The Zimbabwe Music Awards remains the only platform that honours music from almost all of its genres.

It was refreshing to see the Awards coming back in 2014 after a long hiatus, obviously owing to chronic financial challenges that the county has been facing.

A vision of one passionate man, its chairman Mr Joseph Nyadzayo, the  awards are back to honour the men and women who sometimes toil in this thankless job but don’t tire in giving us a song to entertain us, console, celebrate and sometimes cry with.

Here are the 5 things that we learned

ZIMA is the only premier awards show in the country

Forget all these other mushrooming Awards ceremonies, ZIMA still is the real deal in terms of entertainment value.

NAMA only comes a ‘distant’ second.

We also should note that the emergence of these other awards shows was necessitated by ZIMA’s absence but still couldn’t attract the same attention as does ZIMA.

Even with all the negativity and shaming it receives; we still look forward to it, dress for it and want it.

However, whoever was responsible for the red carpet bungling should receive a sharp rebuke and possibly a final warning. That kind of disrespect for our celebrities is colonial and unacceptable.

We need new Mcs/Hosts

Candice and Tich Mataz were a perfect disaster to be polite. The cohesion wasn’t there.

Tich is now too old for this and has lost his golden touch.

And Candice was angry the whole night; if you are a host of a show then you need to learn to tolerate dissenting voices that come via Twitter.

People shouldn’t be forced to agree with what you believe in.

Let’s try giving our hosts a written and rehearsed script or better still let’s have a comedian host ZIMA8.

Alick Macheso needs to release an album today

I think we are now tired of the lack of competition against Jah Prayzah and Sulu Chimbetu in their respective genres.

With Tuku not being nominated and Peter Moyo failing to reproduce his father’s magic, sungura is now dead.

This means that Macheso now has to stand up and provide real competition.

Dear Baba Sharo, please release Tsoka Dzerwendo as soon as you read this.

Reverend Chivaviro should be feeling robbed

This has to be the biggest controversy of the night as Ebenezer lost to a song which was released outside of the ZIMA cut off dates.

During a press conference at the Rainbow Towers, an official from ZIMA, Farai Chapoterera had to give an unsatisfactory explanation of why Disappear and Vanondibatirana were included in the Song Of the Year Category.

She said: “We knew that the public was not going to understand it if Disappear was not included in the category since it was a big song released year end, so we had to include it..”

In the same press conference she also confirmed that their cut-off date for consideration is August previous year to August current year.

So clearly Disappear was included only to appease the public.

As a principle, we think this is unacceptable for an organisation to flout its own regulations for mass sympathy.

Artists and the consumers of music need to trust the system. We hope this gets fixed next time.

Sponsors are beginning to believe in music as an industry

We saw some significant sponsors this time around, a commercial bank, mobile phone manufacturer, courier service, Africa’s biggest Satellite TV provider and a Mobile Telecoms network.

Although we are not privy to the amount of money these cooperates poured in, the good sign is that we can have something to build on from.

And the huge announcement by the lady from the Mobile telecoms company that they are pledging their support to music and not just awards is a welcome gesture.

The only time we see sponsors making such commitments is at HIFA, for which we can’t really ascertain for sure if their financial support benefits local musicians.

It was encouraging to also see that most celebrities were dressed by local retailers and designers; I also heard that that one local ladies’ wear shop is already recording high influx of potential customers just by dressing a few popular faces.

ALSO READ: We will not be entering any Awards – Rev Chivaviro