US-BASED RWANDAN arts enthusiast Elie Ndisanze has introduced a music contest from which the most talented young artists will be unearthed and supported to grow their careers and give them a platform to turn them into established artists. The contest dubbed ‘Show Me Your Talent’ will be done in various categories ranging from musicians (solo artists and groups), poets, traditional dance and comedy among others. Ndisanze told The New Times that the idea to bring the contest came to his mind after realising that a number of young artists are left with little hope to establish themselves as great artists due to lack of support and a platform to showcase their talents. “There are so many young artists out there whose talents are going to waste because they did not get a chance and platform to showcase them to the creative world. That’s why I thought of bringing this concept on board to encourage them to show the world what they’ve got inside them,” he said. “I hope this platform helps them because this is what I wish for Rwanda’s young generation that is talented in different aspects of arts,” he added. According to organisers, the contest will be held virtually and will be done categorically, beginning with music, for them to swiftly identify talents by category. Every category will be contested for throughout a period of one month before jumping to another category. Registration for aspirants contesting in the music category will be done online starting Monday, February 14. They will be required to shoot short videos of a performance and send them via the contest’s official email showmeyourtalent2@gmail.com. The four winners in each category will be announced live on Rwanda Television (RTV) via its talk show ‘Versus’ that broadcasts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In the video, every aspirant will introduce themselves with names and their place of residence before beginning to perform. In music, they will be allowed to perform their own songs or any song from another artiste. The video must be between 20 and 30 seconds. Ndisanze will post the videos of every contestant on his Instagram account (ndiisanze) and artists with the top four videos that will generate most votes will be invited on RTV’s ‘Versus’ talk show for the finale which will see two win prizes. The overall winner will walk away with Rwf100, 000 while the second will pocket Rwf 50, 000. The prizes are, according to Ndisanze, sort of motivation for the artists to ‘carry on and do big things because their talent is priceless’. “I want to see this contest become a big platform that will produce a big number of talents that will help boost Rwanda’s creative industry in all categories. I also want to increase the prizes as time goes by because our young artists deserve more,” he said.
