Perspective: The East Africa Boyz II Men tour

The mid-1990s Black American Rhythm and Blues band Boyz II Men last week held two concerts in Nairobi and Kampala, on this their tour of East Africa.
For readers who don’t know the world of music and entertainment, Boyz II Men were one of the world’s biggest music acts, scoring some of the most popular songs of the decade, from End Of The Road (1992) to One Sweet Day (1995), the band’s duet with another huge 1990s pop superstar Mariah Carey.
Boyz II Men were to the 1990s what The Jackson Five were to the late 1960s, The Commodores were to the 1970s, and Kool & The Gang were to the 1980s in terms of Black American music.
As is typically fickle of pop music, Boyz II Men after that duet with Mariah Carey – their peak moment – never quite resonated again with the public and today are more nostalgia than recording force.

Most enthusiastic fans
Most of Boyz II Men’s most enthusiastic fans today fall within the age range of the mid-40s to early 60s.
In East Africa, that would mean their fans are now mid- to senior-level white-collar professionals, from banking to marketing, law, news media, accounting, real estate development, medicine, insurance, public administration, the senior military officers, academia, international franchise dealerships, tour and travel, the civil service, and politics, among others.
The urban elite of Kenya and Uganda, in a nutshell.
This, then, gives us an opportunity to assess how East Africa’s elite organised, marketed, and executed the two concerts, the first at Nairobi’s Uhuru Gardens, and last Sunday’s at Kampala’s Kololo Airstrip (or what is today called Kololo Independence Grounds.)
It is a continuation of my “State-of-the-Nation” article last week.
Nearly all Ugandan and Kenyan government economic planning focuses on production of physical goods, provision of social services, and building of public infrastructure.
Every annual government budget speech dwells on these three areas. There is very little focus on the development and refinement of the human being.
Sure, large amounts of money are budgeted for public healthcare, education, and vocational skills.
But this is done in a perfunctory way, the way mosquito nets are distributed to communities or posho and beans distributed across the country during emergencies like Covid-19, a natural disaster like flooding and mudslides, and an influx of refugees from across the border.
It is basic, bland, unsophisticated, bare minimum -- the lowest common denominator in terms of quality.
This is why, among other reasons, the major expansion of education in Uganda since the 1990s, from kindergarten to university, is still not producing a quality workforce.
Kenya is different from Uganda only because it has enjoyed 60 unbroken post-independence years, in which the British colonial-era schools, missionary schools and hospitals remain intact.
Kenya’s elite is “polished” in a way that’s patchy and little and far in between with Uganda.
Kenya did not go through the mafuta mingi and “Kibanda Boys” phase that Uganda did in the 1970s and 1980s, where semi-illiterate businessmen became the elite, semi-literate army officers became Cabinet ministers and heads of parastatals.
But even here, Kenya has its limitations. Which brings me to the Boyz II Men concerts.
Someone called Mark Philo in Nakuru, Kenya, noted thus on the micro-blogging site Twitter on Sunday, June 11:
“Looking at all the complaints about the Boyz II Men concert makes me wonder if we don’t know how to plan events. Almost every concert complaints are always there. Are we that bad [at] customer service?”
The answer is, yes, we are that bad.
Kenya is Africa’s seventh-largest economy, with its capital Nairobi one of Africa’s biggest and most cosmopolitan cities.
They are one of Africa’s leading tourism destinations, Nairobi is the Africa headquarters of many international media houses and even hosts the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is one of the five or six busiest in Africa, and the port at Mombasa along the Indian Ocean is Africa’s third-busiest port.
But even this Kenya is still a long way from attaining the finesse of haute entertainment and media production.
I will not name Nairobi media houses, but will just say there was surprisingly poor photography of the concert on the websites of Kenya’s leading newspaper brands and online-only media.
Uganda managed some good photos, slightly better, overall, than Kenya from the Kampala concert, although they tended to feature more of the revellers than the performers on stage, Boyz II Men and the popular Kenyan opening act, Sauti Sol.
A crisp-clear, very beautiful photo of the Kampala singer-guitarist Irene Ntale was taken by a young photographer called Israel Kasiita, shot from the left side of the stage.
As would be expected, the set-piece promotional videos by the main sponsors (MTN for Kampala, Stanbic Bank for Nairobi) were much better than video of the actual concerts in Kampala and Nairobi.
That’s the point here.
It’s much more challenging and takes much more skill, imagination, and planning to produce footage of a live event than a 30-second television promotional video.
Poor quality, amateurish video concert footage from Nairobi was posted on the video-sharing site YouTube.
Nearly all the video footage from the Kampala concert was shot on smartphone and it told in amateur quality and framing.
The amateurish video footage on TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, inconsistent audio output at both venues and the dearth of technical concert reviews, laid bare the difference between GDP growth and true sophistication.
We’ve see this in such international events as the Commonwealth and African Union summits held in Kampala, and Papal visits to Uganda.
We do not yet have the ability to bring to bear sophistication in the major events we stage.

Without single technical glitch
By contrast, note the way the live global sporting events are aired on South Africa’s SuperSport or how the state funeral last year of Queen Elizabeth II was aired live, without a single technical glitch.
Every video shot, from slow motion action replay in soccer, Formula One motor racing and tennis to underwater shots of competition in swimming, has the same consistent look -- the same accurate colour white balance, near-perfect lighting, and imaginative framing.
During Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, every soldier and sailor, pallbearer, bugler, trumpeter, everyone part of the funeral procession, marched or played their role with a precision that left viewers wondering when these thousands of people got the time to perfect their roles for an event that was not rehearsed.
This is what being a developed society is all about.
It’s not just about high-rise office blocks and four-lane highways, traffic jams and every home with electricity and widescreen TV sets.
It’s about a systematic and methodical identification and cultivation of talent, by people who bring total professional dedication to their work, and a complex, organised culture that brings together different elements into one coherent whole.
Our redemption as countries will at last come about, as I suggested last week, when we go beyond our usual focus on and obsession with politics, governance, Parliament, and big men, and start to pay attention to the finesse of organisation, design, and production.

Uganda slightly better

Uganda managed some good photos, slightly better, overall, than Kenya from the Kampala concert, although they tended to feature more of the revellers than the performers on stage, Boyz II Men and the popular Kenyan opening act, Sauti Sol.
A crisp-clear, very beautiful photo of the Kampala singer-guitarist Irene Ntale was taken by a young photographer called Israel Kasiita, shot from the left side of the stage.