Big Problem in Sierra Leone Music Industry Traders Cry
The many problems in the Sierra Leonean music industry have, according to sources, dented the economic expectations of traders and musicians that have been investing in the industry to promote musicians and at the same time derive profit. (Photo: Ibrahim Saio Sesay – Founder and Adviser, CDSA in Sierra Leone)
It has been reported to the SEM that there is a loud outcry by those investors over the manner in which the business has been re directed.
In a recent interview, the Founder and Adviser of the Sierra Leonean Compact Disc Sellers Association, (CDSA), Ibrahim Saio Sesay, said that challenges in the music trade sector, especially with those trading in cassettes, are enormous considering the high number of informal traders in musical products, the dubbing and illegal compilation of songs and the act of Disc Jockeys prioritizing foreign music.
Sesay recalled that when he joined cassette trading in 1992 during the days of the Indian-owned Super Sound, sales of musical products were controllable and profitable.
He observed that a seeming battle for supremacy in the Cassette Sellers Association, which culminated into the unseating of the former leader, Gibrilla Turay by Abu Bakarr Kamara, commonly called D.D Abu, and team was a major factor that sparked the many problems facing the music industry today.
He further recalled that musicians were realizing reasonable amounts as royalties for their albums when the industry was under control and there were no unlawful compilation of songs and massive dubbing, bur noted that disunity in the industry killed that development made by Turay and his team.
Those were the glorious days of the industry when, under the banner of the Cassette Sellers Association, CSA, popular musicians were selling over 120,000 copies of their albums locally, citing Emerson Bockarie’s ‘Bobor Belleh’ and Vicky Fornah’s ‘Dis World’ musical albums as among the highest sellers of the past.
The CDSA Founder pointed out that the disunity and consequent collapse of the CSA prompted him to set up the Sierra Leone Compact Disc Sellers Association as a move to salvage the situation.
By Rosetta Moijattu. Njawa
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