Daddy Lumba's Chicago Concert Off

Daddy Lumba was ready and set to go but his band was held back by US immigration services. We received the confirmation today that the petition for P-3 visas for members of Daddy Lumba?s band in Ghana and Germany were denied. This is a very disappointing news for all of us from Daddy Lumba to the all the promoters in this cause. Lumba realizes that he was previously scheduled for another concert 2 years ago in Chicago and was ready to make amends for his no-show. In 2003 he went to Ghana to release his new cd Bubra but became ill during his promotional effort going from region to region and from one radio station to another. He was seriously ill and was admitted to a hospital for a period of one week. After that, his doctors advised him not to travel but to stay home and get some rest. He had no way to notify the public or his fans in Chicago because he was home recuperating. He was hoping that the promoters would do a better job to spread the word and notify the public of his illness but it never got done.

Many fans in Chicago up to now are still bitter about the whole situation because they feel Lumba stood them up and took their money. In every case where any concert does not happen, every customer is due a full refund of their money. No one who has bought a ticket should ever say that the musician took their money because it is the person?s right to return the ticket to where they bought it and get their money back. There are people who are always on the outside looking in and never even bought a ticket that are the first to say something like so and so musician came and took our money and never showed up. It is ill tempered Ghanaians that always want to bring their fellow Ghanaians to a level lower than where they are. For some reason when something fails, there are always people to talk negatively about it but when something is done right, where are the people to praise one another for a job well done? When situations like this happen, most fans do not know and immediately blame the musician because the concert didn't go through. There are some things that are out of the musician's control so we shouldn't immediately point fingers and say he did it. For this particular situation, the US immigration services are taking all the precautions that they can to assure that they do not admit any immigrants into their country that could later end up as a potential threat to the country. They do not care about what our cause is but they are just playing it safe due to events of 9/11 that was caused by immigrants previously admitted into the country.

Daddy Lumba is heart broken about the whole situation because he knows that this is the second time that he has disappointed his fans in Chicago. When the initial contract was being discussed, one of the first things Lumba requested was that the promoters should not advertised this concert until they were sure that they can get the appropriate visas and everything was going to be set in stone. But he didn?t get his wish so when something he was afraid will happen ends up happening, is he at fault? The promoters were afraid that there wouldn?t be enough time to promote the concert if they waited for the visas to be approved and therefore they went ahead and put an advertisement from elevators in apartment buildings to everyone?s bathroom. Lumba doesn't want his fans to give up hope because this was completely out of his hands. Daddy Lumba is doing all he can to make sure that he can plan his own concert one day where he can truly show his fans what a real concert is. He?s still looking for the one promoter that can deliver as promised and not look to plan B when things are falling apart. Daddy Lumba is truly sorry for any inconvenience this has caused anyone that had planned to attend any of the shows especially the one in Chicago