Kenyan musician Eric Wainaina performs at the Jars of Clay concert in Nairobi. Africa’s music sector has a bright future. /Anthony Kamau
The global economic crisis has hit Africa’s commodity revenues and foreign investment but one of the continent’s greatest resources is still neglected and even repressed: the creative talents of its songwriters, composers, and bands.
Unchained, they could create domestic and export wealth--and a lot of fun.
Take Ghana. From Highlife to Hiplife, Ghanaian sounds fill dance floors all over the continent.
Indeed, Prof John Collins of the School of Performing Arts at the University Ghana estimates its music could generate US$53 million a year from foreign sales. And Ghana did pass a strong copyright law in 2005, although it still has not been fully implemented.
Unfortunately, it takes more to build a music industry than talent and a law. You need enforcement of the law and a music business with effective private institutions, such as music publishers and industry associations.
What is more, a lucrative music business is not just the luxury of a wealthy economy: it can help build an economy.
Our study “Nashville in Africa” shows how African musicians can look to the US city of Nashville, Tennessee, to see how a creative industry can help a developing economy.
Nashville is home to the Country Music industry, which creates US$6 billion a year for the city’s economy and supports tens of thousands of jobs.
But eighty years ago it was in one of America’s poorest regions. Incomes were a mere 40% of the US average, a large number of people lived off subsistence farming and malaria was common.
Nashville’s fortunes began to change in 1927 when an enterprising music publisher named Ralph Peer introduced America and the world to Country Music with his pioneering Bristol Sessions recordings.
Just as importantly, he helped pioneer a business model that turned an unknown musical style into a huge commercial success.
Collect royalties Peer did win-win deals with his artists. He paid them well for their recordings but his music publishing company also paid them royalties for the new songs they wrote and assigned to the company.
The artists had a reason to write new material and the publisher had a reason to promote songs and collect royalties for their use.
This drew many songwriters, musicians and entrepreneurs to Nashville. Other music publishing companies, record labels, recording studios, and ultimately royalty-collecting societies were founded, earning Nashville the nickname of Music City, USA.
Today, a Ghanaian musician and producer aims to be Ghana’s Ralph Peer: Victor Tieku’s Kampsite Music plans to promote and license music for radio and television, in advertisements, films, ringtones and recordings by other musicians.
Although most African countries have long had collecting agencies, these government bodies have largely failed to collect and distribute royalties to songwriters and performers.
For years, musicians, film-makers and producers have complained bitterly of the failings of the Copyright Society of Ghana, the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the Senegalese Copyright Association and the rest.
In the USA, successful music publishers like Ralph Peer’s company set up associations to collect royalties.
Such private initiatives proved more efficient than government offices and more accountable to those who created them. This can be copied with the right legal framework.
There are small signs of progress. In Ghana, Section 49 of the 2005 Copyright Act theoretically allows publishers and composers to form private royalty-collecting organisations.
Tieku’s Kampsite is the first instance of an entrepreneur seizing that opportunity but rampant piracy remains a major problem.
The 2005 Act has some good provisions but has still not been implemented.
Without better enforcement, piracy will frustrate any improvements by entrepreneurs like Tieku.
Africa’s music sector could and should have a bright future. One pleasing twist is that Kampsite has entered a partnership with Peermusic, the music publisher founded by Ralph Peer: Ralph Peer II sees the opportunity in West Africa that his father saw in Tennessee.
As Nashville shows, it takes more than a rich cultural heritage to improve the fortunes of musicians and the wider economy.
Getting the laws right, enforcing them and letting entrepreneurs and musicians do the rest is what worked for Nashville and it can work for Africans.
Schultz is an Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University School of Law, USA.
van Gelder works at International Policy Network, a London-based development think-tank, while Cudjoe is executive director of the Ghanaian think-tank IMANI Centre for Policy & Education.
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