The 2021 South African Music Awards are breaking records!
The national awards show has broken some records before it has even taken place!
The South African Music Awards are a national institution that is a benchmark for musicians and fans alike.
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The awards ceremony has been held since 1994 and has been an important part of the South African music industry.
The 2021 edition will be the 27th annual SAMAs and it's already making headlines, even though the nominees have not been announced as yet!
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The SAMA27 entries opened in November 2020 and were met with a massively positive response, which has now been reflected in the record amount of entries that the awards show has received.
They have received the most entries in their entire history and are sitting with a total of 1,163 entries.
We are greatly encouraged by this huge number of entries that came despite the challenges we faced as a nation from the COVID-19 pandemic, to economic woes and loss of income, especially in the creative sector.
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Some of the categories that made waves include the 'Best Collaboration' category with 170 entries, the brand new 'Best Amapiano Album' category has kicked off its first year with an impressive 63 entries, and the 'Best Kwaito Album' has a solid 19 entries.
Now the next step in the process will be to review these entries in order to determine the list of nominees.
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This is done by a special independent committee of industry members/panelists who will follow a strict judging process.
In the end, the nominees will be announced in April of this year.
We can also confirm that we are extremely excited to see which proudly SA artists will walk away with a SAMA honour this year.
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Main image courtesy of @lesleymofokeng/Twitter