Four years is a long time to be away, but Saturday 25 January came up fast for music lovers who had waited for the return of the Zimbabwe Music Awards.
Newlands was the venue and the expectation was high and so was the appetite for a good time.
Here are the Five things that we learned.
1. We still struggle to sing our own National Anthem.
Treasonous! That’s how I can describe the way Fusion 5 bastardized the National Anthem. You see, the national anthem is our national prayer, it is a solemn patriotic song, it is an expression of national identity.
It represents the tradition, history, and beliefs of a nation and its people. Now for someone to mumble through the lyrics of such an important song is utter disrespect. Disrespect both to the language and to the Nation.
2. There are corporates who still believe in Showbiz
Now for a cement company to be a headline sponsor of a music show was a stamp of confidence on the organisers’ part. This shows that someone and something is right up there with the new organisers led by CEO Reason Sibanda.
Kudos to PPC for believing in music. We don’t know how much you poured in, but we had an event and it went almost well.
3. We still use the sunset and shadows of trees to determine time
I saw some organisers wearing nice watches but those were just to decorate their wrists. Because if the watches did work, how is it that an event can start 2 hours late? Do you know what can happen in 2hrs?
That’s a whole soccer match including half time break. We really felt patronised by ZIMA considering that nobody cared to explain the cause of the delay or apologise for it.
4. The Awards have lost credibility
On the same day as the ZIMAs, Jah Prayzah had an appreciation concert in Budirio where he was thanking his real paymasters – the fans – for raising him and supporting his music. So were some of the nominees whose absence goes to show the level of disdain and mistrust towards the Awards.
Who can blame them when you have adjudicators making the whole country believe that Takura did more for Hip Hop than Ti Gonzi.
Who can blame them for snubbing a ceremony that saw it fit to award Ishan the Best Male gong. Who would bother to attend the next edition when history will record that Gemma was 2019 Best Female artist. That was scandalous!
5. NAMA and Star FM in serious danger.
Almost the same constituency will be expected to attend the NAMAs and Star FM Awards in just a month’s time. The precedence that ZIMA has set will have a direct consequence on how Awards are to be viewed in this country and the same snub may befall the two aforementioned.
NAMA and Star FM organisers now need to do some serious PR work to make sure theirs won’t become a sham.
Check out the complete Winners’ List Here
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