Who needs a NAMA plaster?

LET’S talk the National Merit Awards (NAMA) hosted by the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe on Valentine’s Day Eve 2008. No love lost after we go over this piece though; the event was well organized but Sungura music, the hot pot, hangs in there like a dark cloud.

Sulumani, “Mwana Wedangwe” Chimbetu has an outstanding album (out of sight for the tireless young man) and falls short of at least one outstanding song?  How can Alick Macheso be outstanding musician / group (no doubt!) for 2007 without an outstanding album contributing to that total act? Then Tongai Moyo’s Wakanaka is outstanding song (well done Dhewa!) in a year and on an album, Naye, which is relatively less popular, well it’s possible but by what measure?

You may have realized I am tempted to tow the line by the brother Mathias Bangure, the Music Crossroads national director as quoted in one weekly gossip magazine, “Seriously when someone is voted outstanding musician…automatically it means that he (or she!)  will be armed with an outstanding album with outstanding songs…(?) May be the brother is looking at it erroneously especially where he uses the word automatically? The recently held American Grammy Awards seem to follow his logic as far as the pop star Amy Winehouse’s album Back to Black is concerned. I am in no way ‘agitating’ for an American model but convincing logic.

Indeed as the gossip paper rightly points out (and as elicited from insiders in the National Arts Council, if we are to believe that), sentiments are flowing there seems to be a yearning by the Council to cool down some rivalry on the Sungura scene. I have talked to several people who seem to share the same idea. That view if correct, NAMA is not the best apparatus for mending bridges. Who needs a NAMA plaster, after all, each is worth their merit?

If the cloud above NAMA has to clear without discharge the question of measure (criteria) needs critical mind’s eye. NAMA don’t have to spew at us the major criterion is the SMS (povo) vote because that same constituency voted Alick Macheso’s Madhuwe best video (song?) of the year on ZBH TV awards on day 1, 2008. That same constituency probably contributed significantly to making Roki’s Chidzoka best song and best video at the Zimbabwe Music Awards (ZIMA), a month earlier. That same constituency must surely have a split personality? Follow the crocodile?