If, for arguments sake, Grace Chinga woke up from her eternal sleep on Saturday, I\u2019m sure she wouldn\u2019t have believed what she would have seen.<\/p>\n
Of course Grace Chinga, being a renowned gospel singer and celebrity, would not havd an ordinary funeral. It was obvious that there would be more people than usual coming to escort her.<\/p>\n
However, the crowd that turned up on Saturday was way beyond normal imagination and spoke volumes about how much adoration she enjoyed among Malawians.<\/p>\n
But was Grace Chinga herself aware that she had such a following?<\/p>\n
I must admit that I don\u2019t know much about Grace Chinga\u2019s personal life. But I can testify here that on several occasions just a few weeks before her death, I saw her travelling on foot, sometimes carrying some branded shopping bags \u2013 indicating that she may have disembarked from a mini-bus on her way home from town.<\/p>\n
And I remember making a comment to one of my friends that it was surprising that such a celebrity could still be without a car considering the popularity of her music over many years, which should have ordinarily translated into a lot of income for her.<\/p>\n
Of course it is possible that Chinga had a car but certainly on those several days I saw her walking, her car would definitely not have been in running condition.<\/p>\n
And a car may not be an indication of success or lack of it but it is certainly a basic means of convenience which many people go for at the first chance of being able to acquire one.<\/p>\n
The point is that while Grace Chinga proved to be a crowd puller during her funeral, she may not have reaped the fruits of such a following while alive.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m actually told that on several occasions, Grace found herself fighting with vendors in markets whenever she found them selling pirated copies of her music. That means she struggled to sell her music and was a victim of piracy, which is legitimised by many of us through purchases of clearly counterfeit artistic material from vendors.<\/p>\n
If all the people that turned up for Grace\u2019s funeral and all those who passionately followed her funeral on Saturday through traditional and social media bought CDs and DVDs of Grace Chinga\u2019s music or attended her shows while she was alive, the singer would certainly have lived a better life financially.<\/p>\n
She probably could not even have died at such an early age as she may have been able to access better medical attention way before things got out of hand.<\/p>\n
Of course Malawians need to be commended for the love showed during Grace Chinga\u2019s death as evidenced by the various cash and material donations made towards the funeral. We could all see how the music fraternity and other well-wishers timely came together to ensure that Grace Chinga was mourned and buried with respect and dignity.<\/p>\n
Messages of sympathy poured in unprecedented levels from all corners of Malawi and the rest of the world through social media while television and radio stations dedicated a lot of their airtime playing Chinga\u2019s music and airing eulogies of our departed sister.<\/p>\n
Blantyre almost came to a standstill on Saturday as thousands thronged Robbins Park and HHI Cemetery to join in paying last respects for Grace Chinga.<\/p>\n
Despite some baseless negative rumours here and there, Malawians should be patted on the back for uniting in making sure that Grace\u2019s last journey was as memorable as possible. In the end, everybody would agree that Malawians affectionately bade farewell to one of its greatest daughters and her soul should definitely be resting in peace in far as far as the funeral arrangements were concerned.<\/p>\n
Going forward, however, let us start honouring our heroes while they are alive. Our various artists require our support for them to live decently from their talents and hard work. It does not make sense for them to live like paupers but be accorded five-star funerals.<\/p>\n
The crowds that turned up at Grace Chinga\u2019s funeral should start thronging up at shows of our living artists to help them earn enough, live better and develop themselves and their families deservedly.<\/p>\n
The thousands that idolised Chinga from all over the world should start buying original CDs and DVDs of our artists as a deliberate way of supporting their lives and those of their families. Buying fake copies, sharing or downloading songs electronically would only condemn our artists to permanent poverty.<\/p>\n
In fact, we need to support our artists in a way that will make them able to cater for eventualities such as sickness and funerals like is the case with those in other professions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If, for arguments sake, Grace Chinga woke up from her eternal sleep on Saturday, I\u2019m sure she wouldn\u2019t have believed what she would have seen. Of course Grace Chinga, being a renowned gospel singer and celebrity, would not havd an ordinary funeral. It was obvious that there would be more people than usual coming to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21155,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21151\/revisions\/21155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}