Smart-phones spoil concert experience

Thalefang Charles
Staff Writer | Monday May 6, 2013 00:00

Instead of getting lost in the live performance, the modern revellers (I don't even think they deserve to be called, revellers) watch the whole show on their tiny phones while recording and taking blurry pictures.

I attended a jam session with Ray Phiri and John Selolwane in Gaborone last weekend. We are talking here about band members of Paul Simon's Graceland Tour that took Rufaro Stadium in Harare Zimbabwe by storm in 1987.Since then, I have been engrossed in YouTube videos of that amazing festival all week and I noticed a big difference between the revellers of the 1980s and today's.

I watched that multiracial crowd in admiration as they danced in rhythmic pulsation to Paul Simon's 'Jus' Call Me Al.' The crowd was immersed in the music. It was evident that the band and the crowd were fused by the beat and all were lost in song. This is surely what festivals are all about; the people coming to experience the music and the artists understanding what their compositions mean to their fans.

Fast forward to today's crowd. They attend these pricey events armed with their trendy smartphones and tablet computers to record the entire show. Despite these concerts usually being held in conditions of poor lighting that give even seasoned photographers with the latest hi-tech cameras a difficult time, fans of today go to the shows to record.

The blurry images that they shoot for the entire show are posted on social networks, Facebook and Twitter, sometimes in real time. Surprisingly, events managers nowadays encourage this annoying phenomemnon. They want people to Tweet and post on Facebook about their concerts so that their event could 'trend' on Tweet or receive many 'Talking Abouts' on Facebook.

But when do these people get to enjoy the concert? After a Tweet or a Facebook post comes re-tweets, mentions and comments, as bored souls elsewhere follow the festival through the social networks. So the poor fella who tweets, 'Jill Scott on stage rocking it' has to reply to comments that follow. But the show does not pause for Twitter updates or replying to comments, which means they miss out on some great moments of the show while busy updating their Facebook status or checking 'notifications.'

The awful videos will then be posted on YouTube, with captions suggesting that the photographer actually had great fun. How do you even enjoy the live concert while watching the whole show on a 10 X 5cm screen of your smartphone? And who do you expect will be wasting their bandwidth and time waiting for YouTube to buffer your blurry video with very poor sound?

Your huge Tablet computers are obstructing other people's views. Plus it is not just cool to be holding the notebook-size computer with a camera function that is designed to record your first baby steps at a huge festival.Besides, it is risky to be wielding your expensive iPhone or your company Tablet in a crowd with beers in their hands. Your pricey little computer could also become prey to some unruly thieves.