The Sunday News
Bhekumuzi Ncube, Sunday Life Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Broadcasting Company’s Star Maker television show is set to become the most watched and viewed show since the production of the first and second episodes of season 2 last Thursday on Zimbabwe television at 1830 hrs.
The first season of Star Maker mainly focused on Harare local artistes, now Season 2 focuses on Bulawayo artistes.
Star Maker seeks to expose the people behind the success of musicians which includes the likes of producers, costume designers, music writers and managers.
The show also promotes local artistes as well as discovering new talents nationally.
The head of Production and Television Services of ZBC Tendai Madondo said the show was a good platform to promote Zimbabwean artistes and to give these artistes a chance to share their experience in the music industry.
“Star Maker was designed primarily to benefit growing and already established local artistes so they can share their experience in the music industry as well as advertising their products,” said Madondo.
Madondo said the show covers all music genres that are found in Zimbabwe and there will be no genre that will be viewed as backward especially traditional genres which have largely been ignored by Zimbabwean youths.
“Firstly, the show wants to promote local content and the show will make sure that traditional and modern day artistes get the chance to communicate with the public on their experience as artistes,” she said.
Madondo added that Star Maker increased local languages which have a low coverage on national televisions.
“Zimbabwe has 16 official languages and mostly English has always been the dominant language but this show seeks to revive all native languages through artistes across the whole of Zimbabwe who will be using their mother languages or any language they prefer during the production of an episode.
The Star Maker host Mzoe7 Gagagugu said after the airing of the first episode, his social media followers when crazy arguing that finally ZBC has created a platform which benefit local artistes and the public since the show allow the host and the artistes to share ideas using their indigenous languages.
“I was speechless because of the responses I got from people across Zimbabwe saying the show was local oriented in the sense that the show allows artistes to communicate using the language they prefer which is always their first languages,” he said.
The traditional imbube and dance ensemble, Nobuntu, who were the guests for the second episode said they were humbled to be recognised by ZBC and hoped to see the show expand nationally.
“We would like to thank ZBC for creating a platform designed to create a relationship between artistes and fans, and also for recognising traditional Imbube music which many youths ignore these days,” they said.
Star Maker is set to go around the country to discover new talents and also create a bond between local Zimbabwean artistes and the public.
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