Sauti Sol is this year’s Best African Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP
Sauti Sol is this year’s Best African Act at the MTV Europe
Music Awards. The Kenyan Afro pop group is the first Kenyan act ever to
receive this award, validating both them and Kenyan music as a force to
reckon with globally.
They beat other
African artistes — Davido (Nigeria), Diamond (Tanzania), Toofan (Togo)
and Goldfish (South Africa) — and are now the sole African ambassadors
at EMA.
They have made it into the
final voting phase, the prestigious Worldwide Act Award category, as one
of 10 international Worldwide Act nominees.
FANS STILL HAVE TO VOTE
But there is still a ways to go. To win in the Worldwide Act category, fans will have to vote from today until next Wednesday.
If
Sauti Sol does win, that announcement will be made in Glasgow,
Scotland, at a live show on November 9, 2014, hosted by rapper Nicki
Minaj.
The boys at Sauti Sol are no
strangers to winning or to international recognition, having been
nominated for the Channel O Africa Music Video Awards, the UK’s BEFFTA
Awards and others. Previous winners of Best African Act have included
2Face (2005), Freshlyground (2006), D’Banj (2007 & 2012) and LCNVL
(2013).
Sauti Sol has continuously
showed how a gropu can harnes the power of social media. They engaged
fans on Facebook and Twitter, thanking and rewarding them for voting.
After
their win, the band received congratulatory tweets from fans who are
all too eager to support and celebrate an immensely talented band of
entertainers whose understanding and execution of music has been a cut
above the rest from the very beginning.
The
tech-savvy group went on an all-out internet campaign for votes to get
this far. They audaciously asked the president if he had voted, to which
he replied that he had. A move that undoubtedly encouraged his more
than half a million twitter followers to follow suit in endorsing the
group.
___________
Who are they?
Bein-Aimé
Baraza (vocals), Willis Chimano (vocals), Delvin Savara Mudigi (vocals,
drums) and Polycarp Otieno (guitar) formed Sauti Sol in 2005 in
Nairobi.
The quartet has performed
at numerous festivals (Blankets &Wine, Rift Valley Festival) and in
2012, was picked to perform all over the country under the Niko Na
Safaricom Live tour. But that’s not all.
They so far have two albums out – Mwanzo and Sol Filosophia – and an EP released in 2012. Their latest album, Live and die in Afrika, comes out this year, the latest single from it being 'Sura Yako'.
Over
the years, the boys have proved to be great performers, sending fans
into frenzies and gaining the respect of fellow artistes.
They
all have university degrees in various fields ranging from Actuarial
Science to Journalism and Banking, an indication of their appreciation
for a solid education.
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