The Sunday News
Kudzai Mpangi, Sunday Life Reporter
THIRTY top musicians from across Africa recently combined to record a mouthwatering hit single titled Africa Rise and Shine which seeks to create awareness for hidden talent on the continent.
The artistes combined to persuade African parents to allow children who have the talent and passion for arts to take it up as a profession.
United Kingdom-based Zim Talent Show founder, Julius Muzuva is responsible for bringing together the 30 artistes.
The song is part of a project which is also titled Africa Rise and Shine which serves as a reminder to African communities that have often frowned upon children venturing into the arts sector to allow potential young stars to take arts as a profession.
“Africa Rise and Shine is the first initiative of an annual production service under the banner of ZimTalent. AfroTalents also helped in the initiative.
Our goal is to create a platform whereby artistes from different cultures, religions and musical disciplines come together to create a strategic
collaboration which will result in a new direction in the composition and exchange of African talent and culture across the globe,” Muzuva said.
“The project aims to encourage the next generation of youth to embrace their talents, perfect them and rise above the negative criticism and social boundaries.
“It also aims to prove to their families and the rest of the world that Africa has talent beyond measure,” he said.
When asked how he managed to bring together 30 artistes from across Africa for the project, Muzuva said it was through the help of Zim Talent Artist Booking Directory.
“We managed to pull out all those artistes through our Zim Talent Booking Directory which connected us with all the featured artistes on the single.
The hard part was selling the idea to all the artistes on the original short list but we have a seasoned professional team which managed to convince the artistes and their representatives to be part of such an influential project,” he said.
“There is no better way to make your message reach your intended demographic than tasking the people your target demographic view as their role models and influential figures with ambassador role to raise awareness and gear confidence for the sleeping warriors to rise up and let their talents be discovered,” Muzuva said.
Some of the artistes who featured in the hit include Stunner, Trevor Dongo, Andy Muridzo, Nox, Sanii Makhalima, Gladys Ndebele and King Shaddy from Zimbabwe. They linked up with Betty Rainha (Mozambique), Kendriq Killer, Rhona Salame, Wyz256, Temperature Hyve (all Uganda) alongside contemporaries from Zambia and Ghana.
Muzuva said he was surprised by the positive reactions the project has received since it took off across Africa.
“The response of the project has been overwhelming. We premièred the record on the ZimboLive TV, National FM, and ZiFM and since then all Zimbabwean radio stations and Ugandan radio stations have the project on rotation,” he said.
“Even artistes, who previously had declined the opportunity of being part of the project, are already calling us to short list their participation in the next project. We would want to give thanks to the project producers Mount Zion studious, Zimbabwe under license and commission from Zim Talent which is part of AfroTalents,” he said.
Mazuva said many projects are yet to unfold this year as it was very important for parents to know the importance of arts across Africa. @kayskudzai
