Senior VP A&R & Creatives Mavin Global, Rima Tahini Ighodaro, has revealed the recruitment process for artists at Mavin Records.
She shared that the record label prefers signing fresh talents, often ones with no prior data.
Speaking on the Martell Afrobeats Live: Women Shaping The Culture show, Rima explained that some of the artists on under the record label were given their stage names by the CEO, Don Jazzy, after being discovered.
“At Mavin, we sign artistes from scratch; no prior data, just raw talent. Sometimes, Don Jazzy even gives them their names,” she said.
On her part, the Chief Operating Officer of Spaceship Collective, Ronami Ogulu, expressed concern over the boxing of African artists into the Afrobeats genre regard less of their musical styles.
She explained that the practice is always going to be problematic because Afrobeats is a blend of genres.
“Afrobeats is great. I can talk all day about the mechanism of music and the history of music because I grew up with a grandfather who is obsessed with the history of music.
“But I think it is more so, how the genre can to be and why boxing artistes into that specific ‘genre’ is always going to be problematic and would always cause conflict down the line. But all the end of the day, all of this stuff [Afrobeats] is a fusion of many things.
“What Afrobeats is was a blend of other genres of music. To the western world, anybody who’s African whether you sing blues, soul, electronic or jazz, you’re Afrobeats… I think it’s important for the western world to know that if you like an artist, it’s important to connect with what they are are trying to say as opposed to what is easy for you as a consumer or music executive,” she expressed.
