Bongo Flava hits a brick wall at Mamas awards

When the MTV Africa nominations were announced early in April it was evident that there were going to be some heartbreaks, laughter and tears of joy on the final night.

And on that June 7 night in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban many aspects of life seemed to intertwine as Africa’s sons and daughters met for the coronation of the best.

They had travelled from far and near across our vast continent but even then what seemed obvious was that this would be a contest between western and southern Africa.

By the time the awards were half way failure seemed to have been inscribed all over for the East African nominees where Diamond had a double nod, even his collabo with Davido couldn’t help matters.

The star-studded line up of African and international talent rocked the continent on MTV Africa Music Awards return after a four-year hiatus.

And as others have aptly put, nevertheless, it was a stunning pan-African celebration of music, youth culture and lifestyle.

Durban’s International Conference Centre resounded to electrifying live performances by Fally Ipupa, Michael Lowman, Don Jazzy, DJ Clock, Beatenberg, DJ Kent, Big Nuz, Toofan, D’Banj, DJ Vigi, DJ Tira, DJ Buckz, and Burna Boy,

Others who graced the stage were Sauti Sol, Ice Prince, Sarkodie, The Arrows, Khuli Chana, Dr Sid, French Montana, Miguel, Trey Songz, Davido, Uhuru, Mafikizolo, Oskido, Professor, Tiwa Savage, Flavour, Diamond, Phyno and Yuri da Cunha.

Davido, Mafikozolo, Uhuru and Clarence Peters turned out as the big winners with quadruple nominees Mafikizolo winning in the Best Group and Song of The Year categories, while Davido took home two awards, for Best Male and Artist of the Year.

The most notable absentees on the awards podium were Nigeria’s power group, P-Square who many had tipped to win following a year of big success.

In this year’s newly introduced lifestyle award categories, Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o took home the award for Personality of the Year, her acceptance speech which was via video was a marvel.

The inaugural MTV Base Leadership Award went to Tanzanian entrepreneur Ashish J. Thakkar.

Just like in March when Tanzania featured strongly at the Africa Magic Awards in Lagos, Tanzania representative was nothing more than an observer.

The game of numbers had failed us once again as the brick wall was too strong for our contestant to penetrate and all that was left was to be dignified in defeat.

In Diamond’s Instagram post after the award he thanked everyone who had supported him in his second attempt to become the first Tanzanian artiste to win an award at the contest.

“That was as far as we could go, the most important thing is to know where we were last year and where we are today and most of all to learn and understand what we have to do next time so that we can succeed,” Diamond wrote in a post that accompanied his picture with Wema Sepetu.

In another post he called on his fans to join efforts in voting at the BET awards which come later at the end of the month

He has sounded cryptic on many occasions and may be that is where some of the issues lie.

When Diamond chose to remix his ‘Number One’ single with Davido on the surface it sounded as if it was a great idea, one that would finally make him cross the borders.

As I have put it on a couple of occasions Davido has ended up owning the song and as we witnessed on Saturday night he owned the performance too.

I am sure this was not part of the script but that is what it has turned out to be, the song has been ‘Nigerianised’.

Diamond has not been alone in this fatal plot of thinking this way as many of our musicians have been duped into thinking that by singing like Nigerians you win that audience , the answer as we all know is NO!

So it finally sinks in that…..Tanzania to Lagos I go makes you Famous …….was another attempt that ended in a fiasco.

Hopefully next time that is just in case we learnt something from this one and it won’t be a surprise if the same artiste trounces him at the BET.