the big man’s huge mouth was a hapless pitch even too small for a nursery school girl! An ant in a lion’s jacket!

And when he got to sing, the judges got more entertainment than bargained for:

The guy settled for a rendition of Lucius Banda’s Mudzawafuna—a number so popular in the late 1990s.

He went:  ‘Amayi akulira, alephera sukulu…”

Are you dating E-Wallet live shows this year?