While many artists wait till they start making some money to be seriously invested in the music industry, according to singer Jaguar, the reverse is true.
The former member of parliament who has returned to the music scene after five years revealed what made him grow as an artist was taking it as a full-time job.
“When you tell me right now to start fighting for Kenyan artistes, what I’ll do first is mentorship and tell them the same thing I was told by Maina and DJ Pinye here, you have to do music that competes with others. If you go to the studio today to record a song that is lower than Kigeugeu and I released Kigeugeu 12 years ago what do you expect?” he said.
“What I want to tell artistes today because I have personally struggled before I released Kigeugeu. I had struggled for like 10 years. The problem with our artistes is that they don’t take music as a business.”
Jaguar further revealed that the mentorship he got from the Maina and DJ Pinye was a game changer and that is exactly what younger artists need.
“If you are in the music business today, you are competing against Diamond, and you are competing against Jaguar who did a hit a song 12 years ago. So we need to sit down and mentor them so that they know this is a business. I hear some people saying music has no money and it is because they don’t save. It’s true because for me what I did when I entered the music business I knew there is no business that doesn’t struggle. So if you don’t save or think about new ideas you’ll close down that business,” he added.
He went on:
“So I just want to tell artistes that their problems won’t end in parliament. Eric keeps talking about the 75%. 75% won’t come from parliament because it’s upon us to do good music. There is a meeting that is usually held at Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) between artistes, media houses and artistes where they agree on the percentages that should be played. When you look for them on the day of the meeting, they are nowhere to be found.”
