admin
Bongani Ndlovu Entertainment Correspondent
THE National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) yesterday launched the National Art Merit Awards (Nama) People’s Choice Award that will see Zimbabweans vote for their favourite artistes from different genres. Last year superstar Oliver Mtukudzi, won the award and again this year people have to vote for their favourite artiste through Short Message Service (SMS) platform.
Voters will choose their favourite artistes from nine categories, music, literary arts, dance, visual arts, film and television, theatre and spoken word.
The SMS platform is open to all cellular networks and people vote by simply typing nama then hash tug (#) and the name of the artiste and send to short code 39436.
In a statement, NACZ spokesperson Cathrine Mthombeni said the SMS platform started on Saturday and will end on February 15.
“The artiste with the most votes will be honoured on February 15, 2014 at the 13th Nama edition to be held in the City of Kings at Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel,” Mthombeni said.
She said the People’s Choice Award was a special award given to an artiste or arts organisation selected by the public.
This year the highest number of entries came from music, which recorded 256 while the least came from the Spoken Word category which had 18.
The Visual Arts category had 137, Film and Television 84, Theatre 56, Dance 48, Literary 34 entries and 31 entries in the Media category.
In total, the 13th Nama edition recorded 664 submissions, compared to last year’s 514 entries.
The Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Andrew Langa, will be the guest of honour at this year’s award ceremony.
Selected local artistes will perform at the glamorous awards as per norm and the event will also be beamed live on national television, ZBCtv.
The 13th edition Nama look at all works created, published, exhibited, performed or recorded between December 1, 2012 and November 30, 2013.
Online Reporter