I have spent the past week watching the conversation around Intotal Band with a mixture of interest, amusement and, if I am being completely honest, some concern. I say that because I have been around the music business long enough to know that once a conversation moves from the industry into the public space, particularly onto social media, it can very quickly lose the nuance that the subject deserves.

Opinion Article By Tendai Joe – Record Label Owner, Artist Manager and Media Consultant

People take sides, emotions rise and before long the actual issue becomes secondary to the argument about who is right and who is wrong.

I have never attended an Intotal show, so I want to be honest about that from the beginning. My observations are based on the performances I have watched online and on the discussions taking place around the band.

From what I have seen, however, there is no question in my mind that Intotal is an exceptionally good live act. They are a cover and tribute band that has clearly put serious work into its musicianship, arrangements and presentation, and the response they have received from audiences tells us that they have found something that people want.

That is precisely why I think this conversation deserves to be handled carefully.

Intotal is not an original band in the traditional sense. They perform cover versions and tributes, meaning that the songs that form the foundation of their live performances were created by other musicians and songwriters.

That distinction matters, but it does not make what they are doing illegitimate. Cover bands have always been part of the live music business, in Zimbabwe and everywhere else. They give musicians an opportunity to earn a living, they provide entertainment for audiences and they can keep songs alive long after the original recordings were released.

There are people who discover old music because somebody performed it for them years after the original artist had stopped being commercially prominent. There is therefore nothing inherently wrong with building a live entertainment business around performing music written by other people.

The artists and songwriters who have raised concerns about the use of their music are also entitled to be taken seriously. I would not want to be in the position of having spent years writing, recording and promoting music only to discover that somebody else was building a commercial enterprise around my work without properly dealing with the rights attached to it.

A song is intellectual property, but it is also often a deeply personal piece of someone’s life. For many Zimbabwean musicians, their catalogue represents years of work and, in some cases, their most important financial asset.

If music is being used in circumstances where the law requires permission, licensing or payment, then those requirements should be respected. The fact that a cover band is talented or popular cannot and should not remove the rights of the people who created the underlying works.

I therefore have no problem with artists asking questions about how their music is being used, whether the appropriate licences are in place and whether royalties are being properly accounted for. In fact, I think they should ask those questions.

A music industry in which creators have no confidence that their rights are being protected is not a healthy industry. The people who write and create our music should not have to choose between allowing their work to circulate and protecting the economic value of that work. The two should be able to happen together.

Where I think the conversation needs to move, however, is away from the idea that the conflict is necessarily between artists and cover bands. It is not.

Both are part of the same ecosystem, and both can benefit from a music industry that works properly. The songwriter creates the work, the recording artist gives it a particular identity, musicians interpret it, promoters create opportunities for audiences to experience it, venues provide the spaces in which performances happen, and rights organisations have a role in administering the rights and payments associated with the use of the music.

These are different parts of the same commercial chain. If one part of that chain is damaged, the consequences eventually travel through the rest of the industry.

This is where I think Zimbabwe needs to look at the bigger picture.

We should have a system in which a promoter can organise a concert and know exactly what is required of them. A venue should know its responsibilities. A cover band should be able to find out what it needs to do before performing music written by somebody else.

A songwriter should be able to understand how his or her work is being used and have confidence that any money properly due to them is being collected and distributed.

These should not be complicated questions that musicians have to resolve through arguments on Facebook or other social-media platforms. They should be ordinary business processes within a functioning music industry.

The reason the Intotal debate has become so interesting is that the band is successful enough to expose the commercial value of the music it performs. If nobody was paying attention to Intotal, there would probably be little interest in what songs they perform.

Their success has changed that. Audiences are watching them, promoters are interested in them and musicians are paying attention to the way they are using the Zimbabwean catalogue.

In a strange way, the controversy has reminded us that the music itself still has enormous power.

Zimbabwe has an extraordinary musical catalogue, much of which remains deeply embedded in the country’s cultural memory. There are songs recorded decades ago that people still know word for word. There are artists whose music continues to cross generations, and there are compositions that can still get an audience singing within seconds of the opening notes.

We spend a lot of time talking about how difficult it is for Zimbabwean musicians to make money from their work, yet we sometimes overlook the fact that there is still a considerable amount of commercial value sitting inside the catalogue we already have.

Intotal’s popularity is one indication of that value. They have taken songs that audiences already know and turned them into a live entertainment proposition. People are responding to that proposition, which means there is still demand for the underlying music.

I do not think we should look at that demand only through the lens of a copyright dispute. We should also look at it as evidence that Zimbabwean music still has a market.

That brings me to the part of this debate that I suspect some people will find uncomfortable.

I am not suggesting that Intotal intends to do this, because I have no information to that effect. I am simply considering the commercial choices available to a successful cover and tribute band.

If the band eventually decided that performing Zimbabwean music had become too complicated, too contentious or simply not worth the administrative burden, it could change its repertoire.

There is a tremendous amount of music available to a talented live band. Zimbabweans have always consumed South African music, Congolese music and music from other parts of the continent, and Nigerian, Ghanaian and international music are now part of the everyday listening habits of many Zimbabweans.

A band with strong musicians and a proven ability to entertain an audience could move into those catalogues and continue doing business.

That is where I think the industry needs to think beyond the immediate dispute.

If Intotal changed its repertoire, the band would probably continue to exist. The musicians would still be musicians, the promoters would still have a product to sell, venues would still need entertainment and audiences would still want to hear good live music.

The Zimbabwean songs that had been part of those performances, however, would have lost another platform through which they reached audiences.

A cover band can change the songs it performs. The songwriter does not have the same freedom to simply replace the commercial and cultural value of a song that is no longer being performed.

That does not mean that artists should accept unauthorised use of their work. I want to be particularly clear about that because I would not want the central argument of this article to be misunderstood.

I believe creators should protect their intellectual property, and where the law requires licensing or payment for a particular use, those requirements should be followed.

My concern is about what happens when the industry’s response to legitimate rights concerns is not a workable system of compliance, but an environment of uncertainty and confrontation that makes local repertoire less attractive for performers to use.

There is an important difference between protecting music and creating barriers around music.

Protecting music ensures that the creator benefits when the work is commercially exploited. Creating unnecessary barriers can eventually discourage people from exploiting the work at all. The first outcome can strengthen a music industry. The second can have consequences that nobody intended when the original dispute began.

Zimbabwe needs more legitimate economic activity around its music, not less.

We need songs being played on radio and television, streamed online, used in advertising and film, performed at concerts and introduced to younger audiences by musicians who see value in the catalogue.

We need the creators to benefit from that activity, but we also need the activity itself to continue. If a rights system becomes so difficult to navigate that people simply avoid local music, the creators may have protected their rights in one sense while losing an important avenue through which those works generate cultural and commercial value.

That is why I would rather see this moment used to improve the industry than to deepen the divisions within it.

A cover band should be able to understand its obligations without having to become a copyright lawyer. A promoter should know what needs to be done before putting on an event. A venue should have clear information about its responsibilities.

Artists and songwriters should be able to see that their rights are being taken seriously and that royalties are being properly administered. Rights organisations should be able to demonstrate clearly how the system works and where the money goes.

None of this should be controversial. These are the foundations of a professional music business.

There is also a cultural dimension that I think deserves more attention.

When a band like Intotal performs older Zimbabwean music, it is not only reproducing songs; it is participating in the continuing life of those songs. Some of the music being performed belongs to a generation that is now getting older, while the people listening to the performances may be considerably younger.

That process of transmission matters. Music survives partly because somebody keeps performing it, and catalogues remain relevant because audiences continue to encounter them in new settings.

The original creators should benefit from that continuing life. There is no argument from me on that point.

But I also do not think we should assume that the interests of the creator and the performer are automatically in conflict. In many circumstances, the continued performance of a song can help preserve its relevance, create new audiences and keep the original work in people’s consciousness.

The task of the industry should be to make sure that this happens within a framework that respects the rights attached to the music.

This is also why I think it would be a mistake to make Intotal the central character in a much larger structural problem.

The band did not create Zimbabwe’s difficulties around copyright administration. It did not create the challenges facing musicians trying to monetise their catalogues. It did not create the weaknesses in the broader music business.

What its success has done is expose those issues in a way that people can now see and discuss.

Perhaps that is the opportunity we should take from this moment.

Instead of spending all our energy deciding whether Intotal is right or wrong, we should use the attention around the band to ask whether Zimbabwe has built an effective system for dealing with music rights.

We should be asking whether licensing is sufficiently clear, whether tariffs are understandable, whether musicians know their obligations, whether rights holders have confidence in royalty administration and whether disputes can be resolved without every disagreement becoming a public battle.

Those are difficult questions, but they are the questions that will still matter after the current argument has disappeared from social media.

As somebody who has worked with artists and within the music business, I do not want to see Zimbabwean creators surrender their rights. I also do not want to see successful musicians and performers decide that working with Zimbabwean repertoire is more trouble than it is worth.

I would much rather see an environment in which the rights of the songwriter are respected, the performer can earn a living, the promoter can put on a commercially successful event, the venue can operate, and the audience can continue enjoying the music that has become part of our collective memory.

There is enough room in Zimbabwean music for all of those interests to coexist.

The challenge is that coexistence does not happen automatically. It requires clear rules, sensible administration, transparency and a willingness from everyone in the ecosystem to recognise that the success of one part of the industry does not necessarily have to come at the expense of another.

That is ultimately how I see the Intotal debate.

I do not see a villain in the band, and I do not see villains in the artists who are asking questions about their rights. I see a successful cover and tribute band that has unexpectedly exposed a much bigger conversation about the value of Zimbabwean music and the systems we have built around it.

If we are wise, we will use that conversation to improve the business rather than allowing it to become another battle in which everybody leaves more frustrated than when they started.

Intotal has shown us that people still want to hear Zimbabwean music performed live. The artists have reminded us that the music belongs to people whose rights and livelihoods must be respected.

Both things can be true at the same time, and I believe the real test of our music industry is whether we can build a system that recognises both.

That is the conversation I would like to see coming out of this controversy, because Zimbabwean music deserves more than another argument.

It deserves an industry capable of turning the enormous cultural value we already possess into sustainable economic value for the people who created it and for the people whose work continues to give that music a life.