By Alex Roberts
The struggle that many creatives within East African have long faced seems impregnable, pushing that boulder of their art up a long and steep hill, only to hit pitfalls of bad management, lack of regulations, unscrupulous event runners and pitiful payouts should money exchange hands at all.
Despite this amalgamation of weirdness and scamming, there hasn’t been much formal or informal guidelines put into place to help creatives to avoid the pitfalls.
Colin Sserunjogi is trying to buck that trend, having self published his book: ‘The African Professional Artists Handbook’.
Designed to be a blow by blow pocket instruction manual for the local creative market, the book lays out everything, how to approach the music, diversifying into performance, how to deal with contracts, producers and delving deep into an artist capitalizing on their image; to carve out a niche for themselves and position themselves to be the go to artist thought of within their own market.
Perhaps most importantly, the handbook doesn’t shy away from trying to convince artists to accept the grind of it all- to not take their foots from the accelerator (except when needed to step back and pump the brakes and reassess the situation at hand).
Meant for the music industry, Sserunjogi’s ‘The African Professional Artists Handbook’ can (and should) be required reading for any East African based creative, regardless of medium for their work.
Far too many jump in without a plan, or wade too far out before realizing they’ve reached beyond the shores of their knowledge, capabilities and talent be damned. This is the manual that touches on every aspect of the industry, a true ‘Artistic Industry for Dummies’ the regional version. Sserunjogi will be looking to publish further copies of ‘The African Professional Artists Handbook’ soon, and hopefully it will be found soon on every bookshelf, in every kitenge wrapped handbag, tucked into the side pocket of every guitarist from Dar es Salaam all the way up through Fort Portal.
If you want your own copy, you can look up Colin on his Instagram, or talk to him in person at one of the many gigs that he plays around Kampala, backing artists on his own or with his band, Read the Room.
