The gospel music scene in Zimbabwe used to be vibrant and artists from the genre used to give their secular brethren stiff competition at awards ceremonies as well on chart shows.
However, nowadays the sector has lost its pizzazz, plagued with many challenges.
In a bid to save it from weakening further, Zingoma Gospel Hub, a social media grouping of gospel artists will be holding a seminar to address some of the challenges on October 28 at Courtney Hotel.
The seminar will run under the theme, ‘Uniting for a common cause’.
“The seminar will cover topics such as music distribution and marketing, quality music production, and organising successful gospel music shows among other topics,” said event coordinator, Fulton Bheme.
“A number of changes have occurred over the years that have greatly affected quality music production. Whilst the emergence of many studios is a welcome development, quality music production has also suffered with it. The seminar will tackle these issues advising artists on how to produce quality music, selecting producers, assembling music groups and music arrangement,” continued Bheme.
He added that another predicament facing gospel musicians is revenue to sustain their work and livelihood.
“In the past artists’ main sources of revenue have been music sales, shows and to a lesser extent royalties from air play. However, music piracy and technological developments have greatly affected music sales. The seminar will address alternative channels of music distribution and sales, so that artists salvage something from their efforts.”
Furthermore, the Gospel Musicians Seminar will help artists with ways to market their music. This will address all issues from product packaging, pricing and promotion. It will also look at how social media and the web at large can be used to market artists’ music.
He highlighted that there will also be short presentations from key stakeholders in the music chain like radio stations, print media, television, music promoters, video producers and promoters.
