Getting Township Youth off the Streets with a Recording Studio
Jun 15 2011, Zambia [ZM], eBusiness, Livelihood opportunities
His recording studio provides youth in the Chawama township in Zambia a chance to showcase their musical talent in a professional recording studio. An interview with Samuel ‘Snaga’ Pauls, one of the studio managers and local recording artist.
“We provide advice to musicians and artists that have no previous experience with recording,” says Pauls. People who come to the studio are mostly young people between 16 and 30 years old from the Chawama township.” For a relatively low fee, they get the opportunity to record a song and make a video for it.
Pauls mainly sees the studio as a great opportunity for youth to be off the streets and to express themselves. Being able to make a living as an artist will be more difficult, he says. “The biggest challenge is marketing your music, even if they are good artists. You need to raise a big budget for marketing and airtime on local radio stations. Most people do not have this kind of money.”
To put these young artists in the picture, Pauls released a compilation cd called What More. “This album features known Zambian recording artists, but also young talent.”
Snaga Pauls’ music and the music of other recording artists at the Chawama Recording Studio can be heard on Pauls’ myspace page. The Chawama Recording studio is an IICD project that is part of the Chawama vocational training centre. More about the music project and the vocational training centre can be read at IICD’s website.