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Momodou
Denmark
11840 Posts |
 Posted - 28 Mar 2007 : 14:11:59
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Culled from AllGambian.net - Enterprise Development Column With Sarjo Bayang
Untapped Enterprise Potentials of Gambian Arts and Music Industry
“Abundance of skills in Gambia stays untapped for long. Those who possess some rare skills and personal talent prefer better value for their skills. But many of them lack a good blend of entrepreneurial skills to make business, using the blend of skills as input of enterprise. Situations arise where the skill holder is reduced to being exploited by more vigilant and competent entrepreneurs who make business out of the skills others possess. Nothing stops people with skills to harness the requisite entrepreneurial capability as part of the blend to start and sustain business of skills. The pain involved in acquiring other skills is same and equal pain required for building up entrepreneurial skills. This is something many people with creative talent and allied skills take for granted. Allgambian.net Chief Editor and Enterprise Development columnist Sarjo Bayang opens the challenge for Gambians with skills and varied talents to consider learning to become more enterprising if they wish to make better economic use of their skills and rare talents. Mr Bayang calls it a case of Untapped Enterprise Potentials of Gambian Arts and Music Industry; a situation that until today remains major setback for success of that industry.”
Music makers and allied artists of Gambia have never had their full enterprise potential rewarded. In the same region across the border, Senegalese contemporaries have exceedingly succeeded from bare use of natural talent in music and varied artistic gifts. Some of the best performing and most fulfilling Senegalese musicians gained grounds on Gambian soil from the humble beginnings in their careers. Far from calling it jealousy, Gambians have no secret in the way gossip tongues complain over how it comes to be that Senegalese musicians and allied artists make their way leaving Gambians with bare crumps for survival. One regular complaint is that Gambians refuse to patronise their fellow Gambians.
Home grown talents have not enjoyed the glamour of celebrity Gambian music and allied arts deserve. The question to ask is one and the same as in other cases. How much of the enterprise potential are our musicians and allied artists able to recognise, appreciate, and exploit? Quite often, Gambian musicians and allied artists are far from making any enterprise sense of their creative genius. This goes long way in the remote past. For example, it has been a norm to see Gambian musicians perform one evening and the proceeds pocketed for the next day shopping and merry making. An established tradition of hand-to-mouth is perhaps the best way of putting it. Music itself is seen as mere entertainment for personal and social occasions. In that way of things, occasions of naming ceremonies and weddings are moments when musicians are seen collecting coins and loose notes dished out by the joyful friends and family members of those who call the occasion. On some occasions, musical parades are staged at open street corners as public show. That could have served the benefit of publicity which some times happened. There is nothing bad in having traditional musicians serve the purpose of entertaining local audience. The harmful situation has always been that the audience get entertained with no enterprise value for the entertainer. Over time, some music groups have gone for commercial terms of engagement. They get hired for occasions. What they did not have and still don’t, is to make proper business of their proceeds.
Music for entertainment is not the same as music for business. In Gambia the social pleasure of music is by far more prevalent over the serious business of making an enterprise of musical talent. Even when some musicians decided settling up for real business of entertainment, it has not always been as good enough to sustain an enterprise. Hotels have relied on the pool of musical talent to provide occasional amusement for guests. What the hotels don’t do is helping the business of musicians grow. They agree on charges and that’s it. But whose concern is it that a musician sets on the business platform?
When some Gambian musicians discover the home ground is not good enough to serve their commercial ambition, they travel abroad for varied experience. Some of them stay abroad. Others come after long spells of time. They come with instruments and the exposure of having performed abroad. What they do not come home with is the enterprise orientation; something they lack throughout a life career. When there is no resolve to create an enterprise, there is no business. The musician is still there to enjoy social value of fame. But time is fleeting and with little or no score in terms of business gains.
It stands that musicians in Gambia are not readily endowed with the required enterprising genius to make their music business flourish. After realising the need to advance, some musicians in the past banked on entrepreneurs who promised making business for them. Results have not always paid off. Some entrepreneurs have taken unfair advantage over musicians using them as springboard for their personal enterprise gains. There is yet to be a serious breakthrough for musicians in making any significant advancement from the low grounds of music for social entertainment to the higher grounds of a booming competitive music industry. That is still a long way for Gambian musicians. Those musicians who ventured into the business of music from ordinary commercial gains to full blown enterprise have encountered considerable challenges. In attempts to secure wholesome business interest, one person performs as musician and continues to handle commercial errands. It becomes too much of a load to carry. They operate without proper management system and organised structure.
Apart from those musicians who practically play the instruments, Gambians are endowed with creative talents of rap groups. Recent times have seen an emergence of music creators who start it all at home and later to the open public halls. They too face similar problems of wanting to make a living out of the entertainment arena but with no blend of serious enterprise undertaking. As they take to wider audience, they grow in fame only to disappear in thin air after some time. Some of the rappers complain about lack of publicity. Even where they end up getting all the publicity they crave for, they are just unable to make good business of their talent. Raw talent is not all that a person needs to make business. What many of Gambia’s musicians and allied artists fail to realise is that entrepreneurship is much of a critical skill as what it takes to pull the strings and beat the keyboards in musical creativity. Much is taken for granted that once the musical product is out in the market music lovers will rush for it. Things don’t work that way lot of the time.
One area of creative talent where the potential enterprise value is least exploited is the arts and design domain. Scores of design and creative artists in Gambia grow and retire unnoticed. All of it relates more or less to the case of other domains of untapped or under-valued creative talent. Schools, homes and some apprenticeship schemes continue to provide tailored courses in specific manifest of skills and creative talent. Over the years, increasing numbers of young home grown talents flood the market with hardly any real progress towards the advancement of livelihood using their special skills as input of gainful enterprise value. Tourist markets are flooded with arts and craft products year after year. Too much sweat and hard thinking goes into the creation of these products. In the end, they are sold at give-away prices just to meet the cost of daily feeding for the producer. By all serious account of things, these artists and craftsmen like their musical contemporaries fail to establish viable businesses to tap the full enterprise potential of their skills.
Ask the musician, rapper, creative artist and craftsman, they rest the blame on society and the absence of institutional support. Yes, society is expected to serve as the moral support platform and institutions as backups. What society and the institutions will not do is baby-seat any artist or musician in handling a business of their skills. That is the sole responsibility of the skills holder.
“The pain it takes to cultivate other skills is same and equal pain it requires to nurture entrepreneurial skills.”
Entrepreneurship is a special skill and does not emanate from wishful thinking and day dreams. For many in Gambia, there is a strong desire to generate income from personal skills and special talents. There is no corresponding will to create an enterprise of one’s special possession of talent, skills, and other rare endowments.
Artists, musicians and allied skill holders are not alone when assessing the situation of untapped enterprise potentials for rare skills. There is enumerable pool of writers and journalists who could not make breakthrough in pursuing a rewarding career. The mere publication of one’s articles is not enough to call it success. It is good enough some writers and journalists try their hand with established media outlets. That is right start for some time. There lies greater potential than having few articles published on periodic occasions. The writer or journalist can take things beyond that point. Again, like the outlined cases in focus, how many journalists and writers ever consider creating an enterprise of their personal skills?
Whatever personal skills an individual possesses, there are opportunities for making an enterprise of it. Some people are not bothered. Other people need help to make headway. Given the choice, many people who settle for skills acquisition prefer to use the skill as means of living in the short or long run. There is an industry for each skills bracket. From vast array of skills, capable entrepreneurs tap individual talents to sustain business. Some skills holders are simply satisfied that they are able to generate sufficient income from their skill as value for special gifts of talent. Fewer persons with skills have the right combination of such skills and the enterprise awareness to carry on self-start and sustainable enterprise. Being aware of the enterprise potential of one’s skills is a discovery in itself. Where the skill holder is not aware and fails to establish an enterprise, others with more competent entrepreneurial skills will reach out for untapped enterprise value of rare skills.
Starting a business from skills does not always require financial and material capital input as many seem to believe. It starts with a self-assessed and self-motivating move. Once the skills holder is motivated to start business using that skill as an input of enterprise, there it all begins. If it takes time to build that enterprise value of skills, it is worth all the while. In the absence of self assessment and self motivation, other more vigilant and enterprising persons will take advantage and build their business using a pool of skills to tap from.
Gambia is endowed with persons of varied skills and talents. This may not be peculiar to Gambia. In a reversal of things, other countries are seen to be more enterprising than Gambians when it comes to exploitation of special skills for enterprise development. It all started long time ago. Whole generations of musical talents and allied skills emerged and disappeared from Gambia without any enterprise made from their rare gifts of talent. There is no better sign to show that this trend is changing. As the tools of business sharpen, more competent entrepreneurs are seeking to tap on the readily available source of local Gambian skills. The skills holders get barely what keeps an employed person going. But they are not ready to challenge themselves for a start in business where personal skills become the primary input for self starter enterprises. Unless musicians, artists, and allied skills holders take up personal responsibility to assess, recognise, and tap the full enterprise value of their rare gifts, more vigilant entrepreneurs will identify the opportunity to do so and will fetch the highest value for enterprise gains.
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