War of Bandas is not musical

Good people, Majete Game Reserve plays home to some enlightening insights into what elephants can do to a stunning nature’s sanctuary.

The picturesque giants, which are all over the place, making ways where there were none. The elephants have  uprooted trees with ease, cleared grasslands and left deepening gullies in their pathways.

In this home of the big five, it is easy to figure out why it is said that when two elephants fight, it is grass that suffers.

Conflicts makes news, but I wish ours was a world where these pages would be wholly dedicated to indisputable feats of the likes of promoter Jai Banda and Lucius Banda.

Do not be deceived by their surnames, the two have not been good brothers in music lately.

The two have waging a war of words since October when power glitches and sound flaws haunted the Sand Festival, featuring reagge artist Diamond.

Just like that, what started with Jai’s lamentations about the tools that artists had to endure has fledged into an unpleasant war of words.

Some have called it cold war, for unpalatable words, innuendos and slurs have being used on Facebook where the crossfire is worsening.

But it might as well be an arms’ race, with the two bragging about who has bigger equipment. Then there are those squabbles about who has the might to attract better artists.

All that is a needless expenditure of energy.

In my world, the two adults appear not behaving better than pair of kids bragging about their toys or who is better between Batman and Superman.

This disagreement that erupts when children discuss their playthings is not the stuff for adults.

If I were former United Nations secretary general Kofi Anan, I would tell the Bandas, the superpowers on the local music scene, to cease fire because they are better and more relevant working together in peace.

The good news is that Music Union of Malawi (MUM) has already weighed in because the industry stands to gain if the squabbling allow to give peace a chance.

This dispute is the stuff that makes the youth doubt that the older we grow, the wiser we become.

Some of us have chanced into several gigs where Lucius and Jai have put their tools together to give their admirers a fulfilling experience—not the sour taste this conflict brings.

Behind these encounters was a promoter helping an artist give his audience memorable shows and an artist helping the promoter make money. That is why Jai and Lucius are better working together while confronting their different viewpoint  with maturity.

Sadly, the two giants are plunging themselves deeper into a needless game that will make it difficult for artists to work with one without being accused of siding with the other.

I am talking about an industry where even the most outspoken movers and shakers childishly believe that one cannot talk about their shortfalls without getting kickbacks from the side they hate.

The Banda-Banda war is escalating to scary proportions where artists are at the risk of being turned back by one promotion agency because they simply because they once hired the other.

But it is not about who needs the other more, but why peace and unity matters. Both Jai and Lucius know that friends dine and wine together not because they have no food at home, but for oneness.

Back to the jungle giants, I find  Jamaican star Burning Spear lyrically weaker than his St Ann compatriot Bob Marley.

But his hit Elephants,  which brings forth the giants moving together as one and defending each other, is not one to ignore.

Coming together is a begining. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. I dare say it is maturity as well. n