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Kili award tour closes in Dar es Salaam on Friday night

Diamond

THE show to close a national tour for Tanzania Music Awards winners is in Dar es Salaam on Friday night with a massive performance of 14 artistes at Posta Kijitonyama grounds in Dar es Salaam on Friday night.

This will be the sixth region to have a taste of this tour whose aim is to bring entertainment sponsored by Kilimanjaro lager. The artistes also get chance to meet and greet their fans who they thank for having voted for them and enabled them to win the awards respected in and out of the country.

They will also confirm to their fans that they really deserved the awards and that they are as good at recording in the studios as they are at performances. Friday night’s show is expected to be massive, according to organizers. Before tonight’s show in Dar es Salaam, the artistes have been able to go to five regions, concurrently going on with the other exercise of searching for fresh talent, known as the Kili star search.

Regions where the festival has been held include Dodoma, Mwanza, Moshi, Mbeya and Mtwara where each region produced one winner in an exercise dubbed Kilimanjaro Awards Talents Search. Dodoma was able to produce two winners who tightly competed from the earlier stages.

The exercise, to produce fresh talent was overseen by judges including Henry Mdimu, who is a coordinator of various shows ,winner of best reggae song award Reggae Queen Darleen, and bongo flava stars including Joseph Haule ‘Professor J’ and Juma Kassim ‘Nature’. From Dodoma, young talents who won and would take part in tonight’s show include Issa Dubat and Juma Madaraka, from Mbeya is Neema, from Mwanza is Christina, from Moshi is Sungura and from Mtwara is Nicolaus.

These are the young winners from upcountry who will curtainraise before big stars numbering 14 will take over the stage. These include Diamond who was nominated for 3 awards, Ommy Dimpoz who is the most promising upcoming artiste who also took part in the category of AfroPop, Ally Kiba and Barnabas Elias who was best male artiste according to this year’s Kilimanjaro music awards.

Others who will be up on stage include Roma Mkatoliki who took part in best Hip Hop artiste and scooped award of best Hip Hop song, Isha Mashauzi who took award for best taarab song, Suma Lee who took best song, Queen Darleen, Kitokololo with best rap song, and AT who had best song with traditional song.

Warriors from the East will also be on stage, The African Stars will also be on stage, Ben Pol will also be on stage as best R&B artiste and Khadija Kopa who was best female artiste. The show starts at 4pm with each fan charged 4,000/- and given a beer at entrance. Music performances can be an agent for multiculturalism and a bridge across many of our diverse cultures.

To many revellers, it has been an exciting and entertaining display, a celebration of different genres of dance drawn from artistes as Barnaba, Dimpoz, Diamond, Kota etc. This ability to reach out and perform a feat from various genres was evidence that art can indeed be a means through which different people can relate with each other -- from north(Moshi) --, east, west (Mwanza) and south(Mtwara).

The artistes treated the crowd to the performances much to the delight of the crowd who cheered on as the dancers shook their waists with flexibility and stamina. They exuded a lot of confidence in this performance. “Watching the collaborative performances made you want to jump all the time and join the dancers. I could only tap away at my feet as I felt the rhythm and beat rush through me,” said one of the fans, James Makaro.

For Ali Kiba’s dancers for example, the movements were physical; the dancers moved with force, unison and flexibility and yet managed to remain organised. The creativity in the performances coupled with the good stage lighting that blended with the various costumes used by the dancers brought life to the dance performance.

George Kavishe, Kilimanjaro beer Manager, whose product has been in charge of the tour, has said that the upcountry performances on the stars’ tour have ended and that music enthusiasts should await for the Dar es Salaam performance on Saturday.

He said that they had given opportunity to the artistes to show case their talent and that they can be great on stage performances for their fans. He said the main thing was to also give a chance to fans to meet their starts up-close, after months of viewing them on television and hearing their music on radio. The moment also gives chance to the artistes to thank their fans for voting them to the top in this year’s Kilimanjaro music awards.

The artistes, on their part, vowed to give earth shaking performances for their fans as the curtain goes down on the tour. Roma Mkatoliki, who has been the talk in every region they performed, has been one of the significant crowd pullers and made the organizers ensure that he always came last so as to sustain the high spirit of fans from beginning to the end.