Representatives of Channel O, the popular continental music channel on DSTV, have said a total of 70 artists from 10 different countries have been produced as nominees for this year's awards in 19 categories. The show, billed for tonight, Saturday 21st 2006, will take place in South Africa. In hot contention for carting home some awards this year is Nigeria's 2Face Idibia, who is nominated for three award categories. 2Face, winner in last year's edition of the award, is joined this time by Dare Art Alade, who also has three nominations.

Nigerian artists are high on the list of nominees for possible awards this year. The list includes the likes of Mode 9, Lagbaja, D'banj, Weird MC, Ikechukwu, Silver Saddih and Mode 9. But topping the nominations with four nods each are Didge and Lizha James from Kenya and Mozambique, respectively. Hot on their heels is South Africa's Freshly Ground and Simphiwe Dana with three nominations each. Now in their third year, the Channel O Awards are unique in that videos are voted for by viewers, giving fans complete control over who receives an award. Criteria used for short-listing were technical quality, frequency of requests for a video on the different Channel O shows and overall creativity. The videos need to have been released between January 2005 and May 2006 and should have received airplay on Channel O.

Channel O General Manager Yolisa Phahle is sure that the nominations reflect the diverse and growing music industry in the continent. "We are seeing videos of increasingly high quality and this is a direct reflection of the industry's growth", she says. "At Channel O we look to strike a balance between promoting the up and coming big names of tomorrow alongside established artists. This year some of the newer names are also producing outstanding music and high quality videos".

Music fans all over the African continent voted for their favourite artists by sending text messages or voting online. Voting started on Friday 25th August and lasted till Friday 6th October. Nigerian viewers were be able to vote locally via SMS, reportedly did so en masse, jerking up the country's chances of picking up a lot of awards.

Abdulkareem Baba Aminu

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