Sunday, February 9, 2025

BOMU promises glamorous 2012 music awards

The Botswana Musicians Union (BOMU) annual awards, suspended for the last two years, are back this year.

The Secretary General of BOMU, Pagson Ntsie, announced this week that the awards ceremony is slated for either November 30 or December 2 in Gaborone. He said it is expected to be of international standard after the organization restructures to adopt a corporate face.

He said after criticism of the previous awards, BOMU had to engage into thorough introspection before dreaming of undertaking an event of this magnitude.

“BOMU had a tough task of restructuring and we were compelled to come up with a new constitution to tally with contemporary times of changes, it took us a lot of time to put the aforementioned constitution in place,” he said.

Ntsie added that this year’s awards are going to be different from the previous ones as BOMU has engaged the corporate world to manage and advertise the event, unlike the previous awards where the executive committee took full charge of event management hence compromising the quality of the awards. The previous awards were hosted in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

He said Sweet Baint and Pleasant Worthy, the local events management and advertising companies, will host this year’s awards. He said as the two companies had successfully hosted a lot of big events, amongst others Miss Botswana, the nation should expect wonders during this year’s BOMU awards.

“We promise Batswana and Africa at large to bring them the best music awards of international standard. Please expect wonders,” he said.

Ntsie said they have proposed to have an international artist perform at the awards, a development which is expected to give local artists an opportunity to benchmark. He said among other corporate partners that BOMU has attracted and expected to have a positive contribution in the awards are the South African radio station Motsweding FM, Brand Botswana, Radio Botswana 2, Botswana Television, and the Department of Arts & Culture. He added that Botswana Television has promised to have proper logistics to broadcast the event at an international standard.  

He said they have also proposed to have more categories such as the best journalist from print and electronic media, most listened to, most downloaded, best radio station and, if budget allows, they will give better monetary awards to the winners.

The Director of Sweetbaint, David Abram, said they will use their experience to advertise this year’s awards at an international level and the media from outside this country will be engaged to work with the local media in promoting the awards. He said they are also organising workshops and campaigns to find out what the audience, musicians, sponsors and media expect from the awards.

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