Nama : A time to celebrate Elvas Mari
Elvas Mari

Elvas Mari

Godwin Muzari Showbiz Mirror
On Saturday night the arts industry celebrates outstanding artists at the National Arts Merit Awards in Bulawayo. For the past 12 years, Nama has honoured those that would have stood high above others in various genres.
It is a time to celebrate. Many awards versions have come and gone on the local scene due to lack of sponsorship but Nama has soldiered on in the face of many challenges.

The organisers have ensured they do their best to reward the best, although there will always be mixed feelings over nominations and eventual winners. It has been like that in many competitions that measure quality. The final judgement for the best quality sometimes ignites serious debates.

Nevertheless, winners will always celebrate and losers commonly have reservations about the final outcomes.

Everyone wants to be a winner but the nominees have to know that being nominated for an award is a great achievement considering the number of entries that are usually submitted at National Arts Council of Zimbabwe for selection ahead of the awards.

It is sad how some losing nominees end up creating grudges with organisers and winners. There have been so many cases of this nature at Nama but the most prominent of them was at the defunct Zimbabwe Music Awards some years ago.

That was the time when Alick Macheso and Tongai Moyo were sworn enemies. The two musicians hated each other to a level of avoiding each other. There were many theories to explain their rivalry.

So, when they were nominated in several same categories for Zima, people’s focus on the awards turned to these two musicians.

Somehow, an unprofessional adjudicator who was close to Moyo told him after the final selection that he had been beaten in all categories. Moyo could not swallow his pride and, despite travelling from Kwekwe to Harare for the awards, he spent the night holed up in his hotel room. Critics accused him of being a coward. The Macheso-Moyo case was unique and humiliation was eminent, but it all hinged on lack of professionalism.

A couple of years later, tables turned at a Nama ceremony when Moyo took many awards while Macheso spent the better part of the night yawning.

These contrasting situations should be lessons to Nama nominees. Receiving a nomination certificate is good enogh. Nominees that fail to attend a ceremony because they cannot shoulder a situation of attending a ceremony and going away empty-handed should revisit their strategies.

The excitement at awards ceremonies is in seeing the nominees walking in and later having losers admitting they have lost to a better candidate.

Art followers and critics are always there to give views on categories that show unfairness while judges will always have defence for their choices. Such is reality and these have been the common scenarios over the past 12 editions of Nama.

No need to chicken out. Celebrate your nomination and celebrate more when you win. It is all about celebration.

Nama organisers have been on the receiving end of criticism but over the past few years, they seem to have taken heed of constructive criticism.

The major step they took in correcting their wrongs was the decentralisation of the awards ceremony. For 11 years, the ceremony was held in Harare and critics felt art lovers in other cities also deserve to feel the ceremony.

Last year the ceremony was held in Bulawayo and this year it returns to the same city. It remains to be seen how the process will take shape over the next editions.

But the awards ceremony still has its shortcomings. The glitz and glamour that used to characterize the awards have subsided. I remember a Nama awards ceremony of 2003 at the Harare International Conference Centre that literally stole excitement from many entertainment joints in the capital. It was such a grand event and NACZ director Elvas Mari and his team should do their best to revive that excitement. They have reasons for making the ceremony a private function but they should find a way of bringing back the excitement to the ceremony.

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