One thing I have come to realise about this world is that people love to see people fail. This is the only explanation as to why bad or rather negative news gets more air, Facebook and Twitter time than good news.
Why? It is simple, because people love scandal.
It is almost as if people are happier hearing about the negative, scandalous news than they are to hear about the positive, happy stuff.
A most recent example, which I will not dwell on because it has received so much attention worldwide, is ‘Solangate’. Yes, THAT fight in THAT elevator between Jay Z and sister-in-law Solange spread across the world like wild fire, and was all people (shamefully myself included) talked about for a whole week.
But like I said earlier, I will not dwell on it in this column, I just wanted to use it as an example to emphasise my point, which is that people love scandal and will create a whole lot of very funny internet memes to prove it.
There is another example that is a lot closer to home.
The break-up of Gal Level.
A few years ago, the Namibian award winning duo Gal Level, like many groups before them, called it quits. And also like many other popular groups, for example, South Africa’s Boom Shaka and Destiny’s Child, not long after the break-up, each member of the group pursued a solo career.
In the case of Gal Level, Frieda who is now known as Freeda was the first to release her solo project titled ‘Just Freeda’ last year. Only a few months later Daphne, who now goes by the name Oteya, released her first single ‘Ethimbo’.
Ever since their break-up and more so when they began their solo careers, a number of people have asked if I think they will survive the music industry as individual artists. And as with all break-ups of course there were rumours of animosity between the two ladies.
I have been interviewed twice on the subject and just recently a journalist from a weekly paper asked for a quote for a story on whether Freeda and Oteya will make it as solo artists.
My answer to that question is this: I think Freeda and Oteya have more than proven with their world class performances at the 2014 NAMAs, as well as their careers up to now, that they are both talented singers, songwriters and performers in their own right.
They’ve also managed to prove that in an industry obsessed with beef they are able to go about their break-up and the formation of their solo careers in a mature manner.
I think a lot of Namibian artists can learn from these two talented and hard working ladies. The most important lesson to be learned is that beefing one another within the industry is pointless and does not take the industry anywhere.
Creating healthy competition not only makes each individual artist work harder, it simultaneously elevates the entire industry too.
