Don’t quite know why he suddenly does an Eddie Vedder and screams towards the end of this original- angst? My friend Kat with whom he sometimes performs skipped into the room?- but singer-songwriter and multi instrumentalist Stanley Sibande, originally from Zambia and now living and working in South Africa, is one helluva good new musical talent.
The guy has a very very good soulful voice though this might be a little lost in this fondue of him jamming with himself.
I could have said that Stanley Sibande is “interesting”, but that would be me being non-committal and not prepared to put one’s balls on the wicket and take a stance even if they were to get whacked.
A little pain never hurt anyone, especially when it’s worth backing really good unknown musicians as, no matter what anyone says about these data driven online platforms, they’re all pretty much much of the same and where many get lost.
Getting from here to there, or even a couple of steps towards somewhere, is really in the lap of the gods. It’s a crap shoot through algorithm clutter and trying to make the purity of music an exacting science- if it’s actually music that’s being marketed as opposed to image. It’s hard to tell these days.
Spotify isn’t going to shine a light on where you’re going with your music either. You’re just a faceless Orwellian number thumbing a ride that might never come.
One can buy views and followers and “likes” and jump on the coattails of others in the same tugboat to show some numbers and pretend you have a “following”, but if this “fan club” is your family and friends, where are you going with anything except to the ever-expanding BS store?
What’s out there these days is a quiet desperation that’s sad to see.
Maybe it’s finally dawning on many that new strategies are needed to have music heard instead of just going around in circles while uploading and streaming with the fishes and getting nowhere.
Nobodies trying to fake it as a somebody with nothing to show except for a pocketful of mumbles that are more promises of yet another new video or recording that’s been in the works for around two years is jive that’s become embarrassing. Everyone knows how and where this circle game ends.
So, if a writer who’s been in music for what seems like forever, stumbles upon a talent like Stanley Sibande, the most helpful thing to do is introduce him to others who, like yourself, might enjoy his music enough to discover more of it. Or maybe collaborate on something new.
The best advertising and marketing and promotion is still through word of mouth. That’s because, it’s real.
It’s also because no one puts their name on anything they don’t believe in.