Busy Signal set for Harare

By Sharon Muguwu

HARARE – Jamaican star Busy Signal is headed for the Harare International Carnival’s after party scheduled for October 31 at the Glamis Arena.

The Jamaican dancehall reggae artist is popular in Zimbabwe and has had fans anticipating his debut show in the country. Some of his popular songs in the country include Watch Out for This, Come Over, One More Night and others.

The show is being organised by Biggie Chinoperekwei’s Devine Assignments and Patson Chimbodza’s Chipaz Promotions in association with the Harare International Carnival (HIC).

Chinoperekwei told the Daily News that they were almost concluding negotiations.

“It’s the Carnival after party, so the show is being organised by three entities. The processes are underway; we were just affected by the Carnival date changes. Every time the dates changed we had to make adjustments to his date.

“You know he is an international artiste so you cannot be changing the dates every other week. So we were negotiating and now that the date has finally been set, we will finalise everything in the coming week,” he said.

He went on to clarify that they were not associated with the first purported Busy Signal show which failed to materialise.

“I don’t know who the organisers for that show were, but it wasn’t us.”

The Dreams of Brighter Days singer had scheduled an African tour last year but failed to do so due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

“Last year, we had to cancel some shows, however, pertaining to the Ebola outbreak and we had to reschedule a lot of stuff,” he explained in a Jamaican television interview.

The media, both mainstream and social was awash with reports that Busy Signal would make his maiden performance in Zimbabwe at the Lion Lager Beer Festival.

Chinoperekwei added that they will open a Facebook page dedicated to the show for updates.

“It is always good when fans give suggestions to a show, especially when it comes to the playlist. Zimbabwean fans have songs that they like and we will engage them on Facebook.

“There are also fans that come to our other events so we will engage them also on what they would want him to play. But obviously at the end of the day the artiste has his way of doing things so we will just give him the list as a guideline to what his fans expect from him,” he said.

Last year, Busy Signal featured on the song Show Me Love by Zimbabwean artiste Patrick Kahlari who is better known as PeeKay.

The track, recorded in Jamaica and the United States, is a fusion of hip-hop and dancehall.

Busy Signal has been one of the star performers on the international dancehall scene since 2003 when he released his first hit single, Step Out.

The hit tracks Nah Go A Jail Again, Smoke Some High Grade, Tic Toc, and Unknown Number, which, were released between 2007 and 2008, received a lot of airplay in the Caribbean and the United States of America.

From there on, he released a string of international hits such as Jail, Whine Pon Di Edge, These Are the Days, and Reggae Music Again, which was number seven on the BBC Top 25 Albums of 2012. Daily News