Glo-Powered African Voices celebrates Diamond Platnumz, Sidibe, Ng’etich

The rising profile of Tanzanian music sensation, Diamond Platnumz’s gets a boost as he, alongside two other star artistes, is featured in this week’s edition of African Voices, a magazine programme of the Cable News Network (CNN) International. Telecommunications solutions provider, Globacom, powers the programme. 

Born Naseeb Abdul Juma, the music star is well known for his hit song, Number One, and is regarded as the most admired and decorated musical artiste in Tanzanian. He recently set a new record at the Tanzania Music Awards, during which he won seven awards, including ‘Best Male Writer’, ‘Best Male Artiste’, ‘Best Song Writer’ and ‘Best Male Entertainer of the Year’.

He was also the ‘Best Live Act’ at the 2015 MTV Africa Music Awards as well as ‘Artiste of the Year’ and ‘Best Male Artiste East Africa’ at the 2015 African Muzik Magazine Awards.

Diamond Platnumz’s appearance on the 30-minute programme is on the heels of his brilliant performance at the 2016 Glo-CAF Awards held at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja on January 5. 

Other star artistes featured on the programme are Mao Sidibe of Senegal and Phy Mwihaki Ng’etich of Kenya. While Mao Sidibé was raised in Dakar where he started the dancehall crew, ‘BBC Sound System’, Phy is based in Nairobi, where she began her singing career at a relatively young age.

Sidibe launched a self-owned music and video production company, Mao Productions, in 2012 and was nominated by France national radio, RFI for its annual African Music awards, Prix Découvertes in 2015. He is reputed for his brilliant admixture of reggae, pop and dancehall beat interlaced with Senegalese traditional drums and instruments.

Phy’s outstanding singing talent was unveiled at age eight, and she won the much-coveted overall number one position at the Kenya Music Festival for the solo classical piece in her age category. By 2011, she formed a group named ‘Phy and The Band’ with a couple of friends. 

The group showed heavy Afro/Urban genre influence, which further enriched their style until 2014, when she birthed her own musical trajectory. Phy’s musical outlook constitutes an ensemble of genres and sub-genres with Mali music, India Arie, Fena Gitu as products of her inspirations in creating her stock of music, which some music pundits describe as ‘Phy-music’.

The programme is aired on CNN International at 10:30a.m and 4.30p.m on Friday, while a repeat broadcast comes up at 4.30p.m on Saturday (today), and at 12.30a.m and 7.30p.m on Sunday, with further repeats on Monday at 11.30a.m and Tuesday at 5.30a.m.