Being the first performer of the evening, with an elegant outfit, she stole the limelight as all eyes were just on her. Just like fellow top five contestants, Wada Songstress gave a sterling performance proving that indeed the DBD Roadshow, a talent search competition was a good gesture for all aspiring artists from different corners of this country. Wanda Songstress also scooped the Best Styled Award, walking away with a whooping P15, 000 cash. She also won herself a brand new Polo Vivo car as a prize for the DBS Roadshow second session winner. She treated the audience to her new song 'Sebaka' produced by DjSkizoh BW. The song is one of her three she recently produced as part of the competition.
Other contestants who proved to be equally talented upcoming artists and ready to blow the music industry away include Abigail Isa, Fino Dee, Rita Christopher and Dj Shawn Lee. The four also did their best to win the competition and their music was also beautiful. The beautiful thing about all contestants is that they ensured that they use their native language in their songs even though some threw in a bit of English.
They also walked away with different beards such as Artistes Choice for Abigail Isa, Fino Dee with Creative and Versatile award, Rota Christopher with the Producer's Favourite and DJ Shawn Lee with the Most Dedicated award. They all went home, P15, 000 richer. They all recorded three EPs each, courtesy of DBS and Big Dawg Productions.
The DBD Roadshow team in conjunction with Big Dawg Production toured all the country's 31 districts searching for talent. According to a clip from stakeholders, a representative from Botswana Music Union (BOMU) had said there is a lot of talent from different parts of this country and therefore the DBD Roadshow event helped reach and unearth raw talent from across the country including rural remote areas. He said from the previous participants, they managed to register more musicians. He added that some of the artists who were discovered from the first session participated in last year's BOMU awards where one of them performed at the event while the other one won the award. He also said two participants from the same segment were doing wonders internationally.
Giving his speech, the patron of the event, President Mokgweetsi Masisi who has been supporting the event since its inception, said Botswana has enormous amount of talent. He added that the demographic realities of Botswana give a natural competitive advantage adding that the majority of the population was young people who were curious, imperative, noisy, troublesome , exciting and liked doing things that adults cannot do. He added that young people lived in the free Botswana where they are allowed to do whatever they want in order to grow.
"That represents a wonderful typestry of creativity. Botswana creates opportunities for you to go to school, for you to do what you like to do and for you to see the creativity of others, interact with others. We provide infrastructure and architecture for you to communicate with those outside. We also provided an open system for you to go through economic by enabling, facilitating and encouraging others to engage with us. When you combine it with the realities of youthful exuberance, you get potential to ignite. To produce employment and self employment amongst you, I marshaled my cabinet to develop a budget that would enable this," he said.
The President added that through the DBS and Botswana Television (Btv), they have a reservoir of opportunities for creatives and therefore urged them to knock on their doors and sell their products. He also said since he realised that the DBS Roadshow was bearing fruits, he would continue injecting more money into the project. He said in season one, the budget of the DBS Roadshow was P9.7 million, while in season three they intend to inject more money.
He added that through the show, they created more than 3, 000 temporary jobs, permanent jobs to more than 100 people and also engaged more than 800 businesses from multiple sectors for their services across the country. He added that they had 25 festivals instead of 23 intended and therefore surpassed their target. He added that they registered more than 3, 000 contestants this year from the 31 districts where more than 500 were selected indicating that the program was top achieving.
For his part, the founder of Big Dawg Productions, Thato Sikwane also famed as DJ Fresh thanked the President for his unwavering support of the show. He explained that he had been in the music industry since he was 19 years and worked at different radio stations both locally and internationally including hosting different shows. He took the audience through different roles they played on the show since it's inception. He said the show had a great opportunity to grow local music industry into a more professional show that contributes to growing the country's economy. He promised to continue bringing quality services. He further suggested that there was need for one structure that could accommodate all creatives in grooming them into big brands. He called on the private sector to sponsor the local creative sectors as it is the case with in most foreign countries.
