Members of Kenyan boyband Sauti Sol take a selfie during a past event in Nairobi. Inset: Nominated Senator Crystal Asige.
Nominated Senator Crystal Asige has told the High Court that one reason cited by Sauti Sol for her dismissal in November 2019 was that their Sol Generation Record label was broke.
In 2018, the singer-songwriter while residing in Mombasa, claims she was approached by Sauti Sol’s Bien Aime and asked to join the label.
Ms Asige is suing her former colleagues Sauti Sol and the music label for violation of various Intellectual Property (IP) rights and exploitation of her disability for financial gains.
She claims Bien asked her to relocate to Nairobi as a prerequisite of joining the label, which she did at the beginning of 2019.
However, in their defence statement in court, Sauti Sol deny the allegations stating that the visually impaired Senator moved to Nairobi in March 2019 to work for Open Society Kenya.
This week, while appearing before the Milimani High court to testify on the suit she filed in 2022, Ms Asige reiterated her written statement.
She told Lady Justice Margaret Mwangi she was dismissed from Sol Generation with the label citing that it was flat broke with no resources to retain her.
She also argues that she never received any royalties of her contributions to five songs: Extravaganza, Favorite song by Bensoul, Rhumba Japani, Ukiwa Mbali and Lenga.
In the suit, Ms Asige has also sued Netherland’s KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which she said used her song, with no compensation either from the record label or the airline.
Justice Njoki heard that MsAsige co-composed and performed ‘Extravaganza’ and ‘Ukiwa Mbali’ together with Sauti Sol and her label mates at the time artistically known as Bensoul, Nviiri The Story Teller and Kaskazini in 2019.
Ms Asige says she was credited as a co-writer of the songs, but never received any royalties.
She also claims to have arranged and performed background vocals of Bensoul’s ‘My Favorite Song’ but has never received any royalties for her rights in the musical works.
In written defence, Sauti Sol say the Senator was only involved in performing the vocals not arrangement.
Additionally, Ms Asige accuses Bien of taking her original created lyrics intended for herself when she presented the song to him for his opinion, then added some lyrics and recorded the same as the track ‘intro’ which features on Sauti Sol’s Midnight Train album, without her knowledge.
Sol Generation denies stating it does not own rights to the album Midnight Train which is wholly owned by Universal Music Limited, a fact they said was well within Ms Asige’s knowledge.
During her time with Sol Generation, Ms Asige claims the record label attempted to have her sign a five-year Artist Development Agreement but she became hesitant as it purported to assume all the rights to her artistic work.
Instead, she requested for a meeting to discuss a 360 recording contract meeting, which never took place as she was continually put off under the guise of busy management and travel calendar of ‘the boys’ (Sauti Sol).
“I made several efforts to have a meeting with the ‘boys’ as they are called, to have an agreement of some sought so that I can work knowing I have that safety net but no recording contract was given to me. Instead, I received an artiste development agreement which offered to give me artistes development on training and things of that nature to develop me as an artiste," Senator Asige testified.
"In exchange it requested for 360 rights which meant I would give up all of my rights to the label. If they made money through my images, merchandising, endorsement or sponsorships deals that have me involved in, they would keep all of it. The Artiste agreement also stated that upon its expiry they would retain half of all my rights for another five years. Usually such terms are only found in a full 360 recording contract,” she further said.
All this while, Ms Asige says she was requested to exercise patience as she continued to being fronted in the media and public as a part of the Sol Generation label.
“They used my images and likeness to market my brand as part of the four artistes under the label. My disability was used as well as part of their marketing and PR strategy. It was a selling point to them because I wasn’t just the only female in the group but also the only person with the disability and therefore it was used to garner support and praise from the public for the label as having put forward and supported nurturing a young female with disability which no other label at the time was doing,” the senator told the court in her testimony.
In his witness statement, Moriasi Omambia — the label’s legal manager, shareholder and co-director — denies the claims.
“At all times during our engagement, she was treated with care and respect and when she had to undertake her medical procedures through communication with her brother Kelvin Asige, it was made clear to him that she should take as much time as she needed to recover. More so never have we purported to or exploited her disability for financial gains,” Omambia states.
Ms Asige adds that she continued being booked for live performances under the label and its other engagements. She adds that the label also denied her taking on some of lucrative solo bookings that came her way thus intentionally denying her a source of revenue.
Thereafter, Ms Asige says she began to notice unpredictable cancellations to her studio time allocations and exclusion in creative meetings and the label’s planned group songwriting sessions.
Ms Asige also told the court that she composed and performed her own song ‘Lenga’ while under the label, which was released exclusively on KLM Dutch Airlines official Facebook account and also made available on its additional platforms as the airlines in-flight entertainment programme for its passengers, but was never compensated.
She adds that she only became aware of the Sol Generation-KLM agreement valued to be approximately Sh5 million “around the time I was dismissed from the label in November 2019.” She claims her request to have a look at the agreement was denied.
“The agreement purported to be acting on my behalf as an agent of myself as an artiste. It signed my rights without my knowledge to KLM to use the song,” Ms Asige testified.
The senator accused Sauti Sol and KLM for benefiting from the song without compensating her.
In defence, Sol Generation say the actual amount was Sh4,602,000 and that the money was for preparation of the said musical works commissioned by KLM which catered for the audio visual production of Lenga to the tune of Sh269,755.
In exchange KLM would use the musical works for its marketing undertaking.
On November 7, 2019 Ms Asige says she was invited to a meeting by Bien that was also attended by the label’s manager Natasha Qubu and Mr Omambia.
“The meeting was to break the news to me that they had sat down and decided to dismiss me. It was confusing because they cited many things for my dismissal which were contradicting. Bien cited that I was the weakest of the acts in terms of performing, recording, basically in all aspects of an artiste. But at the same time he said I was amazing at songwriting," Ms Asige told the court.
"I was also told by Moriasi Omambia that the reason they were dismissing me is because they are broke and they can’t afford having as many artistes as they started with in the beginning of the year. They also said they didn’t believe I am ready and many other reasons that were cited. It wasn’t clear. There wasn’t one pinpoint, it seemed to be whatever was thrown on the wall, whatever would stick,” she said.
Having been disengaged from the label, Ms Asige claims Sol Generation still repeatedly contacted her to appear on music videos top the sound recording of Ukiwa Mbali and Rhumba Japani she had recorded prior to being dismissed.
She refused to participate without compensation.
The Senator says the label would go on to film the video song to Ukiwa Mbali, including in it unauthorised usage of her image and likeness, and released it without her consent.
In response, Sol Generation says the label owns full master rights to Ukiwa Mbali and releasing the track was within its rights.
The senator would later send a demand letter to Sol Generation which began a lengthy process of negotiation of split sheets which she claims the label tried to manipulate to its favor.
“Rights were conflated in the split sheets that were presented. For instance, in the case of Extravaganza, the split sheet stated that apart from giving me five percent for my performing rights and five percent for my songwriting, Sol Generation would retain 20 per cent as a producer and another 20 per cent as an arranger.
"They did not wish to amend the split sheets and I was told to take or leave it. I remember a communication saying that even Burna Boy agrees to these kinds of split sheets so who am I to question. I still do not have any split sheets as pertaining to my rights to these songs since 2019,” says Ms Asige.
The label denies these claims stating by virtue of investing and funding the musical works production, it owns the master rights.
It further states that split sheets agreement are negotiated and determined according to contributions made on the musical works.
Further, the senator claims the label generated revenue from a synchronisation deal for the song ‘Extravaganza’ which appeared on various advertisements and Netflix film ‘Country Queen’ but is yet to receive a single shilling to date.
In defence, the label say they have not collected any royalties owned to the Senator as she ought to pursue her own royalties through an independent publisher.
The Senator now wants Sauti Sol, Sol Generation and KLM compelled to disclose full royalties and revenues from Lenga, Mbali, Exravaganza, Intro and Favorite Song’ from 2019 to date.
She also wants the KLM agreement disclosed and awarded general and exemplary damages by the court.
tmatiko@ke.nationmediacom
