The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
THE National Arts Merit Awards (Namas) last week got the ball rolling for the country’s awards season with the announcement of nominees for the 21st edition of the ceremony and has become the norm, the release of names of those nominated stoked controversies as some fans felt as if the omission of some big names had taken the gloss away from the country’s prime arts awards ceremony.
Those in contention were nominated for their creative works produced in the period from 1 December 2021 to 30 November 2022. The event will be held at the Harare International Conference Centre, Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare on 25 February 2023.
The highest number of entries was recorded in the Literary category which had 277 entries, followed by Film and Television category with 267 submissions, Visual Art category (252), Music category (232), Theatre/Drama category (76), Dance category (66), Spoken Word category (45), Media category (26) and Diaspora category (25). These entries came from all 10 provinces of Zimbabwe with the highest number coming from Harare Province.
Conspicuous by his absence from the list of those nominated was Jah Prayzah, arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular artiste. After the release of the list of nominees, online chatter seemed to suggest that the contemporary musician had deliberately snubbed the country’s premier awards ceremony.
Jah Prayzah
In an interview on Zimbabwe Television Network (ZTN) Nama executive director Napoleon Nyanhi however, dispelled such rumours, saying that Jah had refused the honour of being nominated again as he felt that he needed to give other artistes a chance to shine. Nyanhi also rubbished rumours that Jah had deliberately snubbed the ceremony by not submitting any entries.
“You have got an artiste like Jah Prayzah who in the past has come out and said, ‘I feel like I have been winning too much. I have been dominating too much and I need to give an opportunity to others.’ He has come out and said that. I don’t think that’s snubbing because in terms of the actual event they would be in support, in terms of attending the event or performing at the event. It is not a snub,” he said.
Nyanhi however, acknowledged that some of the country’s major artistes had indeed snubbed the Namas.
“There are artistes that do snub, and this happens the world over. Eminem says the Grammies are the worst thing in the world and then you have the community of colour who feel that the Oscars are racist. It will happen because like I said, art is an emotive thing,” he said.
Nyanhi also said that the Namas were getting accusation of bias or corruption from fans of urban music, who did not necessarily understand the pull of artistes that were not popular on social media.
“To kick off that conversation, I think we need to acknowledge that award shows, world-over, always cause controversy and division of opinion because art in itself is an emotive issue. Everyone is emotional about it, from the artistes themselves to the fans, so when you come to the nominee’s announcement, you just have to know that there will be issues.
“There are two things involved. Number one, there is the lack of submission that plagues us every year because there is usually someone that people really feel, and when I say people I mean twitter warriors, deserves to be there. I say twitter warriors because you have someone like Mike Ngwazi but is not a twimbo (Zimbabwean twitter user) favourite because he is singing sungura, so his market is not necessarily people that are online,” he said.
The absence of some names from the final list, Nyanhi said, did not mean that they had not been considered.
“You get people that get huge followings and credit from the adjudicators but the social media people don’t really know about. So, you get questions like ‘Who’s this guy?’ ‘Why don’t I even know him? which means these things are corrupt’. Then you get genres like hip-hop, zim dancehall, afro beat and all of that, which do trend online. Those are the ones getting people asking why their person isn’t there. Please note, when we say these are the three nominees, what it means is that these are the three people that the adjudicators felt were most outstanding. It doesn’t mean that the others were not there. They could have been number four or five.
“There is also the issue of what they are adjudicating, meaning what are they looking at. Popularity is not part of it. We have an award for popularity, which is the People’s Choice Award. That People’s Choice Award is voted for by the people. We have different award shows in any country and in Zimbabwe, we have the Star FM awards, which are voted for. Those are the People’s Choice Awards through and through, which is good. But you can’t have all the award shows in the country in that way,” he said.
With the death of such celebrated artistes as Cont Mhlanga and Clive Chigubu among many others, Nyanhi said they would be a tribute at the ceremony to celebrate their life and work.
The late Cont Mhlanga
“We always do that in terms of a tribute. Sometimes it’s a moment of silence, sometimes it’s a whole performance that is a tribute to them. I remember last Nama we have a big tribute to Souljah Luv, which was the performance of a medley of his songs by a number of Zim dancehall artistes . . . it was one of the biggest performances ever at Nama,” he said.
