AfricaPress-Tanzania: NATIONAL Arts Council of Tanzania (BASATA) has urged artistes to use their talents for economic gain and also to promote the country’s arts beyond geographic boundaries.
At the moment, Tanzanian genre, Bongo Flava has made a crossover appeal to win mammoth audience all over the country.
The pledge was made in Mwanza by the Executive Secretary of BASATA, Godfrey Mngereza during a Press Conference with reporters from different media houses during his tour of different areas of the zone.
He called upon artistes to produce works which have moral ethics and to register themselves and their artistic works at BASATA. He said growth of the sector will have positive results to them and the nation.
Mngereza said that works of artists have a big value; therefore their artistic works must adhere to legal and professional regulations so as to combat piracy as there are some people who use their works of artists for their own benefits, something he said deny them good benefits of their job.
He said that BASATA knows that artistic works have worth billions to the nation and the council has divided the country into six operational zones of Dar es salaam, Northern, Southern, Central, Highlands and Lake Zone to enable the sector defend properly artistes’ works.
Mngereza urged artists to register to Basata so as to make them to be well known officially and to be able to get assistance from BASATA once they encounter problems in their activities.
He advised artists to ensure they make contracts after consultation with faithful lawyers so as to give their works legal rights and proper benefits.
On his side Chairman of Mwanza Press Club Edwin Soko said that since the media sector is growing there is a need for reporters to make specialization of coverage so that they can manage to give proper information on every sector.
He said since the sector is growing therefore there is a responsibility for reporters to ensure they inform the public clearly so that artistes’ works becomes well known to the public.
