A Campbell River musician is raising money to give artists in two African countries an opportunity to make music.
Sam Mdwara Decter runs a Canadian-African hip-hop label called West Hawk Tapes and is running a fundraiser to help two groups of musicians from Botswana and South Africa access tools to make and record music. Decter performs and records hip-hop music in Campbell River, performing under the Dog Dad Posse sobriquet. His interest in helping young African musicians comes from his own background.
“This is my life man,” he said. “I have a lot of family in South Africa. It’s where my father was from and this is just my way of connecting my business into that.”
One of the beneficiaries of the fundraiser is a rapper from Francistown, Botswana who will be receiving a new microphone to help him record. The other group is South African record label The PsychxGeneration (TPG) Records. The goal is to send three artists to a professional studio to record new demos.
Decter says that his goal is to help promote these artists in Canada, and to help them move forward with their music.
“It’s been a real big step forward for my label,” Decter said.
While Decter has met his fundraising goal of $1,000, he said that any more money raised will go to the artists and give them a chance to make more music.
“End of May is the end of the fundraiser, but we already raised our we already got the cash for the the gear and the studio time,” Decter said. “So anything over that is going straight back into making tapes.”
The fundraiser is being held on Crowdfundr.com. Decter also said that people can support the project through his Etsy store, which is selling tapes from the artists.
“this money is going straight into the hands of enterprising young musicians with whom I am building a creative network of extraordinary possibilities,” he said on the fundraiser site.
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marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com
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