LAGOS -A veteran musician, Tosin Alao, popularly known as “Sir T’’, on Monday urged all tiers of government and corporate bodies to help to promote local musicians for the music sector to grow.
Alao told the news Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that with the unstinted support of stakeholders it would stimulate the creativity of the artists to bring out their best.
According to him musicians needed to perform in concerts on a regular basis throughout the year to get better in their art.
“We have to export Nigerian creativity through the music for arts and culture to be relevant and for the world to see us more.
“Let government at all levels promote music through our rich culture, then we should be ruling the world with what we have.
“All they need do is to build music schools all over the 36 states of the federation.
“Our greatest challenge is that Nigerian promoters do not want to promote upcoming musicians and stakeholders do not do much to help,” he said.
He claimed that “South Africa promotes their own artists even though they invite artists to perform during their music festival.
“There are lots of gifted talents in Nigeria unlike anywhere else, but to showcase Nigerian acts is one of the greatest challenges,” he said.
The musician, who had played music for over three decades, said that in most of the countries he had visited the artistes were being supported by their governments.
“We bring in talents from abroad and pay them more money, respect them more than our indigenous talents and we say we do not have good musicians.
“I am begging all the stakeholders to help in any way they can to promote local musicians and make them both local and international stars,” he said.
“Nigerian musicians have been travelling and are getting acknowledgements in the international arena but more needs to be done to help them grow locally.
“It is high time people come from other parts of the world to Nigeria to see what we have, and we will export more of our music because we have not done enough,” Alao said. (NAN)
