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L' vovo sleeps in hotel foyer
BAYANGSUKELA: L'vovo performs at the Ntyce in London
on Friday
By
Showbiz Reporter
KWAITO
star L’vovo Derrango was forced to sleep in a hotel foyer last
Saturday after a music promoter who brought him to the UK abandoned
him, New Zimbabwe.com can reveal.
L’vovo cancelled a performance at the Batley Tarveners Club near Leeds after the promoter, Arthur Janjawa, failed to cough-up the artist’s performance fees.
On Friday, L’vovo was persuaded to perform a 20-minute set in London despite also not being fully paid.
Also caught up in the chaos was DJ Sox of Durban’s Finest and DJ C-ndo, one of South Africa’s leading female deejays.
L’vovo’s UK tour appeared doomed the moment ‘Kwaito King’ Arthur Mafokate – also part of the artist line-up -- pulled out over a payment dispute with the promoters early last week.
Mafokate said after he withdrew from the tour, he was bombarded with threatening text messages telling him he would be “the next Lucky Dube” – the reggae legend gunned down in Johannesburg last year. He believes the text messages originated from the promoter’s associates.
When the promoters opted to go ahead with the tour, minus Mafokate, it was a gamble too far and problems began outside London’s Ntyce Nightclub on Friday night when L’vovo arrived but refused to perform until he was paid.
The Bayang’sukela star finally went into the venue and started dancing away with fans while downing several bottles of Courvoisier.
He was finally persuaded by friends to “do it for the fans”, and he obliged with a stellar 20-minute performance which left the 300 fans asking for more. DJ Sox and C-ndo also played briefly.
On Saturday morning, L’vovo and his crew spent several hours in the car park of a London hotel before taking a road trip up North where another disaster awaited.
With the promoter nowhere to be found, the show was called off and when the artists got to the hotel where they had been told they were booked, hotel staff said no payment had been received. The artists slept in the hotel foyer, departing early Sunday for the drive back to Heathrow Airport to catch a flight home.
L’vovo’s road manager Sibusiso Mhlongo told New Zimbabwe.com: “We are owed something in the region of R60 000 (£4,500). The promoter also asked us to pay for our flights from Durban to Johannesburg with a promise of refunds. But the promoter just disappeared. It’s a highly regrettable situation.”
Janjawa said: “The Leeds show was cancelled as a consequence of the many problems we had with this tour. It was beyond our control and we will see how we can revisit the contract with the artist to make a settlement. But the money we know we owe for sure is a £500 balance for the London show.”
Asked about the flights from Durban to Johannesburg, he corrected himself: “And that as well.”
Janjawa denied the artists had slept in a hotel foyer. Instead, he said he had advised them to travel back to London and stop over at the house of someone he identified as Precious, before going to the airport.
“I have lost in excess of £30 000 on this tour and to say the artists should sleep at a hotel when the show is cancelled, and when they are going to the airport a few hours later, is just not reasonable. Where does the money come from?” Janjawa said.
He vowed this was the last event involving Southern African artists he would be involved with.
“To hell with
it,” he said. “I will not grow grey hair over these shows
and the attendant squabbles. I am done.”
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