US hip hop artists urges others to be entrepreneurs
JOBURG - Despite their creativity and being revered by society, all too often, artists die as paupers, leaving behind only brand names with no financial or other value to their offspring.
This emerged at a workshop for artists at the Olive Tree Theatre where the United States of America Consulate brought in its cultural ambassador, who is a hip-hop artist, to help them strategise ways to mitigate this challenge.
This after the theatre’s recent women’s theatre festival where the consulate committed to support the arts through cultural exchange programmes and to sustain them as potential employment generators.
The ambassador, Toni Blackman a renowned American female rapper, writer and poet with 25 years of experience in the industry, assisted the artists to reflect on their sustainability challenges. Blackman, who confessed to the many barriers she had to overcome, including male chauvinism and society’s perception of art as charity, urged them to think out of the box. She helped them to introspect on self-belief and self-esteem and, to accept that they were professionals entitled to make a living out of their god-given talents.
“We often block ourselves from reaching and sustaining our potential because of the inbuilt resistance to achieve sustainable fame backed by financial security,” she said. This, she said, was a worldwide problem deriving from artists lacking understanding and the desire to be both artists and entrepreneurs.
“We should move beyond regarding our trade as only part of our cultural lives and of entertainment benefit to others, and to think of it as a business. This is important, particularly for poor and vulnerable but talented females who should be assisted to combine their talent with business skills.
Blackman encouraged them to explore working as a collective to entice long-term external business support and to exploit social media for marketing purposes.
The artists confessed to lacking business skills, unlike artists in other countries, particularly overseas. They called for government recognition, as in sport, and for it to afford them opportunities.
Selaelo Maseko, also of the consulate, said art was a creative space and also a platform to make money to sustain itself, but this required business and financial skills. She said they supported artist groups in Soweto and want to also capacitate those in Alex to sustain themselves as brands through entrepreneurship seed support.
