adminAuxilia Katongomara Entertainment Reporter
FANS have taken to the social media to campaign and garner votes for their favourite artistes for this year’s People’s Choice Award in the National Arts Merit Awards (Nama).The organisers of Nama, the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe last week called on fans to use the short message service (sms) platform to vote for their favourite artistes.
Now the fans have set up pages, urging others to vote for their favourite arts personality. There are four days to go before the awards.
The People’s Choice Award is open to all Zimbabweans to vote for their favourite artiste from different genres.
They should be from music, dance, theatre, literary and visual art. The names of a number of legends from various genres, both late and surviving have cropped up.
Music legend Lovemore Majaivana is among those that are being touted for the award. A Facebook page titled Vote Lovemore Majaivana for Nama People’s Choice Award has already been set up and had 177 likes by end of day yesterday.
The self-exiled musician based in the United States of America after quitting music is among the artistes who have not been honoured for his contribution to music.
The Isono Sami hitmaker was honoured with a Life Time Achievement Award at Mporiro Arts Festival in Canterbury, United Kingdom in 2012.
However, there are several campaigns on Facebook showing a variety of tastes and likes. Some of the popular artistes being thrown around are the late Safirio Madzikatire, Leornard Dembo, United States-based Thomas Mapfumo and the late mbira songstress, Chiwoniso Maraire.
Voting began on February 1 and closes on the night of the awards on Saturday. Fans can vote for their favourite artiste via sms using the shortcode 39436 which is open to all Zimbabwean cellular networks and artistes with the highest number of votes will be honoured at the awards.
Last year, superstar Oliver Mtukudzi won the award.
Online Reporter