The much awaited 11th edition of the hipipo music awards is on Friday, November 18, at the Kampala Serena hotel and More than ten uniquely gifted artistes have been lined up to perform this year.
The performances will be headlined by Bebe Cool, Naava Grey, Kenneth Mugabi, Afande Miah, Winnie Nwagi, Fic Fameica and Ykee Benda. The audience will also be entertained with perfomances from artists from South Africa, Nigeria, Zambia among others.
Mr Innocent Kawooya, the Hipipo music awards CEO said during a local television interview that they reduced the categories from forty to 15 purposely to reward the best.
“We reduced the categories from over forty to the quality fifteen categories where there is no duplication, no contradiction or anything Because our music is not well segmented, people would say Afrobeat and Zouk are almost the same, how do you know that this is Afrobeat and this is Zouk? Because this is an industry that is growing, we nurture it by reducing the numbers, we remain with quality but also ensure that we pick up everyone for example we have regional categories, who had been the best from upcountry because there are so many musicians like Afande Mia from Busoga, Ray G has become a full Ugandan artist but he started as a regional artist from Mbarara,” he said
The Hipipo music awards have lived the test of time. For instance, during the lockdown, they continued to boost the moral in the creative sector when the organisers held scientific awards.
Innocent highlighted one of the challenges for Uganda’s music industry as failure to understand critiscim. He said the shareholders fail to understand positive criticism but get so much into the negative critiscim.
He also advised Ugandans not to feel bad about Nigerian music playing in Uganda and advised artists to work even harder for Uganda music to play in Lagos
“Music is a demand driven. People love what they love. If they love the Nigerian sound, the TVs, the radios will play the Nigerian sound but two things are going to happen. 1. Do we have a policy that tells NTV that play 70% Ugandan music, if the policy is there, does Ugandan music have the quality NTV can play,” he said
Hipipo music awards are organized to appreciate musicians, recognize and also introduce talents.
