Kora Awards 2012

Below is the personal message of Suzanna Lubrano on her Facebook pages, last week.

‘The Kora Awards ceremony finally took place last night (December 30, 2012). Unfortunately, I did not win the award for Best African Female Artist of West Africa, an award which was won by Nigerian singer Chidinha. I congratulate Chidinha with her well deserved award !!!

Of course we have to bear in mind that the public vote of over 160 million Nigerians is more powerful than the public vote of a million or so Capeverdeans living inside and outside Cape Verde. That was always going to be a hard job. However, it is great to be at Kora again meeting so many arrists and producers from countries as diverse as Burundi and Nigeria, Senegal and La Reunion, Central African Republic and Angola (I’m proud of you Shelby !!!).

We Africans will start to cooperate more, creating new pan-African music platforms, so that Cape Verdeans can crossover to the Burundi market, Senegalese can crossover to the Angolan market, and so on. African music is big, powerful, and here to conquer the world!!

Kora Awards were orginally scheduled to take place on saturday December 29, then it was rescheduled to monday night (31 December), because Chris Brown, who was going to attend Kora, did not get into the private jet that was chartered for him. At the end he and Rihanna landed in Abidjan early sunday morning, and Kora decided to do the Kora Awards show on sunday at 8 pm and the Chris Brown show before that at 1 pm.

For various reasons, Chris Brown and Rihanna decided not to attend the Kora Awards ceremony in the evening, an act that many artists view as an act of disrespect for African artists and African music. Those African artists are now unable to enjoy New Years Eve with their families at home. However, it is still hard to know who is to blame for various failures at this years Kora, also because different media report different stories of what happened. We shouldn’t judge now. But sooner or later we will surely learn what really happened.

But one lesson is learned. We African arrists do not need Chris Brown to get recognition for our music around the world. We can do it ourselves!!

Pictures of me at the Kora Awards will be uploaded later. We will continue to work on making African music big in Africa and around the world !!

THANK YOU ALL FOR SUPPORTING ME AT KORA 2012 !! AND HAPPY NEW YEAR !!