Back then, there were no numbers of categories that listed nominations for different genres of music. It was only Lifetime Achievement Award that went to the late Tara Devi Shrestha in its first event.
In the succeeding years, too, it continued giving lifetime achievement award to veterans of Nepali music industry. It was only at the 6th Image Music Award Ceremony that Bharat Shakya, the station manager of Image FM 97.9 MHz, added more genres to the award ceremony.
From singers to musicians, lyricists, arrangers and technicians, almost everyone who made a niche in music got an Image Award. And obviously, the awards not just boosted them professionally, it took them to unprecedented heights of success and fame.
One more time, Image FM and Image Channel are all geared up to host its much celebrated music award ceremony of Nepal. With nominations out now and voting in process, Image Awards will commence in the first week of September. This year, the Image Awards ceremony is late by two months due to 16 hours of daily load shedding Kathmandu went through a couple of months back.
How are all the processes done to judge who is the best singer, the best music composer and so on?
“All the songs and music videos that are released in the market from Chaitra 16, 2064 BS to Jestha 30, 2066 are listed at our office. We have already started sorting out the songs to verify if they meet the technical criteria to compete or not,” revealed Shakya.
As the songs are sorted out, they are sent through an internal judiciary panel who recommend their listing to the other senior most judges comprising music professionals, and they list the top five in each category. And as the nominations are out, Image FM asks the public to vote for their favorites either through SMSs, through their website or through paper ads. Besides, music professionals come together to judge the nominated numbers and videos technically and list the winners.
But have the judgment always been fair?
“Well, award ceremonies are always put into controversies. It’s too obvious for them to say against the award functions who go home empty handed. We do best on our part. Most of the time, our singers and musicians aren’t aware of the technical criteria and even they don’t bother to query about it,” added Shakya.
So this September, Kathmandu will see if Anju Panta can defeat Mandabi Tripathi or not and whether Nima Rumba will come before Satya Raj Acharya. It’s now your job to get your favorites grab their deserving trophies. So everyone start SMS-ing or vote for your dear ones through Image Award’s nomination ads in the papers or go to its official website
www.imagechannels.com to cast your votes.
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