International music vs Local music

About 2 weeks ago Marcee and I were watching a doccie on C Breezy's (Chris Brown) trip to South Africa and we started talking about something very interesting.

International or local artists?

Marcee said that she was starting to take offence when international artists whose songs are often on high rotation come to South Africa and say 'Oh I had no idea how popular my songs are here'. I guess I understand where she is coming from. It makes us feel really crap that they know how many albums they sold in the US/ UK/ Japan but the rest of the world doesn't even really matter.

That got me thinking that more than 50% of what we hear on radio comes fro outside of Africa and that no doubt influences record sales. I mean I only recently (2 yrs ago) started buying South African music and I know some people who don't even consider it worth buying. What's really annoying is that we are 'showing a lot of love' to people that don't even consider us worth finding out about.

Ever since I started working at Radio 2000 I have heard some really good music and thought that these people work their butts of to produce music that is worth buying and people don't think it's not good enough to buy. It's these people that go around South Africa and put on amazing shows, got to obscure towns and 'show a lot of love' to people who bother to buy their CD's. CD's that cost less than that of acts from outside of Africa.

Marcee pointed something else out though: there are a lot of popular local acts that keep putting out the 'same' song and calling it something different and people worship these people. These are people who have never thought of playing with a live band and usually mime their way through ;live performances' and people glorify these people.

So not only do decent musicians have to compete with international acts, they also need to compete with local gimmicks. Is it any wonder that the talented local bands go outside of the country, where they might get 'a lot of love shown' to them? Or start requesting quality local music on our radio stations??? I don't know man!!!

I happen to LOVE music and it breaks my heart when quality is chosen over a gimmick. So what exactly is the solution here? To tell the 'overlooked' to keep making good music and hope that the lights will come on? Or tell them to go overseas and find their fortune there?

And the international ones? Well... I am really disappointed with a lot of them for not coming out here while they are still in the prime. Seriously, no one wants to see a hasbeen (who doesn't even draw crowds in their own country) perform here. We deserve the same 'love' that they show to their other fans.

That's it!