SAMA29 has been rescheduled
The 29th South African Music Industry has been rescheduled. According to several reports, the KZN government has canceled the sponsorship of SAMAs, which were scheduled to cost the province millions of dollars.
The Music Awards event, which was planned to take place in Durban in November, was a topic of discussion for many people until the tragic news that it had been postponed.
The main organizer of SAMA, the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA), issued a statement denying that the event was intended to be used as a conduit for looting and promising to investigate the matter and hopefully address it.
“The SAMA remains the largest, most prestigious, inclusive, and representative music awards event in the South African music landscape. We continue to attract considerable attention and support as well as market-leading viewership among televised music awards shows across the continent. We note with dismay that a prestigious, credible, and apolitical national cultural asset that has been in operation for 29 uninterrupted years, longer than any other award ceremony in South Africa and the continent, has been characterized as a conduit for looting. This is an assertion that we as RISA strongly rebuke. It is problematic that an institution of great importance to the pulse of our cultural economy has been violated for cheap politicking. What has been lost in all of the resultant noise are the economic benefits of hosting a show of this magnitude for any city or province. The SAMA is not a superfluous party, any such assertion flies in the face of the contribution made by the SAMA to the Mzansi Golden Economy. It stood to benefit the creative sector as well as to ignite a number of other economies including tourism, hospitality, retail, transportation and the informal sector.” – RiSA
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