I would have wished to squeeze in a sentence or two about Tanzanian hustler-singer Diamond Platnumz, only that I just developed second thoughts. I had wanted to jot something about Diamond’s pre-music/stardom life, because as a music pro, my knowledge of music and things musical stretches far wider than just mastery of chord progressions and syncopation and tone and rhythm and pitch and cadence and musical keys and notations. On the contrary, my music prowess also extends to the nitty-gritty of artistes’ lifestyles, in that for the local music industry, I know which artistes have been nabbed by cops while smoking banned substances around the Nyarutarama lake. I also know which side jobs artistes do besides singing, for instance song bird Knowless Butera peddles a swag edition of a popular beer brand whenever she is not on stage. Rapper Diplomate is yet another artiste who knows that a side job is a necessary evil in this rat race called life. That is why whenever performance deals are not forthcoming, he sneaks off to the offices of the website yegob.com to voice jingles for them. By the way, yegob is pronounced ‘yego bee’ and it’s a third rate local entertainment portal that some people go to whenever they can’t access the market leaders –Inyarwanda and Igihe. But who says that having a job on the side is something that only artistes like Knowless and Diplomate do? The fact is that everybody does have a side hustle to compliment their regular, known income. I used to wonder why my media colleagues who specialize in photography are always rich and loaded with liquid cash stashed away in their bulging wallets, while on the contrary I’m always in bed with broke-ness. That is until it occurred to me that photo journalists know how to keep a side hustle better than the average writer. When photojournalists go to cover fun events like cocktail parties and music concerts, they do not do it just for the media house they are attached to. Photojournalists always know the best camera angles and shots to flatter Knowless Butera into paying for a whole CD compilation of photos after her performance. This is the very reason photography is my very next professional stop. But being a writer and not photographer does not mean that I’m immune to the side-hustle syndrome. That is why whenever I’m off the hustle of looking for news to write, I usually head to Musanze, where my side hustle is to guide tourists who have ibiraayi-viewing permits around the best Rwandan potato fields in Kinigi. Yes, why call them Irish potatoes, yet it’s a known fact that the best of Irish potatoes originate from Kinigi?
