D'BANJ "NO SHOW" AFTER CONCERT PARTY IN LONDON
Dbanj's after concert party on Monday the 31st of August at a posh night club called RSLOUNGE in South Woodford in Essex, United Kingdom (probably one of the few American styled night clubs in London) was very widely attended. People started queuing up at around 12:00 midnight and within an hour there were over 600 people waiting to get into the night club and party with the KOKO MASTER. The management of the night club were overwhelmed by the number of young people waiting to get into the club and were asking the question WHO IS D'BANJ?
The crowd was a mixture of pretty, classy young Africans, Afro Caribbean’s, a few English and Italians etc all dressed to kill and from the music blasting from the numerous cars parked outside, ready to party.
Unfortunately both the club management to include security personnel and the promoters were unprepared for the number of people who wanted to party with Dbanj. The promoters out of greed decided to introduce a two tier gate fee system, 30 and 50 pounds. For a VIP table which on normal nights were charged out at 500.00 pounds was now costing 600 and 1000 pounds respectively. To ensure that they clearly milked the tier system, people were left queuing outside for over two hours whilst the first class citizens who were paying up 1000 pounds for the privilege of partying with Dbanj were let in first.
Clearly Dbanj is one of the most talented entertainers in Africa in our time and it is not surprising that the African la crème de la crème in the UK were out in on mass to party with him.
At one point the crowd had enough of waiting and started trying to push their way into the club with only a handful of bouncers or security staff on hand (as the Club management clearly underestimated Dbanj's popularity after all he is African) and the whole thing started turning into a riot, the Police had to be called out.
Dbanj and his entourage drove past the night club took one look at the situation and decided that it was not worth attending as they would have clearly been at risk and rightly so.
So by 3 O’clock in the morning the situation was as follows; over 600 to 700 people trying to force their way into the Club, confirmation that Dbanj was no longer attending, latest Dbanj’s and Wande songs blaring from the different cars parked in the car park and the club management wondering what they had taken on.
Overall I think from the pictures below you can clearly see that people tried to enjoy themselves without Dbanj in attendance, the promoters and club management were the big winners on the night as they clearly made a lot of money.
The two lessons I believe should have been learnt are as
follows;
African entertainers have come a long way and are probably more admired by Africans in Diaspora who don’t get to see enough of them. Any time there is such an event the organisers should be prepared for the kind of crowd that may show up.
2) There is clearly a huge appetite possibly out of nostalgia for African type entertainment or entertainers, which will explain the numbers that turned out for this after concert party, but one, will hope that promoters and organisers of such events will not take advantage of the situation and be fair.
We live in a different society from Nigeria or other African countries and it would have been best to let people into the club on a first come first serve basis, instead of instituting a class system that ended up almost ruining what could have been one of the greatest after concert parties held in honour of an African Musician in the UK in more recent times and we could have all got the chance to party with Dbanj.
Sylvia Tansali - August 31st 2009
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