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Showbiz Reporter
URBAN radio station — ZiFM Stereo — has declared the whole of August its birthday month as it celebrates its 3rd anniversary with a series of parties countrywide, starting this weekend.

The parties being held under the theme: “We own August”, in preparation for the anniversary on August 15, will see the station taking Zim dancehall music across the country.

This weekend, the party will be in Kariba at Carribea Bay Resort with Ricky Fire and the Mix Masters entertaining revellers.

A party for Bulawayo listeners will be held at Hartsfield Grounds on August 8 with Zim dancehall artistes, Ricky Fire, Seh Calaz, Judgement Yard and ZiFM’s Jason Le Roux and Mix Masterz expected to perform.

Gweru listeners will be treated to a similar party at the Gweru Sports Club on August 22 followed by a party in Mutare on August 29.

The main celebrations will be held in Harare on August 15 with performing artistes and venue still to be confirmed.

ZiFM station manager, Tendai Madondo, said they would conduct live broadcasts for the better part of next month as they take the station’s personalities to the people.

“Our plan is to take Zim dancehall music to the country’s main cities as it’s the genre of the moment. We’ll periodically have live broadcasts to promote local products with other shows dedicated to the promotion of our culture and arts,” Madondo said.

She said the station had grown tremendously from 2012 when they launched.

“In our three years, we’ve managed to increase our transmitters to 14. Our listenership has grown tremendously as we’ve more than two million listeners with a national footprint of over 90 percent.

“We’re excited about the multiple accolades which we’ve bagged as a station through our news and current affairs programmes.”

With personalities such as Tonderai “TK” Katsande, Ruvheneko “Rhuvie” Parirenyatwa, Patience Musa, Kimble “Triple K” Rogers, Temba Mkanda and Samantha “MisRed” Mussa, ZiFM recently introduced another Zim dancehall slot — Zi-Dancehall Empire — to cater for listeners of the ever-growing genre.

“Through various interactions with listeners during live broadcasts and on platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, we discovered that Zimdancehall was what the people wanted and decided to add another show on Saturday.

This has seen Judgement Yard splitting into two with DJ Flevah and Etherton sticking to their Thursday show and Abisha and DJ 2 Bad hosting the new Zi-Dancehall show on Saturday which replaced Dan and Lo’s show,” Madondo said.