50 Niggaz shines in Cape Town
SOUTH AFRICA-BASED Zimbabwean outfit 50 Niggaz is on cloud nine after clinching Best Collaboration award at the just-ended Music Awards show in Cape Town, South Africa.
The outfit, which is made up of three artists, collaborated with Zami Mdingi (Code Africa) and Chunda D of Tanzania on the song ‘Dance with me’ said the award will go a long way in the development of their musical career.
“We are so happy that we won the award. We have just finished shooting some videos from our upcoming album.
Clinching the award in a very competitive musical market is a major success of us. We thank God and we would like to dedicate it to our fans and family,” said Masimba Jekete – lead vocalist.
Jekete said their music is Afrojazz and is inspired by societal settings.
“Our music is afro-jazz hence we target all ages. Most of our songs are party songs and we are happy with how our music has been receiving airplay abroad (Cape Town). Our album has songs like ‘Mawaza dance’, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Dance with me’ which is also in Xhosa. Mostly, we sing rap, hip-hop, reggae and rhumba, trying to fuse it that is why we call it afro-jazz,” he said.
Jekete said their stay in South Africa for the past 10 years hasn’t been rosy. “If you are a foreigner it is difficult to penetrate the arts industry here because it is very competitive. It’s not easy and we won against all odds.
“We are happy that we have a huge fan base hence have been hosting a lot of shows. We decided to come back for few weeks to launch our video ‘Dance with me’ in Zimbabwe.
“The video was shot in South Africa and it was hurting that we are not celebrated back home but in Cape Town we are somehow like heroes,” he said.
He added that they were planning to come back home and stage one major gig.
“We are in talks with some music promoters so that they can host us in Zimbabwe. It is a challenge trying to penetrate on such platforms,” Jekete said.