Le Band, we squandered money on women – Charisma
By Rajab ZawadiIn January 2017, just a year after graduating from law school, Afro-pop singer, songwriter, and performer Charisma was forced by his group Le Band to shoot the video for their first hit song ‘Number 1’.
But Charisma (Fidel Eli Shammah), who wrote the song, was reluctant from the start. Having started making music in 2014 with his friends Ken Mwendwa (Man with the Bass), Joel Maina, and Abel Kiptanui, who had formed Le Band while still at university, none of their previous releases had rocked the airwaves. The Sina Noma singer had given up.
“The boys said the budget for the video was Sh120,000, meaning each of us should contribute Sh40,000. I said no. We had done several songs before and none of them had been successful so I didn’t understand what made them think ‘Number 1’ would be any different and to make matters worse the budget was five times more than any other video we had ever done,” Charisma opens up.
But there was another problem.
“We were all students. I was living at home with my parents and if I was going to raise the money, it meant taking a loan from them, with whom I was at a crossroads at the time because I had chosen music over a career in law”.
But eventually, his crew convinced him and he relented.
“Deep down I was still not for it. We had released music videos and all they could get was an average of 400 views on YouTube. Nevertheless, we recorded. There was so much drama around the making of the video. We were short-changed by the producer, and the videographer was also not easy to work with. It was just too much drama.”
But when the video was released soon after, it immediately went viral and topped the charts.
“It is the song that changed my life forever. We suddenly became stars. We started getting media interviews on TV and getting booked. Our first big cheque was for Sh100,000. That was a lot of money for us because when we started we used to get paid Sh5,000.” He recounts.
The more airplay the song got, the more Le Band’s popularity grew and the more they were booked.
“I don’t think there was any artist that was booked more than Le Band in 2017. At that time there were only three bands at the top. You had Sauti Sol who were expensive, H_art The Band who were also relatively expensive, and Le Band. So if you had a budget, who would you choose?” charisma says.
With the rise in popularity and fame, Charisma says Le Band amassed a huge fan base becoming a daring for the women.
“That year (2017) we made good money, but there was a problem. I always admit that we were young – the boys were still in school – and making solid chums (a lot of money). The women’s hype around us when we exploded was huge. We had a big song, we were on TV. The hype was surreal.” he adds.
And so what happened with the new-found fame?
“We wasted our money on women. We would go for club appearances, get paid, and then spend the money on random women, buying them botties (alcohol) and paying for their cabs to go home. We would do this a lot with different babes (women). Then we’d go broke and when it got to the point where we had to make another video, we’d have to do another gig to pay for the new video because we had no money. We were not saving”. Charisma tells.
Many years later, Charis regrets and admits that they were financially illiterate.
“We were making so much money, but we didn’t know how to plan for it. We were also excited by the fame and again the music and entertainment life is a fast life”.