Awards winning South Sudanese Singer based in Toronto, Canada, K-Denk this week openly questioned why Tusker Project Fame, an East African reality-singing competition show sponsored by Tusker Lager, never compensated contestants.
The show is similar to American Idol and Project Fame South Africa, musicians compete to win cash and a one-year record deal with Universal Music Group South Africa.
What triggered K-Denk to raise such concerns was not immediately understood. An attempt by Ramciel to reach out to the singer’s publicity team to clarify his opinion was not possible. His team cited the musician is on a tied schedule.
Deng was the first South Sudanese who took part in Tusker Project Fame in 2010 representing the country. His appearance attracts wide attention and has been ever since regarded as a “breakout moment” for his career.
On Saturday, Deng went on social media and openly questioned where the millions of monies collected to sponsor the show were allocated and they never reach the contestants.
The singer said he is financially well off right now and felt like the winner of the show he gave his best 11 years ago.
“Did you know that during Tusker Project Fame, the audience was paying for entrance to the reality show at a rate of which was considered high? And people were being charged through SMS to vote for their favorite contestants?” he asked.
“I am very much comfortable right now financially and somehow felt like the real winner of ”
According to our sources familiar with the singer’s thinking, K-Denk felt participants were mistreated during his stays in the program and later pushed out without being taking care of. Most of them after the program were signed to studios that never make any real differences and never help them realized their potential.
Even after exposing them to world, still the contestants came out of the program with nothing to change their life.
“But being exposed to the entire world, then evicted and mess, left with nothing has destroyed me personally if not all of us for years, I have to reveal it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one but the idea of using young talented people to steal money from the honest fans and real caring hearted people out there and only to share the 1% to a single one of the contestants is a pain in the ass to the rest of the participants. I feel like that program failed due to thefts in the organizers if not founders!”
“And not only did it stop there? There were huge chunks of companies sponsoring the shows and would inject more funding into this program” he added.
Deng wondered why millions of shillings were collected to sponsor the show but never makes helps the contestants. The controversial artist said the organizers were unkind to them.
“Why this money wasn’t extended to contestants? The amount becomes more if you calculate all the millions of people voting and I was told people were charged not less than 20 Kenyan Shillings, but there were millions and millions of people voting from South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.”
“I am not tempted to think but I know the people running this particular program were unkind to us.”
Deng added that he will go live soon to address or to talk about this issues not to criticize but to celebrate how far God has brought them with his friend Juveh with the talent installed in them.
Deng began his musical career early in 2004 as a choir member singing for the Kakuma Presbyterian Church.
He was also the first South Sudanese to tour refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda as part of an “outreach program” designed to encourage people affected by the South Sudan civil war.
Denk’s song Brighter Day was played over the radio to celebrate the 2018 ceasefire that brought an end to the civil war.