However, danger looms in the ecstasy and craze to cast a modern figure in the entertainment industry as the rich, informative and educative African trends are cast to the backwaters at the alter of what some prefer to call “modernity”.

The western tide is without doubt too strong in this part of the world and one would appear backward trying to resist it. This has unfortunately resulted into the ubiquity of western artists as African artists languish in abject poverty and obscurity. Forget the flamboyance of a section of artists, the truth of the matter is that royalties from their music cannot even foot a house rent and piracy is not to blame, it is the endless desire to copy western artists that is their Achilles heels.

While there are few artists who can credit their rise of fortunes to music, theirs is a unique blend of the breathtaking African style and the so called western style.

Take for instance Suzanna Owiyo’s hit Janyau: An African hut with a lazy man is exemplified while the image of a hardworking woman is shown in a farm.

This not only entertains but also imbues fans with the virtues of hard work in the war against poverty, contrary to what jeans-sagging and sheng-speaking youths satiate the public with.

As a result, she performs on international stages, including gracing Nelson Mandela’s birthday concerts, a far cry from what the latter day “lords of modernity” do.

Lest one forgets, civilization is not in trying to mimic an American artist and sneering at African culture. After all it began in the African country of Egypt at a time it was purely inhabited by the famous blacks who designed the Pyramid Scheme.

What is envisaged, therefore, is a Tusker All Stars episode of Shuka-clad, drum-beating, whistle-blowing, Jingle-shaking contestants being judged on their ability to take the African culture to enviable heights.

Artistic material is the society’s mirror, it should tell more about our society and used to correct the ills facing mankind like hunger and disease.

Nudity and a showy behavior does nothing to promote this. The sight of a musician waxing lyrical about his/her (perceived) wealth or lambasting fellow musician in a video is nothing near to the true objective of art.