Rwanda’s dancehall artist Crispin Ngabirama is organizing a concert to award local reggae artists whom he claims have been abandoned in various local music awards.
Among the awards he criticized is Salax, a yearly reward given to local musicians, but minimal or no recognition is shown to reggae musicians.
Those mainly favored include; genres related to R&B, Hip-hop, Afro-beat and traditional.
Attempting to respond to the matter, the chief organizer of Salax awards Mike Karangwa disagreed with Ngabirama’s argument adding that most local reggae musicians show a lesser will in the competitions.
“I can’t be blamed for a group of musicians who are hesitant to compete. The contests are open to all musicians irrespective of their type of music.
Though the category of reggae is not indicated in our categories we still classify Reggae under Afro-fusion since both genres have a lot in common,” he explained.
Ngabirama, who is gaining popularity for his latest hit ‘Dieu d’Afrique’ is not satisfied and wants full recognition of Reggae musicians.
Currently he is having talks with renowned reggae band members from Holly Jah Doves and musician Ben Rutabana on how to organize a concert to award reggae artists.
He further points out that Reggae songs are more advantageous compared to other genres since they portray educative messages which are especially based on behavior change, unlike R&B which talks about romance and love.
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