There is brightness in his lingo
I landed on Bingolingo’s music by accident, his real name like mine, is Bright Mhango. I found my name on Google with a description that I was a musician. I protested and followed the link and what graced me was pleasant to my ears.
I tracked and caught up with Bright Mhango to hear of his musical side (and ask him if he was not impersonating me) and if what he describes really resemble an artiste focused and aiming to get his share of greatness.
“I started music in secondary school when we used to do the teen-time Rap &Ragga, but didn’t put much effort in it until 2011; I have recorded 12 tracks, which are to be in my up- and-coming debut album Issues.
“As an up-and-coming artist, l haven’t yet attended a big event, but have shared the stage with artists like Rashid, Marco Sadik, Pittie, Boys, Gwamba, Mafunyeta and Mabilinganya and many more artists,” said Bingo Lingo.
He terms his music as a mixture of genres; rhythm and blues, Afro, reggae, hip-hop and local flavour. Most of his songs are in Chitumbuka so as to bring in a different flavour to the Chichewa and English saturated market.
His stage name, Bingolingo, yanked the “B” from Bright and “ngo” from Mhango to make B-NGO(Bingo) and the “lingo” is to represent his unique language characteristics as an individual.
He has not yet crossed over to being a full time musician, his job at Blue Financial Services as a quality assurance officer currently pays his bills and if he needs anything musical, his manager Ekari Salanya jumps in.
“Am still doing accounting, l sing for the passion of music, but, I have big plans. One of them is to go international to work with different types of artists.
Not all is rosy for the 25 year old.
“I feel like we don’t have enough promoters for urban music in Malawi, which makes it hard for one to excel, even if you have the talent. The other issue is managers: l feel music in Malawi hasn’t gotten to the level where one would think of investing in it, as a result we don’t have enough managers.
“I also feel we still don’t have good studios, which make it hard to produce high quality music,” laments Mhango.
Tracks for the 12-track-album are available online on Reverbnation and also enjoys good viewing on Youtube and according to Bingolingo, on MBC TV too.
Titles on the album include Kaswenga, Stay, Heart Broken, Sibwene, Ndiwe Wane, Mama, Napulika, Timakondana, Ndidziwe, Ndiwe Wekha, Never Let You Go and Sindingathe.
“My favourite tune is Kaswenga which actually means “pretty lady,” l sang it appreciating the beautiful ladies we have in our country,” chuckles Bingolingo, admitting that almost all his songs are love themed.
Listening to Wanitola Mtima one can go from identifying with Wambali Mkandawire at the chorus and then in comes some Chris Brown type lyrics all in one song.
