RECORDING local gospel artistes and their fans will soon have something new to look forward to as new music contest dubbed ‘Rwanda Gospel Stars Competition’ is set to be launched with the aim to recognise the best Rwandan performing gospel artists. Organised by Matts Rwanda Services in partnership with Lotus Bleu Ltd, both of which currently operate in events management, the music contest intends to empower Gospel Music artistes to utilise their creative musical talents in order to positively impact both religious and secular culture. The contest, which runs between May and August, is expected to attract a host of gospel artists of all ages as a platform to not only support the gospel music industry but also promote it to the vast audience of the creative industry in general. Samuel Nyandwi, the CEO of Matts Rwanda Services which co-organises the competition, told The New Times that the contest comes to promote the message for all Christians to “Get out and praise the Lord,” the theme of the inaugural edition. According to Nyandwi, Rwanda Gospel Stars Competition will capitalize on the opportunity surrounding Gospel musicians in Rwanda to motivate social participation and encourage them as well as Christians to use the “Good News” for the better future of Rwanda. “This the first gospel music contest of its kind which we believe will change the lives of gospel musicians. Gospel music is home to so many talents but which lack support and empowerment and hence do good music but with lower production standards and quality. That keeps gospel music lagging behind and some are left with no choice but to switch to secular music which looks more dominant,” Nyandwi said in an interview. “They have all it takes to thrive but, still, they lack support and empowerment. We are bringing this contest because we don’t believe that gospel artistes deserve just a ‘thank you’ after all the sweat, days and nights of writing and recording songs. They deserve more and this contest can help,” he added. According to the contest schedule, the grand finale will take place on August 29 and, if all goes according to plan, the public will attend the ceremony at Kigali Arena. Meanwhile, as the covid-19 pandemic persists, organisers are considering taking the music contest on a yet-to-be-confirmed TV where all performances will be held live. At the very beginning, 30 gospel stars will be selected in the preliminaries of the contests and will be reduced to 10 finalists as the contest enters the final stage. The first edition of Rwanda Gospel Stars Competition will see gospel music stars competing for Rwf10, 000, 000 worth in cash prizes, with the overall winner set to pocket Rwf7 million and each of the remaining top 10 finalists will have a chance to walk away with a certain cash prize. The inaugural music contest is anticipated to become a huge boost for Rwanda’s gospel music industry whose artistes have for years been doing music with no motivation from any rewarding platform other than the renowned but controversial Groove Awards. Some promising artistes have quit gospel music and started a new life in secular music. Musicians Patrick Nyamitari, Mani Martin felt that their talent deserved more than what they would get from gospel music and changed their careers to secular music while the likes of The Ben, Meddy, Alpha Rwirangira, G Bruce, Buravan, Knowless and Bruce Melodie established themselves as secular artistes even though their talents were discovered in Church choirs. Organisers admit the gospel music sector has lost a big number of talents to secular music due to the fact that they had no platform to showcase their talent, and did not want to miss out on business opportunities since several companies prefer to work with secular artistes during promotional campaigns. They, however, believe the music contest will play a big role in influencing competition with secular music as long as opportunities are available in the gospel music side.
