Eve and Wyclef save the Zain experience

When the promos for the Zain 026 experience started running it was clear that the concert would be the biggest outdoor event Ghana had seen in a long time. With international artists like Wyclef, eve and Mario headlining; and supported by 2face Idibia, Obrafour, tinny and Kwaw Kesse, nothing could go wrong. Well, almost nothing could go wrong.

For those of us that were at the Ohene Djan Stadium on Saturday November 22, we know that a lot more went wrong. I thought hosting a grand concert of this nature made the stadium a good choice; after all most memorable concerts the world over are held in stadiums. So what went wrong?

The stage for performances was tucked away in one end of the football pitch several hundreds of meter away from spectators. Two useless tiny screens were placed on both sides of the stage, and in fact spectators needed the best pair of binoculars to see any action on the stage. This made performances on the stage stiff and impersonal.

After waiting for 4 hours from the advertised time, Obrafour was the first casualty of the night as he tried to work with what he was given. His act was terrible, he had no reaction from the crowd and to make matters worse, his microphone didn’t work half of the time. Tinny tried to make things work in his favour by running across the pitch to get some reaction from the crowd; he even decided to score a goal on the field. It worked well for him but it affected the quality of his sound. Kwaw Kesse tried a combination of the two by starting off his performance on the pitch and rounding off on the stage. The tale end of his performance was so uninspiring that he was booed by the crowd.

While all these were happening time was fast spent and some patrons had given up and walked out of the stadium. Did I mention that the stadium was 2/3 empty? That’s what happens when you charge Ghanaians 20, 30, 50 and 100 cedis for a Zain sponsored concert at the sports stadium. In fact the gates were later opened free to the public but still the place was empty. At this point without mincing words, the concert was a complete flop!

2face managed to get some audience participation from the crowd and R&B superstar Mario took it a notch further but still the energy levels were low as most of the patrons remained seated. Then came Eve, who literally turned the fortunes of the concert around. Suddenly the sound seemed to work and we could hear and feel her energy even when she was rocking the stage. Occasionally she ran unto the pitch to get some more energy from the crowd. After Eve came in the maestro, Wyclef, who absolutely stole the show. He tried to get security to open the gates around the pitch to let the crowd in. he even protested that if the gates were not opened he wouldn’t continue with his show, but it fell on deaf eyes. ‘I didn’t travel for 10 hours to perform to my people behind cages like prisoners’, he protested.

Wyclef’s energy was simply unbelievable as he performed on the stage, on the pitch, on top of the gates around the pitch; and even jumped over the gate to get into the audience at a point. His energy was so high that when the microphones went absolutely dead on him in the middle of his performance, he staged a little drumming and dancing show, capoella style until the microphones worked again.

Well in a nutshell, the Zain 026 Experience went from being the most anticipated show of the year to a biggest flop and then just when we thought it was down and out Eve and Wyclef pulled a 360 to save it. It may affect Ghana’s reputation with international artist but I hope the organizers have learnt their lesson and would only grow based on this ‘experience’.