Jah Prayzah bans cameras at his shows, says ‘content is money’

Top Zimbabwean musician Jah Prayzah has said he will not be allowing professional camera crews at his shows, as he seeks to stop unscrupulous promoters from profiting from his live performances.

Posting on his Facebook account, Jah Prayzah said while he would allow fans with cellphones to get footage from his performances, the same would not apply for professional camera people who he expected to pay for the privilege.

“All my fans are free to use their cellphones to take memories of themselves and my performance. However, kana wakuuya ne PROFESSIONAL camera rato drama CONTENT IS MONEY. Pay first! Promoters when you book for my services, please keep this in Mind,” he posted.

In an interview with H-Metro, the musician’s manager Keen Mushapaidze said the move was strictly a business decision on the part of Jah Prayzah’s camp.

“We have not had serious problems with individual content creators who attempt to live-stream or record our performances and we stop them. Those ones comply because they understand where we will be coming from.

“The problem are professional camera crews who are hired by show promoters to record performances either as live-stream or for posting later on their platforms simply because we have a performance contract. This problem is not in Zimbabwe alone, but even outside the country we have faced it,” he said.

Mushapaidze said they had resorted to stopping performances so as to force promoters to comply.

“They believe that once a performance fee has been paid, we cannot cancel performance over filming, but this year we have stopped performances on TWO occasions.

“I shall not mention the shows, but TWICE we had to stop performance until those recording our show without agreement had stopped. They had ignored approaches from both our security and management and only complied when Jah stopped performing,” he said.