Story By: Rahamatu-Lahi Zakaria || Sanatu Zambang
Over the years we have seen the national media and other regions talk about the northern region music. Musicians and fans alike in other regions talk about how they admire the unity and show of love that northerners have for their musicians.
And for the last few years, we have come to think that, the industry is on the rise but what we have is a mirage. Says Don Gama. The real deal on the ground is the growth of just individuals and not the entire northern music industry.
He made this known during a Facebook live session in the studios of Sanatu Zambang. Don Gama in his submissions says the individual growth of the industry is due to the fact that there is no unity in the industry. Every artist is at his corner working alone and thinking of the individual benefit instead of the collective benefit.
As an artist, he finds this to be a big challenge in the industry and would like to see that, the individualistic behavior in the industry ends and people start to see each other as one. He laments that Individualistic behavior has a negative impact on underground artists.
On the negative impact, he explained how difficult underground artists find it to get features from the mainstream artists. He further explained the importance of a feature an up-and-coming artist gets from mainstream artists.
We have to grow as an industry not as an individual artiste -Don Gama
Another aspect that he mentions again is promotion. In his narrations, he says that what underground artists need is promotion. For instance, mainstream artists sharing this struggling artistes music on their social media platform to court more views and followers but that is not the case.
These mainstream artists do not see the need to help them by sharing their work. While Don Gama is embracing the new streaming services, like audio mark he is mindful of the old sharing platforms that his fan base is comfortable with.
According to him his new song with Fad Lan is on Audiomark but he will be making the song available on WhatsApp for his fans who do not know how to access the links.
Asked about joining music groups like Gambro, MusicGA, Don Gama says he is not part of any music group.
He believes that before one can join these groups, you need to be well established in the industry because as an upcoming artiste when you rushed to join them, the hierarchy will cheat them.
Currently, he is working with Maccasio, Fancy Gadam, and some other big names in the industry.
