Citizen TV news anchor and 10 Over 10 show presenter Willis Raburu on Sunday disowned the Gengetone Festival held in Machakos that spectacularly flopped in the weekend. 

In a video he shared on his Instagram page, the usually happy-go-lucky Raburu admitted that the show was a miss and noted that it was a “rare teachable moment”.

He however delinked himself from the failed show referring those interested in knowing the faces and names behind the show to check the fliers that were used to promote the event.

“The Gengetone Festival was not my event. I attended basically as an emcee and as an upcoming artist,” said a seemingly disappointed Raburu in the Instagram video.

The scribe, who has joined music and has released Gengetone tracks recently, admitted that the Gengetone Festival was poorly organisers and artistes were not paid as agreed beforehand.

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The son of former Provincial Commissioner Peter Raburu revealed that most artistes who were set to perform refused to go on stage claiming they had not been paid the full amount agreed on.

“I went to backstage and started talking to the artistes. They told me they wanted to perform but they had not been paid the other half of the money. The rule for most artistes is that you pay half of the agreed amount before the event, then pay the other half before they perform,” Raburu explained.

Raburu, who unveiled his new hairstyle on Friday, said he told the artistes not to perform as the organisers were allegedly waiting to claim ticket collections with a pledge to pay them this week.  

He said, “I told them, If you guys step on this stage and perform, then we will never break the cycle of people being taken advantage of, more so Gengetone artistes.”

Raburu went on to rant about the organisers of the failed event terming as immoral their actions of failing to pay the artistes as earlier agreed and asked such artistes to speak up.

He added: “I hope this starts the conversation that artistes need to be respected, need to be paid and they should demand it and not be quiet.”

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Teachable moment in the creative industry in KE

A post shared by Willis Raburu (@willisraburu) on