Zima entries now open

Sophia Chese Arts Correspondet
Organisers of the Zimbabwe Music Awards have opened entries for this year’s edition of the awards ceremony. The entries opened on July 10 and will close on August 7.

ZIMA marketing and public relations executive Farai Chapoterera told this publication that artistes are being invited to submit their work released between the August 9 2014 and August 6 2015 for consideration for the coveted accolades.

“Last year, we witnessed an overwhelming response to our call for entries and we expect that this year will be no different. We have seen a number of artistes across genres releasing quality work and we are really quite excited about the depth that we will have for the 2015 edition,” she said.

Commenting on whether or not they expected artistes to have confidence in ZIMA this time around, Chapoterera said they had no doubt in their mind that ZIMA will be well received.

“Like any institution, we have faced challenges but we have never shied away from there, neither are we in the business of making excuses, our main goals are and always have been to assure our artistes, sponsors and all stakeholders that we maintain a clean and transparent selection and adjudication criteria, which really are the backbone of any awards system.”

She highlighted that as ZIMA, they believed that even those artistes that did not take home the gong in 2014 will return to the ring to give it another shot.

ZIMA awards accolades to artistes across several musical genres and technical categories including engineering, producing and music video direction.

To add to the excitement ZIMA have announced the introduction of a new category that is set to award music journalists for their excellence in bringing Zimbabwean music into the limelight.

“We are still in discussions with members of the media fraternity to come up with an appropriate entry and adjudication system, since the category is new to the ZIMA list of accolades it would be remiss of us not to come up with a selection criterion without wide consultations and entry dates for these additional categories will be announced soon,” Chapoterera said.

Last year ZIMA launched a new electronic entries system that allowed artistes from across the country and even in the Diaspora to register their work online and the system will be up and running again this year for the convenience of all artistes.

Interested parties will also be able to access these forms from various pick-up and drop-off points across the country.