Praye Wins Ultimate Award

Praye displaying thier award The stars definitely fell at the Independence Square to witness the six contestants from Burkina Faso, Mali, La Cote D?Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Ghana who vied for the ultimate prize of the Pan African Nescafe Africa Revelations 2005.

NAR began last year, unearthing talents in some of the African countries and now is the time to see one group who will stand tall among them.

Papa Sly of Music Music Jokes Corner fame steered the programme by introducing artistes like Kwaw Kese, FBS and Nkasei to get people in the mood for the show before inviting KOD and Mariam Toure from La Cote D?Ivoire to take the audience through the second phase.

The event kicked off with KOD reminding the audience about the stages that the contestants had to go through and why they were all summoned at the Independence Square.

Batman dressed up in all black cape costume got the audience guessing when he came up stage. His live performance really shocked every one and he also introduced the contestants whiles his band played the instrumental version of the NAR theme song.

The contestants had to go through a stage called ?Nescappella? where they did accapella of Nescafe. The crowd was not ?down? with the contestants but as soon as Praye got on stage they cheered them all out.

Christiana Love, the only gospel artiste who found herself in the show with her ?Oko yi? song lifted up the spirits of the contestants.

In the second phase, the contestants had to do their own recorded songs. The crowd was not in tune with Raph B of Mali who sang like primary school children to me.

Berey Koy of Niger shook the colourful decorated stage with their rap song. The lead singer of Khady Mbaye of Senegal sang nicely and told Ghanaians how she loved them. El Dad, the all female group also proved themselves well.

The crowd sang along with Praye who had home support when they came next singing ?My Shoddy?.

A star-studded line-up of artistes like Okra, Tinny, Quata, Obour, Rex Omar and Freddie Meiwa followed up the contestants? performance.

Meiway of Zoplazo fame got the audience fired up with his Miss Loulou song. Rex Omar displayed an African live band performance singing songs from his old albums and his current album ?Didadadididi?.

Praye and their new producer, Sarfo Abebrese of Lisarf Music made a triumphal entry when they were adjudged the winners of the event, holding their trophy award aloft to cheers from thousands of fans.

Khady Mbaye (Senegal) who were also tipped to win took the second place and Berey Koy (Niger) found themselves at the third position.

Praye won for themselves an already built recording studio, a trophy plus a ghetto blaster.

Kudos to Nescafe and Top Dogg Communications for putting together such a major event and hope that we see more of this, this year.