14 Mar 2024

Ten delightful musical artistes showed up on stage and delivered with great aplomb enthralling audience during an ongoing heavily contested DBS Road Show on Saturday in Tsabong. They set Tsabong alive in a glorious, enchanting musical competition with upbeat local artistes evoking powerful emotions and transporting audience to different times and places. The line-up consisted of Tasty Lips, Timber Lady, Biq J Musik, Gala the Songbird, Lucky Action Sephiri, Tizo, Casha, AC Venus, Halala, Sebatana, Vasto Kitoko, and Moody who displayed rich talent on stage. Last year’s DBS Road show winner HRB Botizo, Ey Brizzy and DJ Skizzoh BW also graced the occasion. One of the artistes Thabo Bimbo alias ‘Tizo’ in music circles set the stage alight with electrifying Kwaito moves. “It always feels good to perform on stage, I am grateful. This performance means a lot, it helps to unearth talented artists live on Radio and television especially those of us who reside in remote areas,” said Tizo with a smile after dropping off the mic on stage. He said it was a challenge for artistes who lived far away from cities and towns to showcase their talent due to distance and generally have no studio equipment to produce music therefore such platforms helped them a lot as artists. Furthermore, Tizo said the DBS road show gave artists a platform to render performances broadcasted live. He said that helped a lot as someone, somewhere could connect with them. He said one could be talented but lack the right connections, as well as finances and so the so the DBS road show provided a perfect platform for artistes. “What we need to do as artists is to strive to do better, believe in ourselves because somebody somewhere might recognise their talent and help,” he said. The DBS Road Show face Thato Sikwane aka DJ Fresh, a Motswana disk jockey, producer and entrepreneur based in Johannesburg, appreciated the spectacular renditions on stage,” it has been good so far, we have covered most of the regions and the talent and the competition is massive, we might end up increasing the numbers taking two or three artistes from one region as opposed to one,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the show. DJ Fresh said they accepted 10 artistes per region and only one artist would represent their region to make 31 artistes who will attend boot camp for a full week and take master class business lessons, understand the legal side of the music industry, and the fashion sense. “Only artiste will win a car but we want to leave everyone empowered and richer in knowledge. We want them to be able to run their music business well,” he said. He encouraged artistes to always maintain a humble demeanour on their rise to fame, adding that getting exposure on media and their videos or songs getting frequent airplay and some becoming celebrities does not give them the right to have too much arrogance. “The way in which you carry yourself as an artist can open up some doors and close some doors for you,” he advised. He expressed concern that some artistes who become successful have a tendency of changing behaviour and start coming late for shows, come drunk and generally become disrespectful which could lead to their talent going to waste. The ultimate DBS Road Show winner will win a vehicle, 12 months recording and management contract with Big Dawg, clothing contract with Lamar Loeto clothing, as well as have their music videos shot as and when required. Left with only one season to run, DJ Fresh appreciated government for showing commitment to the process of talent search, incubating artistes, “this is one of the few governments taking artists seriously, not many governments are committed to the process of unearthing talent. Most artistes in other countries are on their own, they get attention only after they have a couple of hits and awards,” he said. ENDS BOPA LC 12/3/24