07 May 2018

The music industry in Botswana is becoming saturated with upcoming musicians hoping to make it big in the industry, but many of them fail to penetrate the music market because they lack the right network and knowledge.

This networking web in the music industry would entail getting the right recording studio and music producers to mould their craft, getting a good manager to handle all their logistics, dressing appropriately all the time and having the right contact at radio and television stations as well as the print media to push their music content.

Without all these necessities, any aspiring musician hoping to break into the music industry will likely fail.

These sentiments were echoed by the House Kwasa sensation, Tarzo Listers in an interview with BOPA recently.

Born Wabuya Morgan 24 years ago in  Masunga in the North-East District, Tarzo is riding the wave of music success, which he attributed to having the right network to help revive his music projects.

This young man surely has some bragging right as he is an award winning House Kwasa artiste during the the maiden Northern Arts Awards .

“Plus I make money from my singing career. It is the only job I do and know so well,” he boasted . Having a new single with the award winning musician, Dr Tawanda is also something to brag about as well as working with another award winning and highly rated Francistown- based music producer, Chase ‘Depapa’ Mabutho.

Many young and upcoming artistes fail to lend a working relationship with these two heavyweight musicians as they do not come cheap and access to them is exclusive.

Once again, networking came to play here for Tarzo whose musical journey began in 2014. “After I won an award at the Northern Arts Awards, Dr Tawanda called the organisers of the awards and asked who won the best house kwasa category. Dr Tawanda got in contact with me, asked me to send him some of my songs, which he liked so much,” he noted.

He said they then came together and collaborated on his new single called Simba, which Dr Tawanda produced at Chase Depapa’s BonFella Records in Francistown.

Tarzo is not new to the music industry as he has been scrapping around it since 2014, when he released his eight track album titled Bigger Goddo,’ which consequently did well and led to his first award.

Currently, he is working on a music video for his Simba single, which he promised to release soon and will form part of the songs in his new second album coming out in June this year. The upcoming album was mainly produced by his in-house producer, Jay Black in Francistown.

The versatile musician said he was mostly inspired by the music of Slizer and was hoping they collaborate on a single one day.

To stay relevant in his music trade, he stated that he mostly markets his music through social media, particularly Facebook, and has distributed his music widely in all radio stations and online.

His music can also be found with renowned Ke thutswe ke koloi ya di gas hit maker, Kganka at his music distribution centre.

Thanks to dropping off his music profiles with many music promoters, Tarzo was happy to note that he was getting more bookings at different music events, including lately, some Mascom events.

He advised upcoming artistes to work hard, write music with positive message and put God first in everything they did and that was when they could succeed.ENDS