Born & Bred Awards 2011 Sucked, Sucked and Sucked!

The 2011 Born and Bred Awards definitely lived up to the hype. Almost everyone was tuning in to see if last years mediocrity of falling wigs and JK’s love affair with R-Kelly could be exceeded. Oh exceed our expectations they did. The Born and Bred awards which are supposed to be Zambia’s flagship awards for music videos was highly anticipated indeed. One would have thought that the organisers would have learnt from last year’s failure and put up a half decent enough show worthy of the airwaves.

The moment the so-called celebrities stepped onto the red carpet I could sense that this was going to be one night to remember for all the wrong reasons. There were celebrities with their entourages talking to the hosts in some slang that did not come out well and the boring hosts who kept asking the same questions.

In typical Zambian style the show began late, we the viewers were left watching the auditorium as the organisers attempted to get the sound system working. When the show finally did get underway we were bombarded with miming performers one after the other with their uncoordinated choreography and dancers. Then during Ozzy’s performance the CD was skipping as he tried to muscle his way through his performance.

Then there was Afunika and his dancing queens who must have borrowed some dance moves from a strip joint or something. They were gyrating on the poles with all manner of obscene dancing that was definitely inappropriate for the family oriented ZNBC TV programming. The shock on some of the elderly people in the audience could clearly be seen as they could not believe what was being flashed before their faces. Our artists then do not even have the decency of coming up with something original. Then some chick whatever her name is comes onto the stage and does a lousy attempt at a dance routine in Beyonce’s ‘Run This World’. It was so pathetic that I think if Beyonce could have seen it done that way she would have shed a tear.

Then somewhere in between some of the audience became unruly it took Innocent Kalaluka the mastermind behind the Born and Bred Awards to come and threaten the crowd by claiming he would cancel the show. The crowd only booed at him. As this was not enough drama for one night the sound system went dead and it took them a good 20 minutes to get the sound back.

It was approaching midnight and still not a single award was given out. We were still being tortured by miming artists who even failed to put a good enough show. When they finally did get to the purpose of the night, the presenters of awards were another dose of boredom. Instead of doing what they were on stage to do they were trying to give the audience a Hip Hop lesson. The audience was definitely not impressed and booed at them. Then the presenters struggled to open the envelope with the name of the winner in it. The winners came with a lot of people on stage that had no business being up there.

In the end I had enough of this mediocrity and decided not to waste any more of my time that I would never get back by watching the Born and Bred Awards. I would definitely suggest to the organisers to take sometime and watch award shows like the Grammys, American Music Awards or even Channel O awards and see how professional they are. The concert/comedy show that we were being shown only demeans the hard work that the artists put into their music videos and makes winning the award itself a joke. By and large, the 2011 Born and Bred Awards did live up to our expectations. They sucked.