Ndubi Mvula – Personally

Why Ndubi personally? Well, when Ndubi Mvula (pictured above) appeared in person as our Guest on the latest edition of ‘The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring Kaufela’ last Sunday, one of the tracks we played was Nigerian duo PSquare’s latest smash ‘Personally’. Few of our listeners had heard it before and it was an instant hit – especially with the Chanters Girls dancing back at the lodge! ‘The Experience’ is our regular Sunday night radio show airing for an hour at 20.30 hrs CAT on Zambezi 107.7 Livingstone’s leading local radio station.

Ndubi is a media consultant, having for a long time been Zambia Daily Mail’s bureau chief in Livingstone, he is now busy helping 107.7 fm revamp the editorial department of their news and current affairs department, and is also involved in the weekly discussion programmes aired by the station. Is there a big difference between the print and audio media in terms of the way they handle the news we wondered? “Well” said Ndubi “one is about what you see and the other is about what you hear!” “Ah!” We said! He went on to explain that in the print media there isn’t always the urgency that there is in radio “you have rather more latitude and chance to work on a story in print” he said, “whereas with radio, the news has to be broadcast instantly”.

Ndubi told listeners that he had studied journalism at the Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka and had joined the Zambia Daily Mail in 1996. He had served until 2012 when he retired. His inspiration to embark on a career in journalism had been the late Charles Mando, a very famous Zambian journalist renowned for his hard hitting Sunday Interview programme and his ability to make famous Zambian politicians squirm in their seats, Republican Presidents included!

Apart from PSquare and ‘Personally’ on this show we played tracks by Dizee Rascal ft Robin Williams, Jason Derulo, Macky2, Pompi, Chris Brown and Avicii. My pick of the week was John Legend’s beautiful ‘Made To Love’. Our oldie of the week was Michael Jackson’s ‘Liberian Girl’ and the prize we give to the first person to text us telling us the name of the performing artist was quickly snapped up.

Ndubi told listeners that he had two beautiful daughters aged 15 and 10 and that his taste in music was reggae as well as ‘old Zambian’ mentioning artists like late Akim Simukonda and late Paul Ngozi. He told listeners that he had done most of the tourist activities available in Livingstone, apart from the bungee jump, when he had been running ‘Tourist Destination’ a feature in the Zambia Daily Mail bewteen 2004 and 2009. He supports Nkana Red Devils and Liverpool – the latter pleased George! He had been lucky to travel widely around the world when on further training with the Mail including to India, Egypt and South Africa often sponsored by Reuters.

Asked where he would like to be and what he would like to be doing in ten years’ time, this personable ‘real journalist’ replied that he would like to be owning and running his own radio station. We wished him the best of luck.

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Facebook For Business

Facebook has become an indispensable tool for business. Why? Because there are a billion people interacting there. Also because your friends, relatives, and most importantly, your competition, are interacting, creating great relationships and building trust, in this global community. Did you know that Facebook is primarily a consumer-driven community? And most of them are savvy enough to smell (and block) a disingenuous marketer a mile away. We asked author and speaker Brian Basilico for his top five Facebook “dont’s” for your business. What are your pet peeves? Go ahead, add to our list!

1. Don’t Post and Run

People talk. A lot. Either you are part of the conversation, or you’re going to be the topic of conversation (that’s not always a good thing!). You can’t get away with simply posting information that is only about you. Be part of the conversation by liking and commenting on everyone’s responses to your posts, and to other relevant posts. If others’ comments are negative, try having a direct-message chat to smooth out any questions or problems that people may have with you and your business.

2. Don’t Only Be a Business

If you own a small business, people expect you to communicate in person. They want to know that you are real and have a life, with passions and struggles, just like they do. Having a personal profile is key to being successful on Facebook. If you have only a business page, people will feel like you are just there to make noise. Worse yet, treating a personal profile as a business profile is not only against Facebook user agreements, but also the fastest way to get hidden or un-friended!  Be real on your page and personal profile. Make occasional mention of your pets, hobbies, and other things that create human connections. When it’s all about business, it just gets boring!

3. Don’t Post About Politics or Religion

If you want to alienate about 50 percent of your audience, then creating posts about your political and religious views is the fastest way to do it. In business, you need to stay neutral – at least fairly neutral. Nobody is telling you not to have beliefs, values, or opinions, but you run a risk when sharing them openly on social media. Whether you are conservative or liberal, pro- or anti-anything, keep that limited to personal and off-line conversations.

4. Don’t Expect Anything in Return

If you want to have an impact in social media you’ll want to find or create content that creates responses, likes, shares, and comments. You need to work hard at it and monitor your content well. Don’t be offended if your posts get little to no response, just learn from that what didn’t work for your audience. You may post a lot of duds before gaining meaningful traction.

5. Don’t Anticipate Immediate Success

Most people don’t ask their first date to marry them, but that’s how some people treat social media.  They don’t take time to focus on the relationship and think that simply posting messages should yield results.  Most relationships take time to nurture.  It’s taken years for some to see predictable and measurable results.  Be patient and continue to learn what enhances your relationship with your fans and followers. Do more of what works, less of what does not, and learn to know the difference. Don’t be afraid to ask friends and colleagues what they like and what they don’t; and don’t take their responses personally!

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Music Review 2012

George da Soulchild Kaufela, co-presenter of our highly successful weekly Sunday night radio show on Zambezi 107.7 fm forwarded this piece for the blog. Thanks George!

It’s been a great year for the Zambian music industry! More artists have come on board and more have become household names. Some artists have simply maintained their status while others have lost out and their names and music are slowly fading “back into black”. Here’s a look at selected months, artists and events from 2012.

March 2012
‘Hip-Hop Crisis’ attended the 54th Grammy Awards in LA saying it was a good thing because it helped expose the international community to Zambian music. The local hip hop artist said “the thing about such events is that you get to meet people and as time goes by, you start crossing paths and you get familiar with each other, and that’s how you build relations.¨

May 2012
Zambia’s Mampi (above) became the first celebrity to be evicted from the Big Brother Africa 2012 house. The 25-year-old singer said a lot of pretense was required for one to win the US$300,000 reality show. “I feel the same, I’m happy that I went in at the time I went in and came out at the time I came out. Being there, I saw what is required, you actually have to pretend. If you don’t pretend, you can’t win. I knew I was not going to win because I am not the type that pretends,” Mampi said. Mampi did however manage to mesmerize Big Brother Star Games viewers with her signature dance moves.
Meanwhile Africa Magic has announced Big Brother Season 8 details will be out in mid-January 2013.

June 2012
Petersen took a shot at politicians and released his highly anticipated controversial album JOB 13:13. The most controversial song on the album “Makwabo Mu Church” translates as ‘Business Conducted in the House Of God’ and it brought about plenty of talking points! Petersen explained that he did not understand why so many churches conduct business in the house of God. To him, if a church announcement says ‘brother Chilembo is selling his car for a negotiable price’ or ‘Sister Betty will be hosting a fundraising braii at church’, that is trading in the house of God and that is why he is exhorting the return of Jesus Christ to whip these offenders!

Still in June
Emeli Sande born from Zambian father (Joel Sande) and English Mother (Diane Sande) won the 2012 UKZAMBIANS Excellence Awards Female Vocalist/Songwriter of the Year Award. Adele Emeli Sandé (born 10 March 1988: Alford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland) known by her stage name Emeli Sandé, is a soul and R&B recording artist and songwriter. A former medical student, Sandé has achieved two top 10 singles in the UK. Her debut album, Our Version Of Events, is nailed on for No1 in the UK and critics across the board have voted her the voice of 2012. Emeli Sandé has written hits for some of the biggest names in the music business, including Cheryl Cole, Tinie Tempah and Susan Boyle. Her album ‘Our Version Of Events’, ended the year top of the UK album Charts. We long to see her at home in Zambia!

October
Zambian rap artist Ruff Kid becomes the second artist from Zambia to be awarded the prestigious BEFFTA Award. Ruff Kid was nominated under the category for Best international Act at this year’s BEFFTA awards. Other nominees in the same category included Camp Mula, D’Banj, Cover Drive, Grace Galaxy and Zahara.
Ruff Kid in his acceptance speech said: “This is all down to my fans and supporters. My management and I have been working tirelessly asking people to support and vote, and this is proof that every vote counts. I am just grateful that people took the time to vote and support me, I am also grateful to God for providing me with such an amazing opportunity and the BEFFTA Awards for recognizing my work”

November
ZNBC director general Chibamba Kanyama apologized for the institution’s latest failure to meet viewer expectations during the 2012 Born n Bred Music Video Awards ceremony held at Lusaka’s Government Complex and promised to do better in the future. While Macky2 won three out of the five categories in which he was nominated. B1’s ‘Sikiliti’ won radio’s most popular song of the year.

December
Slap Dee’s ‘Kuichayila’ voted song on the year for the year 2012 by listeners on five different radio station including Zambezi FM Radio. The Lusaka based rapper who is leader of one of the most popular hip-hop Groups ‘XYZ’ recently ended his beef with a certain named Copperbelt rapper. At some point last year he (Slap Dee) lost his grip on the local scene as the Copperbelt rapper made more headlines and received more airplay than he did.

2013 will, without a doubt, be a very competitive year on the local music scene as most artists ,music producers, music video editors/producers seek international recognition.

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Brooklyn

Check Milli Jam – presenter of our weekly Sunday night radio show – getting up close and personal with our Guest on the most recent edition of the programme, Makazo Mwangala, better known as ‘Brooklyn’ – half of a rapping duo BK – Brooklyn and Kimorah – out of Windhoek, Namibia. The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela, airs on Zambezi 107.7 fm Livingstone’s leading local radio station every Sunday from 20.30 – 21.30. Streaming live on the internet too, it’s a great mixture of international and African music. Between tracks we chat to our Guest and later in the show give away a dinner for two at the lodge to the first person to text us telling us who’s the artist on our ‘oldie of the week’. On Brooklyn’s show the track was by the late great Zambian artist Smokey Haangala and we were inundated with text messages all giving us the right answer. Great stuff!

Brooklyn told listeners that she’s a third year journalism student at the Polytechnic of Namibia in Windhoek. She and her fellow student Kimorah came together in 2010 and have so far released seven singles and several videos. The girls play live at events like fashion shows, pageants and CD launches. Brooklyn is a Zambian but has been mostly brought up in Namibia where her dad is a meteorologist with Meteorological Services in Namibia. “Does he present the weather on TV?” I wondered. “No” replied Brooklyn “he writes what the presenters read on TV”. Did she miss Zambia? We wondered. She did, especially her family here. “Married?” Wondered George (predictably). “Very taken!” Was the reply. “Pass George the tissues!” I told Milli Jam.

We featured two of BK’s tracks – ‘Get Ready’ and ‘I Can’. Brooklyn explained that the single is called ‘Get Ready’ because the girls are telling everybody to be ready for them because they want to show their versatility and want to do something in a different style. ‘I Can’ is about “showing all the haters and people who want to bring us down that we can accomplish things.” She said. Brooklyn has a great voice, her inspiration is Nicki Minaj she told us, while Kimorah is inspired by Brandy. The girls wrote both songs themselves and the production on the recording is excellent.  Other tracks we featured on the show were from Petersen and Manas locally, and internationally from Justice Collective, Dido featuring Kendrick Lamar, Tom Odell and The One Pound Fish Man (!)

Brooklyn told us that both she and Kimorah have jobs to help pay for their college education. Brooklyn is in charge of social media for a marketing company while her friend works for the ‘Namibian’ newspaper in that country. They had first met at the Polytechnic of Namibia where they were in the same class. “We just clicked. She liked what I liked. She listened to the same music as me and that’s where Kimorah told me about her interests in music,” said Brooklyn, adding that from there they got along like a house on fire. Asked when the girls were coming to perform in Zambia, Brooklyn said “keep your eyes wide open, there’s something in the works!”

Milli Jam closed with the usual question to our Guest – where would she like to be and what would she like to be doing ten years from now? Brooklyn replied that she would like to be “sitting on a large stack of money” and to have trillions of fans in an international market. “Get in!” We said.

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Peter & Gill Langmead on Zambezi 107.7 fm



Meet Peter and Gill Langmead from Chisamba, north of Lusaka, who’ve been visiting Livingstone to see the lunar rainbow over Victoria Falls for the first time, even though they’ve lived in Zambia for many years. So, we took the chance of inviting them to guest on The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient, our regular Sunday night radio show airing on Zambezi fm every Sunday at 20.30 hrs Zambian time, and also streaming live on the internet. Peter and Gill own Langmead and Baker – click the link to read all about their company!

“Did the lunar rainbow live up to expectations?” Milli Jam asked our guests at the beginning of the programme. “It probably exceeded them” replied Peter “it was absolutely fantastic!” “Did you get some good photos?” We wanted to know. “Absolutely!” said Gill “in fact we’ve already posted quite a lot of them on the internet via Twitter and Facebook”. “How did you hear about Chanters Lodge?” asked Milli Jam. Our guests went on to explain that they’d first made contact with me through Twitter and everything had then fallen into place when they came to make their arrangements to visit Livingstone and see the lunar rainbow. Of course they’d found time to do other things as well, including visits to Livingstone Museum and the Railway Museum, as well as Lawrence Yombwe’s fabulous art gallery.

Peter explained that he’d first come to Zambia in the mid 80’s and that for most of his career he’d been involved in agricultural development – for much of that time with cassava. We were amazed to hear about the many uses of this shrubby plant whose starch filled roots are much in demand in Zambia for food. For some time Peter and Gill produced cassava starch commercially. They’d been involved in many other things, we heard, including but not limited to, the production of essential oils and bath soap, the publication for 5 years of Beauty Zambia magazine and handling media interests and public relations for British Airways in Zambia, amongst a load of other corporate clients!

The music on the show was great. We opened with Cher Lloyd’s ‘Swagger Jagger’ (number one last week in the UK), back to back with One Direction’s ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ – “sure fire future hit” I commented. Our Zambian tracks were ‘Vomela’ by Dalitso and ‘Nalilwala’ by Afunika. (The first track saying ‘if you’re sick, accept it’ and the second ‘I’m sick’ ….apparently!) Milli Jam also featured ‘My Life’ by DJ Khaled and Akon coupled with ‘Oleku’ by Prince ft Brymo. Our oldie of the week was ‘Dancing On The Ceiling’ by Lionel Richie and we closed with Jessie J’s ‘Sometimes Dreams Come True’. (In a disappointing number of replies Enoch won a dinner for 2 at Chanters Lodge for texting us that it was Lionel Richie singing ‘Dancing’.) The Langmeads informed us that they were friendly with Hip-Hop Mr Cri$iS with whom they had been involved on the United Against Malaria campaign.

Peter and Gill told listeners that they’d been married for 11 years and had originally met in England (in a Hampshire wine bar!) They’d spent some time living in Thailand. Gill’s background was in journalism but at the moment their focus was on public relations and media matters. Peter had just returned from a trip to the far north of Zambia and when they left Livingstone the next morning they were heading for Choma to research a vitamin A enhanced maize.

Interesting, lively and nice guests? You bet!

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The Pastor’s Donkey


Some time off yesterday and time to think made me remember this naughty but nice story from Judy in Australia. It has a nice point at the end!

The Pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The Pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in another race and it won again.

The local paper read:
PASTOR’S ASS OUT FRONT.

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the Pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.

The next day the local paper headline read:
BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR’S ASS.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Pastor to get rid of the donkey. The Pastor decided to give it to a Nun in a nearby convent.

The local paper, hearing of the news,
posted the following headline the next day:
NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.

The Bishop fainted. He informed the Nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey so she sold it to a farmer for $10.

The next day the paper read:
NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.

This was too much for the Bishop so he ordered the Nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.

The next day the headlines read:
NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.

The Bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story is . . .. being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery . ..even shorten your life. So be yourself and enjoy life. Stop worrying about everyone else’s ass and you’ll be a lot happier and live longer!

Have a wonderful day!

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