Botswana's music is not developing, the band master commented. The comment carries some credibility because the man is looking at Botswana from outside.

He has been living in Botswana for quite a while and he has the formal training that enables him to analyse the music. The point of this article would be made more effectively if specific mention of the place where the comment was made was mentioned, and the names of the artists. Let us just say that it is musicians' business!

The band master, I believe, wanted to make the point that even if there have been a few variations in the way in which the musicians state melody, and their manner of dress, there has hardly been much innovation in the making of creative melodies, and much less, the investigation of rhythms other than the military 4/4 time.

The popular music of Botswana has not embraced 3/4 or 6/8 time. It has not embraced the ballade. It has not learnt much from Afro American treatment of the various blues patterns or Latino and Cuban rhythms.

Botswana popular music has not learnt to absorb the harmonic patterns of the Shona, the Sesarwa, Pedi, Ndebele or even the Xhosa. There has been some response to the Zulu based beats that have been made popular in South African commercial music. Much time has gone to waste in the reproduction of sterile and unrealistic rhythms that are gleaned from computers' to make what the exponents call by an array of colourful names such as Hip-hop, R&B, Motswako and all sorts of things. All of them are varieties of what was called bubble-gum music in the 70s.

Culture Spears, Dikakapa, Matsieng and a few of the Ikalanga ensembles have kept the naturally African 6/8 beats' which are also wearing out.

I keep hearing the theoreticians of the music talking about the 2/5/1 progression as if it is generic to 'all' music. Well, let them have their way. I will only comment that it is the western way of explaining the harmonic progression of the music f the world, but that is another argument.

The point to be made is that Botswana popular music had failed to progress by way of embracing the nuances of world music - in melody, harmony and rhythm - in such a way as to enhance the intrinsic qualities of the indigenous.

Forty years ago the Scarers played ballades like 'A tear fell' and compositions by Babsie Mlangeni and the All Rounders in the ilk of 'Sala Ema' and 'Swabisa Satane'. It was a welcome shift from the noisy 'Rock' music of the 1960's that had captured the imagination of the younger generation of musicians who modelled themselves on the 'hippie' culture of the American and European youth who smoked dagga whilst they listened to Black Sabbath.

Of course this was a response of the American youth to the mess that America created in Vietnam and resistance of the establishment to the demands of the civil rights movement.

But it was not an African response.It took the repatriation of Jonas Gwangwa around 1977 to pick up on the base that the Scarers and Radio Botswana had created in keeping the folks in touch with the Dark City Sisters and the Mahotella Queens, Bra Sello and Mahlathini, and Franco on African Beat, to redirect Botswana urban popular music in the direction of the folk music of the southern part of the continent.

The music is still stuck there. Mosco Modise and the BDF band are now playing an arrangement of the Ratsie Setlhako song, 'A re tshengtsheng'. Punah Gabasiane sings 'Sello sa malema' which unfortunately mimics Jonas Gwangwa's harmonic arrangement of 'Kgomo di tsile'.

This seems to be the direction in which Botswana music should be going.

There is an inexhaustible resource in the folk music of Botswana on which the composers and the arrangers can tap to create a modern, innovative and forward looking Botswana music.

There could also be discrete and disciplined adaptation of the harmonic theory of Afro American folk music, Bossa Nova, Asiatic music, Cubano rhythm and harmony, West African 'Highlife' and Fela's Afro Beat, to build on Botswana's folk music. (Please do not confuse the Botswana music with a hundred and one adaptations of the chord with flatted thirds, fifths and thirteenth chords. Botswana music is not Be-bop).

That is what the band master meant when he said that Botswana music does not seem to have moved in any creative way in the past 30 years. (In fact it could be argued that it has regressed).

Some suggestions: A real union of musicians ought to reward creative music rather than reinforcing the continued recording of junk. That means that there should be a modest academy of music personalities such as Rre Jake Sibiya, Phillip Segola, Batho Molema, Mosco Modise, Ms Marcovic, Citie Ntsholeng, Tsilo Baitsile and Seatlholo Tumedi.

Two or three should be assigned to keep track of developments in the music scene with the view of judging the music artefacts of the year against that background. This should include music presenters on radio and television, arts journalists, performers, academics and every category of person who has anything to do with the development of music.

If there should be music awards, they must include scholarships, contracts to record with the help of experienced producers and the guarantee of internship at the appropriate place.

It is true, the music is stuck, and it must move.