THE Namibian Annual Music Awards as we have come to know them over the last couple of years no longer exist.
A whole lot of changes have recently been put in place with the biggest change being the scrapping of 11 categories from the awards show.
At a press conference to announce the official opening of entries for the 2018 awards, it was also revealed that awards for the categories kizomba and shambo were cut due to low entry figures, and Radio Song of Year, the NAMAs Special Award, Best Live Performance, Best Musical Event, Entertainment Journalist, Radio DJ, Most Disciplined Artist, Song With a Message and Most Socially Responsible Artist of the Year have also been scrapped.
The reason given for cutting categories was “to afford the NAMA team to focus more on the main event and make it more impactful,” according to outgoing NAMAs executive Tim Ekandjo. He did however add that the exclusion of these categories is not permanent.
Giving his two cents on the dropping of the 11 categories, Big Ben said that the action may have been necessitated because of confusion and conflict that arose from the choice of award recipients.
“Some awards are very hard to determine winners for and they only end up causing more distrust and if those were the reasons why they were cut then so be it,” he said. He advised that categories such as Best Musical Event be altered to incorporate what the musicians themselves think is worthy of a good event.
“Some of these categories could have been saved if consultations were held with the music makers themselves,” he noted.
Another change comes in the form of the Best Producer of the Year category which will now be included within the NAMAs 2018 entry categories, where previously this category was a non-entry category and the vetting committee chose producers based on the albums nominated in the Best Album of the Year category.
With these changes, there will no longer be 35 categories as usual, but 24.
In addition, NBC’s Umbi Karuaihe-Upi took over as the new NAMAs executive chairperson.
She made another big announcement, saying the industry awards were completely scrapped from the NAMAs, with only the main show taking place on the tentative date of Saturday, 28 April 2018.
The call for entries welcomes all Namibian artists with music/albums commercially released (made available for sale in any recognised retail trade) in Namibia between 1 December 2016 and 30 November 2017 to submit their applications. The application period started yesterday and will run until 2 December.
For awards rules, entry requirements and other details, visit nama.com.na.
