55TH Grammys: Night of Glitz and Glam

Jay-Z scooped a few like always.

By: @Thapelo_Mosiuoa

On Monday night we witnessed the screening of the Grammy awards on South African television but because of the significant time difference they were over by the time VUZU screened them at 7.30 pm local (unless you deprived yourself of sleep & woke up at 3 am to watch them on Mtv)

With a total of 81 awards due to be presented (with 3 new awards added from last year’s 78) 70 of them were awarded at the pre-telecast ceremony earlier in the evening and 11 were presented at the main awards ceremony which were hosted by LL Cool J.

One thing worth noting was that almost all the performers of the night were either country or rock artists except for Alicia Keys, Miguel, Frank Ocean, Rihanna & Justin Timberlake which begs the question are Americans more biased towards country & rock music? (I mean Taylor Swift IS one of the highest selling artists in the world & she is a pop/country singer)

Riri with Nas at the After -Party

Anyway after the festivities of the night were concluded in was on to the after-party! But most of us in S.A were left in awe of the sheer quality of the production of the Grammys & how professionally they were held! Unfortunately we cannot say the same for our own awards ceremonies. With South African’s almost obsessive admiration of American pop culture you’d think that the quality of our productions would be of a higher standard.

And the award goes to......

For the past 4 months we have had several American musicians come to our shores and even though (according to reports) the performances were below par the production was up to standard! But our awards shows are not of the same standard. The SAMA’s of 2011 were probably the worst of them all, they were plagued with chaos and disorganization which led to the then CEO of the SAMA committee Randall Abrahams resigning.

The SAMA committee could learn a thing or two from the Grammys from stage production to selection of performances and even how to select a proper host! Little things like a dress code were implemented at Grammys, which could be a step in the right direction towards taming Somizi’s outrageous outfits.

LL Cool J held it down smoothly.

America has multiple music awards ceremonies but the Grammys are extra special, if music was soccer then the Grammys would be the world cup! So with the Metro fm awards looming on our shores it would’ve been advisable for them to have watched the Grammys but more importantly just like #Grammys was trending all over the world on twitter I hope #SAMA can trend as well & for the right reasons!

SAMA committee I hope you took a pen & paper and wrote down how an awards show is supposed to be held.