Malawi: 2019 UMP Awards cancelled
The 2019 edition of the Urban Music People (UMP) Awards will not take place this year. The event, which was supposed to be held in Blantyre, Malawi, on 9 November, will be back next year, the organisers said.
The UMP Awards said the decision to cancel the event was due to an ongoing review process
“We will hold the next UMP Awards event in 2020,” UMP CEO Ken Limwame told Music In Africa. “We are currently undergoing a review process necessitated by a combination of external and internal factors. The review will guarantee the long-term sustainability of the music awards and their scale-up in terms of quality, scope and reach.
“The review process includes, but is not limited to, rigorous stakeholder consultations, impact evaluation, learning tours to other awards ceremonies and international institutionalisation of the awards. Our team composition is also being revisited.
"But as a movement, we still have a lot of activities going on this year: we have a multi-college music tour of last year’s music awards winners and nominees, we have the UMP 50:50 female in arts initiative underway, and as you know the Fashion Awards and the Media Awards are going on this year.”
Commenting on the various challenges faced by the awards platform, Limwame said: “The persisting number one challenge is suboptimal corporate involvement. But we have mechanisms to still hold the awards despite that.
"Second is the slow growth of our music industry; you can’t have vibrant awards when the fundamentals of the industry are weak. All we do is to play our part well and hope to fire up other industry players.
"Thirdly, it is to manage elements of scepticism regarding the fairness of the nomination and winner identification processes.”
Limwame said they would announce the dates and venue for next year’s awards early in 2020. “We will release a comprehensive plan when the review process is over. We will announce early next year. I am aware the anticipation will be greater than ever.”
Meanwhile, UMP will host its Media Awards and Fashion Awards in Lilongwe and Blantyre respectively. The dates and venues will be announced in due course.
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