Morgan Heartache: Anything to smile about?

Good people, Morgan Heritage’s flop in Lilongwe was fraudulent.

What was supposed to be the biggest Sunday in the country’s gig culture wound up being a day of small things– a computer with a  CD or flash disk.

The black smoke from the capital points to theft by trick, not illegal herbs self-styled rastas consumed until the wrong side of the night when the Morgan brothers appeared at Silver Stadium.

It’s the smoke from gutted hopes of the multitudes that were duped to expect the Royal Family of Reggae and the bonus marketed as Jamere.

Alas, posters lie!

Except the money had already exchanged hands, with the recipients promising the giver the very best.

The deceptive adverts put five Morgan brother and sisters in the frame to perform Strictly Roots vibes live in Malawi.

But the Grammy-winning band did not turn up.

They dispatched three comedians with nothing to smile about.

Somebody call Charlotte Malonda at the Competitions and Fair Trade Commission and she will unpack why the mismatch between the promised concert and the disc-jockeying could be an illegal profit-making strategy that hides in plain sight.

The ‘Cashgate City’ is host to numerous daylight robberies, but importing three adults all the way from Jamaica to scratch a computer mouse, shake their meat on stage and twist their lips while singing no song is midnight robbery.

They held nobody at gunpoint, some would say.

But the thievery in Lilongwe featured thugs notoriously armed with a portable computer supposedly stuffed with their newest CD.

Strictly Roots? Not really.

Lip-synching is the trickery Malawians wanted ended when Morgan Heritage’s compatriots, Brick and Lace, came to Country Club Limbe and jetted back with millions of Kwachas after mimicking pre-recorded sounds with their DJ hard at work.

That was bleak and a loss, I wrote in 2011.

With the battle to end CD-based international shows almost won, it is shocking why the Royal Family of Reggae opted for more of the same.

But computers confirm one golden rule–garbage in, garbage out.

It is astonishing why the Jamaican group wants frustrated Malawians to believe the waste of time at Silver Stadium was actually an ‘appetiser’ for a discounted show with a live band next  year.

An awful starter points to a tragic meal.

Malawians are mourning their wasted K10 000 and K20 000 despite the promises of an indefinite jam with players of instruments that were neither here nor there.

With or without a deal gone sour, Morgan  Heritage had the liberty to do a Dru Hill.

By staying put in their motherland as did the US rap oddies last month, the reggae group would have come with unscathed pomp and vibe–as did Jah Messenger Luciano after skipping a flight to Lilongwe amid what he thought was a continental Ebola outbreak.

Nobody knows the contents of the business treaty the group signed with the disgraced promoter Bon African?

This is why the dreadlocked Rastas need some soul-searching and repentance.

The gig-some crowd had better used the cash to buy food for their starving brethren elsewhere.

But Bon African reportedly has no apology.

Capitalists never apologise with money in the bank.

But this is the gospel truth according to the heartbroken losers: the heartaches could be the downfall of the promoter, but the arrogance will not pull him up.

Yet, my kindred–the journalists–are not saints either.

The starstruck scribes stand guilty of not asking important questions when it mattered most–the days they abandoned their mighty pens and went baring their jaws ear-to-ear, smiling and queueing as for photographs with and autographs of Mojo, Peetah & Gramps.

Duping thousands of fun-seekers, do you see anything to smile about? n