Contracts are serious business
Jah people, it seems there is no end to scandals hitting the personalities that entertain us with their musings.
This time, the band we have all known as Fikisa, the Akamwire hitmakers, have been barred from using that precious name because doing so constitutes a breach of the contract signed with Nyimbo Music Company.
On the other hand, vocalist-cum-dancer Jeffrey Thom, who continues to use the prohibited name will-nilly, feels he has the right to everything to do with Fikisa because he did not get a fair share of their self-titled debut album and that he has no other source of income and livelihood other than Fikisa.
It’s stunning how musicians often give readers the impression that entertainment labels are getting richer while the actual performers, the earners of that money, are getting poorer.
Without peddling any Marxism and all that pro-poor jazz, I would like to put it on the record that it is not business when people take pride in incessantly milking thin cows without feeding them a bit.
No artist is a cash cow. They are individual harnessing their talent and energy to make a living, a decent living that will take them a notch or two higher than they were yesterday.
Mine is a prayer for sanity, equal rights and justice in the way labels manage or mismanage artists.
First, it was Maskal breaking away from Nde’feyo Entertainment on allegations that he had hand no penny or bank statement on the sales of his first album, Nthawi. Then came his label mates Piksy and Armstrong.
Something must give to ensure sanity in the game.
That thing includes helping artists understand the binding nature of contracts – a role Musicians Association of Malawi and other arts groups should take up.
According to law, contracts are living documents that you cannot break a part of them without injuring the other party and facing the wrath of the law.
In an ideal world, you don’t sign a contract without fully understanding its stipulation or engaging a lawyer to interpret every bit thoroughly because appending a signature to it takes away your right to add or subtract a word with or without any excuse.
But ours is a quirky world. Many look at contracts as a jackpot, not an obligation. Ours is a world we sign contracts first and read it later. Ours is a world where even the learned big shots only lead laws when they are unceremoniously fired. Ours is a world where, given a chance, people would look at their funeral plans when they are dead and buried.
Like many, artists must change the way they perceive contracts to reap the fruits of their labour and save us from the endless squabbles with record labels.
