Veteran musician, Lomie Mafunga, has bemoaned that old-time musicians continue to be neglected, and has since asked the Musicians Union of Malawi to set a special fund for artists who have contributed greatly to the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I know that awards have been conferred on musicians, but these are not enough because, at the end of the day, the artist has to survive. We have seen people get awards, only to end up dying penniless because an award cannot bring food to one\u2019s table,\u201d said Mafunga.<\/p>\n
Mafunga said the government should be in the forefront promoting artists in the country.<\/p>\n
He suggested that, by taking artists abroad, the government would be selling the country\u2019s rich culture to the outside world.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at me. I won the British Broadcasting Corporation acoustic festival award in 1992 on April 12. I also won a Red Cross award for messages of encouragement in my songs after I mobilised people to donate blood through my music. Many people visited hospitals such as Queen Elizabeth Central because of my initiative.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, the Malawi Electoral Commission gave me a certificate in recognition for my role in civic and voter education. But all these [awards] amount to nothing if I have no money. I would, therefore, like to ask the government to be taking us aboard,\u201d said Mafunga.<\/p>\n
The musician, who started singing in 1983 as Lomie and Tinyade Sounds, said he does not have a lot of albums because production used to be done at the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation in those days.<\/p>\n
He has one album, titled Bwato ndi moyo<\/em>, which was released in 2003. It has songs such as Baba Mika, Dziko, Kumwalira kwa baba, Mwana wa masiye, Safunsa, Serena, <\/em>among others.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we need is a helping hand from Malawians. We are tired of being applauded when we have nothing in the pocket. I would like to ask people to help me go into the studio to produce a new album, \u2018Munthu sakondwera\u2019.<\/p>\n Culture Minister, Grace Chiumia, said the government appreciates the role of artists in society, hence the adoption of the Culture Policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Veteran musician, Lomie Mafunga, has bemoaned that old-time musicians continue to be neglected, and has since asked the Musicians Union of Malawi to set a special fund for artists who have contributed greatly to the industry. \u201cOf course, I know that awards have been conferred on musicians, but these are not enough because, at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27632","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\/27632","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=27632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27636,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27632\/revisions\/27636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}