KORA Awards are here with a million dollars cash prize

Just when you thought that the recently launched AFRIMA awards had successfully replaced, the KORA Awards, as the most sought after all African award music show, the later have jumped up to stir things up to an email interesting angle.
KORA Awards are back and this time, they promise to be bigger.
Remember these awards have in the past been won by P-Square, Angelique Kidjo, Koffi Olomide and our own Pastor George Okudi and Juliana Kanyomozi among others. The awards have also attracted star power like Michael Jackson, Missy Eliot, Shaggy and the likes of Nelson Mandela.
The awards that launched their 2015  chapter last week will be held in December in Namibia.
Unlike the different award show in Africa where an award is simply an honor, the organizers are giving up to  one million dollar cash prizes to winners.
The recently announced categories and prizes for the upcoming KORA All-Africa Music Awards are as follows:
· Best Male Artist - West Africa: US$50 000
· Best Female Artist - West Africa: $50 000
· Best Male Artist - East Africa: $50 000
· Best Female Artist - East Africa: $50 000
· Best Male Artist - Central Africa: $50 000
· Best Female Artist - Central Africa: $50 000
· Best Male Artist of Southern Africa: $50 000
· Best Female Artist - Southern Africa: $50 000
· Best Male Artist - North Africa: $50 000
· Best African Group: $20 000
· Best Male Artist - Spiritual Music: $20 000
· Best Female Artist - Spiritual Music: $20 000
· Best Group - Spiritual Music: $20 000
· Best Traditional Music Artist - Male $20 000
· Best Traditional Music Artist - Female: $20 000
· Best Traditional Music Group of Africa: $20 000
· Most Promising Artist - Male: $20 000
· Most Promising Artist - Female: $20 000
· Best Artist of the African Diaspora: $20 000
· Best Video of the year: $20 000
· Best Collaboration of the year: $20 000
· Best Album of the year: $20 000
· Legend Award: $50 000
· Best Hip Hop Artist: $20 000
· Best Urban Music Artist: $20 000
· Most Downloaded Song of the year: $20 000
· Best Artist of the Continent: $1 000 000

2015 MTV MAMA is happening in Durban on July 18

The MTV Africa Music Awards are back this July.
The definitive musical celebration of African talent takes pride in recognizing and rewarding artistes.
Last year saw local artistes up their game to favourably compete with the likes of Nigerian and South African acts. And it's not that bad to dream especially of the tweet by MTV Base is any thing to go by: Join D'Banj Bebe Cool and others at this year's Mama's 

The July 18 event will be the second time the show will be held in Durban after a succesful one last year. The MAMA is a world class staging of dazzling performances from the African continent as well as prominent international artists.

First staged in 2008, the MTV Africa Music Awards has recognised the talent of musicians, achievers and personalities from across Africa, rewarding iconic artists and game changers such as 2Face Idibia, Big Nuz, Davido, D’Banj, Flavour, Gangs of Ballet, HHP, Fally Ipupa, Liquideep, Mafikizolo, Lira, Nameless, Lupita Nyong’o, Clarence Peters, Diamond Platnumz, Anselmo Ralph, Sarkodie, P-Square, Tiwa Savage, Cabo Snoop, Toofan, Zebra & Giraffe, Uhuru, Wahu, and many more.

The awards will broadcast live on MTV Base (DStv Channel 322) and MTV (DStv Channel 130) on Saturday 18 July.

First art and Colour exhibition ends

A photo exhibition celebrating Uganda's culture and nature debuted at Acacia mall last Friday.
Supported by the premise, the exhibition is their way to promote art and photography.
The show that had exhibitors, Mathias Mugisha, a veteran photojournalist, international photographer Thomas White, New York  based Joel Isababi  Nsadha, Ophelia Nabeta of Ophelia photography and David Kibuka of Zimbe Collection, has been running for a week.

Orquesta Chungu to perform in Uganda

Orquésta Chungu will be touring Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia from the 10th of May to the 15th of June. The group is named after the Chungu, the traditional East African clay cooking pot which is popular because it retains its heat.

Orquésta Chungu has cooked up a menu spiced with tasty grooves from Mozambique to Ethiopia featuring music by some of the great composers in East Africa. With an international line-up consisting of Will Ramsay on saxophone from South Africa, Girum Mezmur and Abiy Woldemariam on guitar and keyboards from Ethiopia and Martin Lillich and Dietrich Woehrlin from Germany on bass and drums, the group will add a unique flavor by inviting local musicians to join them for some sizzling performances. 

Additional the band will host a 5 day workshop in each country with a selection of musicians and music teachers who will be trained to read, write and analyze their own music using an innovative core curriculum which they can then use in their own teaching programs to document, preserve, promote and teach their own music.

These workshops will be crowned with a concert to showcase the work that has come out of the workshops. The performance in Kampala will be joined by the two musicians Sammy Kasule and Frank Mpalire.

DOADOA redifines live performing

Dubbed Doadoa, the East African artiste marketplace took place in Jinja last week. It is designed as a one-week event that provides a platform for professional networking, joint learning, bringing together various stakeholders and linking people, organisations, businesses, knowledge and technology.

It is done with a view to create demand and develop a market for the performing arts and unlock the potential of the East African creative industry. The openning night was held at the National Theater where Annet Nandujja and the planets were the main showcase.

Annet Nandujja during one of the acts

Beatles celebrated with a dance off

Norwegian College of Dance (NCD) and the Makerere University Department of Performing Arts and Film (PAF) collaborated on a project aimed at interesting Ugandans in dance as an art.
The show aptly titled Come Together, was themed around 20 Beatle songs like Tommorroe Never know, Love Me Do and Can’t buy me love among others.
Much as it was collaboration, some songs were basically done by a specific entity – the Norwegian students did much of the classical side of things and the Makerere students had the Ugandan or generally African touch.
You should have seen the opening that had them dancing to Beatles and Micheal Jackson’s Rock ‘n’ roll heavy Come Together.
Well it’s not the best song one can choose to start off a show with many students especially with its illicit lyricism.

The Nowegian dancers, who according to choreographer David Byer are first year students, dominated much of the performance.
Their dances had a mixture of classical, jazz and bits of punk stuff, their moves were swift and most of the time flawless – sometimes the dancers may have looked a bit tired but tyhey were amazing anyway.
The Ugandan contingent was superb though didn’t get enough time to shine, they preyed a lot on foreign contemporary dances yet you felt like they would have used our traditional ones – not that they didn’t try, the Kinyarwanda marriage with ballet was immaculate and all those runyege corruptions on rock songs were spot on but we needed more.
According to Byer, many of the dancdes especially the ones with the Nowegian students were created over a month back though the others that included Ugandans were all developed in two weeks; some of these were acoustics to songs like the magnificent Hey Jude, I want to hold your hand and let it be.
The NCD and PAF collaborations are annual and the past  engagements have seen different Ugandan dance students get scholarships.

Uganda celebrates mediocrity at Chameleone’s Wale Wale do

Ugandans cherish mediocrity; you don’t have to perfect things for them to call you superb, legendary or the best to ever do a thing.
Take a look at the arts industry with a bias towards Film, Music and Theater, we have interesting Ugandans that push the envelope way deeper and others that just do things to finish, make a quick buck.
There’s little professionalism in all those fields and those who try to be professional are ridiculed, like whatever they are trying to do is completely non Ugandan.
In all these industries, the media uses one statement while passing a critique on Ugandan productions; ‘Judging by Ugandan standards’, in there they get to praise poorly done films, poorly mastered audios and poorly produced concerts because they are Ugandan and we can’t compare them to what we see on TV.
At the Wale Wale concert held on Friday at Kyadondo Rugby grounds, the mediocre mentality came out to play – and it showed up in unplanned measures.
From the onset, show production, media and time management, backstage policy, show scheduling – the scanty behavior of being poor at doing things and thus anything goes, reigned supreme.
And to many of these, the answer was one; “this is how things are done in Uganda.”

The ridiculous upcoming artistes
It was a personal show where we were we were going to celebrate the man and his music, at least that’s what we thought, only to get hijacked by a number of upcoming dreadlocked people whose music all sounded alike.
Seriously in an age of social media, you wonder why these so called upcoming acts are still looking at concerts as the only way to get their music heard.
Now the most annoying thing about upcoming artistes is a fact that they all look up to Chameleone, Bebe Cool and Bobi Wine for inspiration, in this way, they’ve created a small corridor that can’t accommodate all of them. They think they have a winning formula – release cheaply produced music, pretend to sing and never care about the lyrics – this is more of a suicide note.
During the show on Friday it was hard even celebrating any of the 20 plus upcoming artistes as talented – their music was stale and stereotypical – if it wasn’t about a woman singing about keeping a man, it was about a ragamuffin singing about penetrating a female, and this went on for four hours.
The MCs – for some reasons Ugandans believe an MC must throw all the ethics and become vulgar in the name of being funny, silly tired jokes of how rich people’s kids, dogs or maids cry and moan are not funny, they suck.
Chameleone featuring the flag bearer
Then Chameleon’s performance, - for some reason since I first attended a Chameleone concert in 2006, he been bringing useless flag bearers with him on stage and this show was no different.
Seriously if this antic is happening at a gig outside Uganda, we can understand but flag bearers of Ugandan flags at a Kampala concert, is this a revolution concert or?
And the vocally lame backup, a forced and terribly sick collaboration with Irene Ntale and Leilah Kayondo, who I actually think is better off as background vocalist than a standalone artiste.
This show creatively and musically had only two highlights, The Wale Wale performance – this was clearly the only rehearsed and choreographed parts of the show and a really toned down tribute to his fallen young brother.
Besides that, the rest was music played from the same template, it was hard knowing that they are now playing Badilisha or Fugga bbi, they all sounded alike, yet at the end of it all, someone claimed this was the best live concert they’ve ever seen and the media was taking an whole different angle – the turn up.

Like seriously! The turn up?
I hear Chameleone has always had the best concerts because many people turn up, way more than those that have been attracted by Sisqo, Konsens, Bebe Cool and Bobi Wine at the same venue..Eehhhh
But no one killed it like the presenter that decided to talk about the concert on radio; “By Ugandan stardards, this is the best concert I’ve attended,” such a mediocre way of looking at things.
Dude, when local artistes go out to perform and they are a mess, no one will say “in Uganda that would have been an awesome performance”…..The world judges on the same level and if our artists generally want to make it, they should stop planning and working by Ugandan standards.