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Millicent Andile Dube, Showbiz reporter

BULAWAYO will on 25 March host one of the biggest praise and worship concerts to be ever held in the city, at the family of God Auditorium

Gotta Love Gospel is an event where outstanding gospel musicians will get a chance to record their music, on the day.

It is a collaborative effort by stakeholders and service providers to boost the gospel music scene and provide a platform for artistes to showcase themselves and interact with fans without having to bear the heavy cost of hosting a concert.

“The preparations have been both quite challenging and exciting because we wanted to move away from the concept where artistes come through with their own bands and backing vocals. We assembled a team of instrumentalists and vocalists that have been working with the artists to create that special show. Our reasoning was we want to maintain the same standard and quality of music from the beginning to the end of the show and from the preparations the team is promising to give a spectacular performance,” said Lungile Mafikela, one of the organisers.

The Gotta love Gospel organisers have partnered with Sound Kalcha for the audio/visual experience, Project Kamili design agency for the branding and promotional content and black photography will be handling the footage for the show.

Mai Mwamuka, Moses Zivengwa, Marvin Dube, Vuyile Qongo, Pastor Barack and Nita Mahara will be part of the day’s exceptional performers.

“We don’t have any surprise guest artists for this edition as we wanted to work with the artists available in the city and see how the people respond to the production that we have planned,” said Lungile Mafikela.

The gospel artistes will be given an exclusive opportunity to sign contracts and be able to voice out their concerns on the music industry as they vouch for gospel as a genre.

“The main challenge in the industry has been lack of finances for artistes to push their brands and more so, hosting concerts. This is what prompted us to come up with this idea to pool our resources and give artistes that platform which they need to express themselves, but also to get something tangible from it and we’ll be giving each of the artistes footage of their performances as it is a live recording. More collaborative effort among the major stakeholders in the industry and finding ways to pour resources into that area will be a game changer because it has never been an issue of talent but rather resources to push that talent,” said Mafikela.