Zimdancehall Awards set for March

Seven new categories have been added to the second edition of the Zimdancehall Awards set to take place at the Harare Exhibition Park on March 6.

The new categories are the Best Zim dancehall Youngster, Best Conscious Song, Best Conscious Riddim, Best Collaboration Riddim, Zimdancehall Ambassador, Best Zimdancehall Artiste in Diaspora and the Best Dressed Artiste.

Organisers of the fledgling awards have also removed several categories which include the Best Producer, Best Artiste from Outside Harare and the Best Reggae Artiste.

The addition and subtraction process has reduced the list for this year’s Zim Dancehall Awards to 18, down from the 28 that were on offer at the inaugural gongs held at the Zimbabwe College of Music on March 16 last year.

Phinias Mushayi, the spokesperson for the official Zimdancehall Awards, told a media briefing at the Harare Gardens yesterday that the list of nominees would be released three weeks before the awards night.

“It is too early to release the nominations now. Expect the nominations for all the 18 categories three weeks before the awards ceremony,” said Mushayi who was flanked by prominent dancehall promoter Hilary Mutake and the patron of the Zimdancehall Awards, television personality Oscar Pambuka.

At the end of December last year, Mushayi had to quickly move in to disown a list of nominations purportedly from his organisation that were being circulated on the Internet.

According to the bogus Zimdancehall nomination list which caused a stir on social media, Seh Calaz and Soul Jah Love had eight nominations while Winky D was on seven. Rising star Tocky Vibes was on six nominations.

Mushayi told the Daily News that the bogus list had been created in a bid to influence the nominations for the official Zimdancehall Awards.

“I suspect that those nominations circulating on social media have been generated by mischievous people with the sole purpose of marketing their favourite musicians. I think their intention is to influence our own nomination process but unfortunately they won’t succeed,” said Mushayi then.

Winky D was the toast of last year’s edition of the awards after picking up four gongs. The Ninja President, whose real name is Wallace Chirumiko won awards in the Best Social Message, Best Live Performer, Best Video and Choreography, Best Artiste 2013 (male) categories while Shinsoman walked away with the Song of the Year Award for Mawayawaya. Daily News