I first read the name on Facebook. Somebody had shared a link to his music. I let it pass. I had two reasons then. One, I don’t like people sharing their links with me via inbox though I very much like sharing mine with them. Two, if it’s an artist, I know if his music is good, it will make it to the top and he won’t need to hustle through people’s inboxes anymore. But, with new artists, it’s a little different. Before you make it out there, you must win hearts of individuals. It’s simply a must.
[caption id="attachment_92863" align="alignright" width="600"] Atsogo Scrafoc[/caption]
A year down the line, that prophecy in reason number two seems to be fulfilling itself. Today, a lot more have written about Gift Chilonga. No. The story is about the artist in him. He has a brand name. Like anyone else. Just that he knows he’s not American. So, his real name has survived the heat emanating from ovens of a name that’s in the process of being baked. Atsogo Scrafoc.
Scrafoc has been into Afro Beat Gospel Rap. That is how he understands his music. That is the ear everyone must borrow whenever Mukhale Nane orZonse ndi Zotheka takes over the air waves on local radio stations. Because this is how it has been in Republic of South Africa too. With Taking Me Higher and Forever. He has been performing in shows out there, with Malawians in Jo’burg craving his art. “I can say my music is doing great right here in RSA as well as back home,” says the Malawian artist, enrolled for a Bacholor’s at Dublin College.
The Taking Me Higher (10 kwa 10) star says his music has a far wider target group, mostly within the range of an age group that can comfortably be described as the youth. “My music mostly targets the youth but it has a far wider audience because these belong to different social classes yet their love to my music is indifferent.”
It is the strongest desire that Scrafoc has to avoid starving his people of motion pictures that Atsogo is releasing a video for one of his greatest hits,Taking Me Higher (10 kwa 10). “The audio was produced by Ralph Ching’amba where as the video is a product of the works of Neighbour Films,” says Scrafoc.
Atsogo Scrafoc’s rise in the music industry has acted as enough inspiration to the artist himself as well as a lot other youngsters that his Taking Me Higher track ought to symbolize his very rising. He has promised fans the video will be something else. It will raise everyone from the dust to high above the clouds, enough to let Scrafoc see airways on his pursuit for international recognition once he’s done working on the roots home.
So, today, I would very much pay whoever decides to share those Atsogo Scrafoc links again. I’m lying. Poverty won’t allow me to. I’m not Scrafoc myself, but Scrafoc is everyone’s man now. That video must come out and we spot the difference and smile as Atsogo drives past us to go perform somewhere, anywhere.
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