Free Ghc3,000 up for grabs

The Hotel Grand Casamora in Accra has set aside a seed amount of GH¢3,000 for the winner of a Karaoke contest it is organising.

“Auditions are free; no one would be charged anything before competing and the winner would simply walk home with the GH¢3,000 cash. The amount may even go up because this is just seed money the hotel has put up for the competition,” Chris Afriyie Samora, manager of the hotel, told NEWS-ONE.

Samora said the aim of the Karaoke contest is not just for entertainment purposes but also to unearth hidden talents in wannabe musicians and give them the platform to become stars.

“It is a very simple contest where the contestants will take turns to sing popular songs into a microphone over pre-recorded backing tracks. And this would be done right here at the hotel. The best singer walks away with the cash and others get some consolation prizes.

“This is very much related to the overall goal of nurturing talents. It is not only about the entertainment, but it is to help discover talents and see how best to make them grand stars. That is the underpinning aim and basically the Hotel Grand Casamora is sponsoring this because it forms part of our aim of discovering talents and making them stars. We have a comedy, poetry and live band aspect and we want people who do not have the opportunity and the platform to come over here,” Samora explained.

He said the competition would run over a period of six weeks, during which six contestants would be made to compete per week for two winners to be selected each week. By the sixth week, there will be 12 contenders who will then battle it out among themselves.

The Hotel Grand Casamora Karaoke contest kicked off last Saturday, May 2, at the hotel, located at Adirigano near East Legon in Accra, and had some convincing talents turning up.

Aside the contest, the hotel also has a tall list of veteran highlife legends who stage live shows there at weekends.

It also has a set of musical instruments for training wannabe musicians.

“What is difficult is when you are an instrumentalist but you do not have the instruments to practise. We provide all the instruments and trainers for free here. We have the likes of Sloopy Mike Gyamfi always on standby to take the wannabe musicians through the rudiments and all this forms part of our mission to discover and nature talents for the creative arts industry,” Samora added.