A good mentor can have a lasting impact on his or her mentee’s life, i.e. from providing valuable encouragement, guidance, and advice to connecting with the right people, affiliates and opportunities. Ultimately, it’s the mentee, who has to take bold steps and build upon a mentor’s advice and useful connections.
In 2016, Think Africa organized a two-month mentorship program for people in the Arts industry. The program matched aspiring musicians, designers, and photographers with creative experts, who were more experienced in their respective field.
Last year, Think Africa had another opportunity to work with Viviane Bossina, one of the mentee from the 2016 mentorship program. Viviane, mononymously known as BOSSINA, lent her artistic talents to our Climate Safari event, which was organized as part of the World Village Festival on May 25th, 2019. Based on this collaboration we agreed to sit down with the songstress in order to catch up and understand how her music career has been progressing.
This week, BOSSINA released a song entitled “Somebody’s Son”, a beautiful song that explores her previous reluctance to being romantically vulnerable and her newfound desire for love.
Somebody’s Son Lyric Video
[KGVID width=”640″ height=”360″ downloadlink=”true”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvVgX85jzV0[/KGVID]
BOSSINA, a Congolese-born singer and songwriter, took part in the mentorship program in order to obtain guidance and connections in building her musical career. Although she has been singing since the age of 14; she had not been able to grasp the fact that a music career was possible until her experience during the mentorship program of 2016. The program was able to pair BOSSINA with a Senegalese musician, Ndioba, who had built a successful music career in Finland. Thus, it became tangible that she could as well succeed because, Ndioba’s successful experience gave her motivation and “made it real” for her. “Now I know an immigrant who is actually making a living from music,” BOSSINA says.
She admits that she is still figuring out how to make a living from a passion for music. BOSSINA currently has a day job working as a personal assistant, which enables her to make ends meet, while perfecting her artistic craft. She asserts “you have to make time or otherwise it’s not going to happen”.
At the moment, BOSSINA is challenged with not being signed to a record label. A deal with a recording label would help her tremendously in accessing resources, gigs, marketing pathways, and studio sessions. Being an independent artist means that she currently has to take care of everything by herself; a journey that has not been easy. At the time of the interview BOSSINA hoped that a record label would have approached her, and that this would have occurred organically. However, such instances seldomly occur.
One has to network and put effort into reaching out to people in the music industry. BOSSINA’s initial thinking was that because Finland is small, it would inevitably be easy to break through and be noticed. In fact, precisely because of the smallness of Finland, its music network and circles are tighter and difficult to penetrate. Moving forward, establishing a network, and reaching out to record labels is a strategy that BOSSINA is going to put more effort into.
However difficult her situation may be, the lack of a record label deal has not hindered BOSSINA’s efforts in making progress in her musical career. She has managed to record and release a couple of songs, especially, her latest project ”Somebody’s Son,” whose lyric video can be found on YouTube.
The artist BOSSINA has also managed to acquire several corporate performance opportunities. She was fortunate to perform in 2018 at the Helsinki African Fashion Festival to an audience of 400 viewers, her largest crowd attracted to date.
Working to increase the number of live performances is the best strategy for gaining publicity and generating income. BOSSINA admits that her streaming revenues are pretty minuscule, especially considering her current small music catalog. The biggest support she can receive from the community is connections to key players within the music industry and recommendations to performance opportunities.
BOSSINA recalls that during the early stages of her musical career, she had to perform Pro Bono, as a pathway to gaining publicity. Nowadays the artist charges for all of her performances and works. BOSSINA explains that “you do a lot of things for free in the beginning – but people take advantage of it. It benefits you for a while, it’s good, but at some point, you have to make the transition to charging”.
Furthermore, she asserts “if this is what you want to do, and want to do it professionally, you have to put your foot down”. A lot of work goes into music making and preparation for performances – And BOSSINA gives it her all regardless of how large or small the crowd. Her philosophy and approach to performing are to: “always be of service: You have to give it your all – regardless of how large the crowd is”.
We also talked a bit about BOSSINA’s acting career and she tells of limitations faced and the fact that her performance opportunities are minimal as many of the acting opportunities require fluent Finnish.
BOSSINA’s main focus is music. Her goal is to become financially independent, stable and able to make a sustainable livelihood. Her other goals include collaborating with artists who embody different Afrocentric elements, for instance, from Cape Verde, or those well versed in South African house music and Afrobeat. Now that she has released this new single “Somebody’s Son,” she is eager to return to the studio to create new sounds. BOSSINA has finally found a sound that suits her voice and personality and she looks forward to being able to create more musical productions that reflect all aspects of her artistic persona. Stay tuned and look out for an EP from BOSSINA in the very near future.
As we wish BOSSINA all the best in her career, we are also keeping our eyes open for record labels and experienced sound engineers in our network to connect her to and increase her career chances for progress..
If you also have any good leads or contacts or want to book her for a performance, get in touch with BOSSINA at v.bossina@yahoo.com or to Think Africa at info@thinkafrica.fi.
