Are local artists gone and forgotten?

If you are an artist in Malawi and you suddenly die before your personal life is written down, know that information will be lost. There is no efficient system that profiles full information about artists and their achievements in Malawi.

This was revealed during the discussion that sprung when arts lovers met at the Mjura Mkandawire Memorial Show held at Blantyre Baptist Church recently.

The discussion highlighted that there is no office that compiles the information of successful artists apart from few individual profile stories published by the media.

One of the patrons, Lucius Chikuni, said Malawi has many exceptional artists whose talent has gone unnoticed. He blamed it all on a lack of documentation of the artists’ information.

“Malawi has had talented composers such as Michael Sauka, Mjura Mkandawire, Allan Namoko and others, but you cannot get their information anywhere. This is an achievement to the country and their contributions need to be archived,” said Chikuni, adding that there is need to archive artists information for future generation.

His sentiments were echoed by many people at the show. However, in trying to trace the responsible office to do the job, it was found to be the Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma).

“It is Cosoma’s role. If they can’t do this, what are they doing?” wondered Chikuni.

In an e-mail response Cosoma senior licensing officer Rosario Kamanga admitted that his office does not document full information about artists apart from registering their bio-data which they use in paying royalties.

Kamanga said it is the role of the media to produce detailed accounts of artists and not Cosoma.

“We do not have a project that profiles artist’s work, but the work of Cosoma requires that it collects bio-data for its members and the works in which they have rights which is required to facilitate distribution of royalties collected,” said Kamanga.

He also revealed that the service is not efficient because the information kept is not updated regularly.

“There is need to design a standard questionnaire for each artist which would be updated regularly and at worst once a year,” he said.

The memorial show was attended by artists, media practitioners, relatives of the late Mjura Mkandawire and art lovers.