WINDHOEK – Ogoba Butterfly, arguably one of Namibia’s most successful music labels when it comes to investing in local talent and growing them into recognisable brands, will be ushering in a new chapter when it celebrates 20 years of existence this year.
The label has an impressive resume and seems to have that golden touch, as every artist it signed was a major success. The label housed industry heavyweights such as Gal Level, Kalaharians, Kid Nana, Angels, Lady May now known as Lady May Africa, Swartbaster, Chikune, LMPC, Jaleel, and the only remaining artist, Oteya.
Record label owner, Sula Kayababa, informed Entertainment Now! that Ogoba only has Oteya, formerly of Gal Level, remaining on the roster and do not intend to sign anymore more artists. This is because their vision and the artists’ vision always differed along the way, as they grew bigger. They learned that most of the artists were chasing fame instead of wanting to build careers.
“Most artists got excited when they started becoming famous and lost the vision in the process. On the other hand, infighting was also a factor because just like having many children, some would feel less loved than others,” he explained.
Sula, as he is fondly known, also explained that one of the reasons why artists left the label was that booking agents or event organisers opted to book one artist per music label, especially the artist who they felt could pull a crowd and they would not book other artists from the same music label.
This led to their decision to have one artist on the label because the constant trend killed the morale of most artists in label, as it did not matter how good an artist was.
“Event organisers always wanted to be fair. If there’s a music label with more than one artist, trust me, only one is booked while the others are just hanging around in the label. It has become pointless to sign more than one artist in a music label,” he pointed out.
The label has so far produced about 250 music videos, and has scored some big achievements over the years, such as Lady May, The Dogg (now King Tee Dee), Gazza, and Gal Level winning awards at the Channel O Music Awards for the videos they produced with Damara Dik Ding, Jericho, and Kalaharians scoring nominations.
Sula and his team are working on Oteya’s new music video to be released at the end of this month.
Also, the 2014 NAMAs female artist of the year, Erna Chimu’s new visuals will be released the first week of August.