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It was all about money that led to the break-up of the once promising music group Le Band.
Made up of three members Fidel Eli Shammah (charisma), Ken Mwendwa (man with the bass) and Joel Maina, Le Band came into the limelight in 2017 with the release of their first hit song
Number 1.
It is the record that catapulted them to celebrity status and started earning them good money from club gigs and performances.
Charisma says once they released the song, hardly a week went by without Le Band getting at least two bookings to perform, in addition to the club appearance gigs they landed mid-week.
Due to the high demand, their rate card quickly skyrocketed from Sh100,000 per gig to Sh250,000.
Charisma says at the time, everything looked promising for the future of their music career, which had struggled to take off since they officially started making music in 2014 before the
Number 1 song came along and changed everything for the better.
But as they prepared to take their game to the next level, Charisma revealed that Le Band landed their first-ever lucrative gig that paid them Sh1.2 million. The gig was to perform at the South African Embassy.
"It was our first highest-paying gig. It was in December 2018 when we were called to a boardroom, these guys (South African embassy) never asked for our rate card which was Sh250,000 at that time. They just said they had a budget of one million and offered us another Sh250,00 to provide sound for our performance. Which we did at a cost of Sh30,000. The deal blew us all away. We had never landed a gig like that before," Charisma recalls.
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But it was the deal that would end Le Band's once promising and aspiring musical journey, as Charisma decided to pull out and go solo. He blames his colleagues.
"I've never shared this, but I hope my boys will understand. I think we have moved on, we are adults and we all make mistakes. After the gig, there was a discussion about the money. I proposed that we put half of it, Sh500,000 back into our music and brand and then split the rest. But my boys insisted that we split equally," says Charisma.
Having been outnumbered and having formed the opinion that his colleagues were not ready to build Le Band into a brand, Charisma says he felt it was time to break away from the group and chart his musical course.
"We had never made that much money before and I didn't understand why they didn't want us to invest some of it back into the craft that was making us the same money. I felt like I was being pushed to the wall to agree to split the money equally. But then I started thinking that I am the lead singer of the group, I do most of the songwriting and singing, but when it comes to decision making I am always overruled. When it became clear that they weren't thinking about building the brand, it became a problem to me." He adds.
It became even clearer to Charisma when one of his bandmates got a job and stopped joining the band for performances.
"I realized we were not on the same wavelength. We also used to practice every week with our band and at one point I was the only one practicing with the band for three months. Then one day the drummer told me, why don't you just be a solo artist because you are always here alone and that was it." he adds.
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