Reggae dancehall musician Blasto real name Otis Chilamba is back from USA where he spent close to four months.<\/p>\n
The artist, who returned last month, held several shows in the US and also played a role in a movie titled The King of Newark. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI am happy to be back home but I might be going again because there are several projects I am involved in. It has been a fruitful trip because I learned a lot, especially on how artists network and get opportunities. I learned that music is a profession which needs to be taken seriously,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Blasto said he held several shows across eight states, including New York and Indiana where he received tremendous support.<\/p>\n \u201cThis trip has opened my eyes, I want to do more and I will strive to expand my brand because there is a bigger and better market for music out there. We need to exploit it as artists,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The artist also said that it is high time the country started valuing art, observing that in USA art is a serious business and that it is huge.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is more support to the resources together. Here an artist has to do everything from producing, distribution and marketing which make things even worse,\u201d said Blasto.<\/p>\n The artist found himself on the USA trip courtesy of an organisation known as Operation Smile which conducts surgeries.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an American organisation which has a branch in South Africa and so they do come to Malawi and as an artist I have been involved in volunteer work and it is from this front that last year I met 17-year old Alec Clifford who is the grandson of the founder of the organisation. He was surprised to find out that an artist like me was doing volunteer work so he decided to arrange that I perform in US,\u201d said Blasto.<\/p>\n He said his involvement in The King of Newark movie also gave him an opportunity to meet other rappers who were also involved in the project.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst in the US I was working with BXXb and Airplay Entertainment and they actually were impressed with me,\u201d said Blasto, who has an EP and Mixtape to his credit.<\/p>\n Blasto started music when he was doing accounting at Mzuzu Technical College and says his brother Mosh D is also a musician.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first recording in the studio was in 2003 and this was not that serious but it opened up the way because after that I started acting in Lilongwe later at Harry Gibb\u2019s place who formed a theatre group. And this is where I started recording music in 2005 and I did this with Dom Dash Records who were then doing strictly reggae dancehall,\u201d he says<\/p>\n He then went on to produce a mixtape titled The Unexpected <\/em>and EP titled Stronger<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reggae dancehall musician Blasto real name Otis Chilamba is back from USA where he spent close to four months. The artist, who returned last month, held several shows in the US and also played a role in a movie titled The King of Newark. \u201cI am happy to be back home but I might be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6120","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\/6120","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=6120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6127,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions\/6127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}