Zima aftermath: Adjudicators unmasked

Arts Correspondent
The recently held Zimbabwe Music Awards left a lot of artists and fans with mixed feelings, especially about the nominees and the final winners with many asking who the judges were. Zima organisers have revealed the names of the adjudicators. They included Tendayi Shoko, a lecturer at the Midlands State University who is also the former chairperson of the Faculty of Music and Musicology at the university and Tarisai Chipere popularly known by her multitude of fans as “Tiriri”, a veteran producer and presenter on Radio Zimbabwe.

Bothwell Nyamondera, a former engineer, producer and studio manager of Grammar records who recently assumed the position of engineer/producer with Diamond Studios was also one of the judges.

Peter Mabhena, head of the Music Department at the United College of Education in Bulawayo and Matheus Bangure, the founding trustee of Music Crossroads Zimbabwe, a Kora Music representative for Zimbabwe and a Director at African Music Network Records were also on the panel.

Trevor Hall, popularly known among his legion of fans as “Ras Jabu”, a veteran reggae musician of Jamaican decent and Given Ngwenya, a label head at Universal Music Africa who is also an adjudicator of the South African Music awards were on the list.

In an interview with The Herald Entertainment, ZIMA Marketing and PR executive Farai Chapoterera said the diversity of this panel was meant to ensure that music was not just judged based on its popularity but also on the quality of productions.

“We wanted to have one panel member who had no ties to local musicians or who knew who was popular or not. The purpose of this judge was to listen to the music purely from a production aspect and judge the sound as they had. Mr Ngwenya also gave valuable input at the end that could be used to help local artists to progress towards the international market,” she said.

She said with the names of the judges having been revealed, they are hoping that focus will shift from speculation on the results and how they came about, to creating competitive productions for Zima 2015.

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