The 21st instalment of the annual South African Music Awards (SAMAs) took place last night at the Sun City Superbowl in the North West. Hosting the main awards was Motswako rapper HHP, while TV presenter Lerato Kganyago hosted the non-broadcast awards as well as the green room interviews. Both hosts received criticism on social media where people said Lerato asked weak questions and HHP was boring.
The quality of the awards was also in question with viewers taking to Twitter to complain about the poor sound and picture quality. Most viewers enjoyed tweets about the event more than the actual broadcast and, to be honest, I don’t blame them. Our favourite moments came from the great performances of the night. Twitterverse decided that hip-hop artist Cassper Nyovest’s performance was one of the best.
HHP gave a medley of South African music with covers from Beatenberg, Dj Merlon, AKA and Cassper, and boy was that entertaining! The nice factor was 13-year-old poet Botlhale Boikanyo’s performance. Simphiwe Dana also did serious justice to an Afrikaans song she performed with Kurt Darren. The big winners for the night were Beatenberg, with a total of seven awards (including songs they were featured in); AKA won Male Artist of the Year, which was one of the biggest categories of the night; Easy to love songstress Bucie Nqwiliso won Female Artist of the Year; while the Record of the year went to K.O featuring KiD X.
Although the SAMAs were disappointing to watch, the great performances and online commentary from fans and viewers made up for it. The fashion was also a great talking point because our celebs showed up and dressed up as usual. Check out more pictures from the event on our Twitter page @BonaMag and Instagram @bona_mag.
