Born Charles Kwadwo Fosu, Daddy Lumba aka DL has grown over the years to be biggest Highlife legend Ghanaians have ever known. Daddy has served Ghanaians with a whopping 33 albums with over 300 songs and each of the songs is a banger!!
Daddy Lumba has songs for parties, he has songs for funeral service, he has love songs, he has songs to worship and praise God; he even has songs for his enemies. The man is simply a living legend.
But over the years, Daddy Lumba is losing his spark and it’s beginning to affect his fans. One major thing that is diminishing DL’s shine is his stagecraft and it’s about time Daddy up his game.
Admittedly, age is not on his side but there are some stage mistakes Daddy Lumba should avoid if he wishes to seal his record as Ghana’s biggest Highlife artist ever and those things can be corrected with no stress at all.
Being a die-hard fan of Daddy Lumba, Ghpage.com did a sample poll on Daddy Lumba and what his fans would want him to change to seal the crown. We received over 1 million comments and we have broken it down into 4 major changes fans expect to see in Daddy Lumba. Not surprisingly, all the 4 bothers on his stage performance.
Below are the 4 major mistakes fans have observed in Daddy Lumba and the changes they wish to see
1) Arrangement of songs
One thing that has become a major turn off about the Highlife legend’s live performance is his choice of songs and the way he arranges the songs. You see, you can’t perform at a Birthday party or musical concert and start with “Adaka Tia”.
If you do that, you have already dampened the spirit of your audience. Daddy Lumba can easily start with some of the gospel songs like ” Yesu Ka Ye Ho” or even “Mesum Jesus” and then follows with any of his 100s of love and high tempo songs.
2) Type of songs
Daddy Lumba has several hit songs which his fans like myself love more than anything else. When performing, he turns to sing the songs he loves but that is not necessarily what we the fans love. We love all Daddy Lumba’s songs but most of his fans love the original highlife songs and we attend the shows for those songs, not the current songs he collaborated with Hiplife musicians
Daddy Lumba sometimes performs without giving his fans the chance to sing along to songs like “Me Sei Da, Osoo Me So Bone, Tokrom, etc.” He has to learn to give fans what we love. Yes, he can sing the low melody songs like “Mariama Etc” and the new collaborations but those songs can be sung just getting to the end of the performance.
3) Style of singing
If DL wants to sing all the song his fans love, we won’t end the show because he has 100s of hit songs and besides age is not on his side. He can’t perform for hours like he used to do. So how does he fix that problem?
Daddy Lumba must learn to blend the songs. If he is singing “Obi Atomeso” But, he should just start the first two lines, then jump to the chorus which will give the audience the chance to sing along with him, after just about a minute or two, quickly switch to the next song like ” Enya Nyame Den” and repeat the style. With this brilliant style, DL will keep his audience on their feet throughout his performance.
4) Stage Ethics
We all admit Daddy Lumba has grown and as such has relaxed on some discipline which he used to hold dear. But some behavior which can easily lead to embarrassment on himself and his management should be avoided. These same behaviors reflect poorly on his die-hard fans.
Recently Daddy Lumba, paused in a middle of an event sip water when he could have easily just moved to the back of the stage to drink it. Imagine pausing in the middle of a show with your thousands of fans cheering you on, only to drink water. You lose the concentration of the fans if you do that. Such petty mistakes are easily avoidable.
Secondly and most importantly, Daddy Lumba for a while now gets into the news over quarrel or anger over money. DL has already made his money so why worry over some peanuts thrown on him on stage. From what we gathered from the comments, it’s one major thing that the fans complained a lot about.
To avoid all those brouhahas over money which is thrown on him when he is on stage, Daddy Lumba should let the band have the money. It is even the accepted practice to give the stage money to the band. It motivates them to go all out.
NOTE: Irrespective of these minor mistakes which are avoidable and I trust Daddy Lumba will take a look at them and work on them, he is still the greatest Highlife musician Ghanaians have ever known. He is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) of Highlife.
source ghpage.com
