THERE HAVE BEEN CLAIMS that the gospel music industry does not get the credit it deserves, leaving the sector lagging behind compared to secular music.

However, the industry could get boosted by the recently-introduced ‘Sion Awards', a gospel music awarding event dedicated to recognising gospel artistes who do outstanding work in their music throughout the year.

The awards are being organised by Christian Communications and will be an annual event.

Sion Awards come at a time whenplayers in the gospel music industry needed recognition, following the inconsistensies of Groove Awards, which haven’t been in place since 2019.

Peace Nicodeme Nzahoyankuye, the lead organiser of the awards said the awards are not being organised to expose the failures of the previous awards but to contribute to the development of the gospel music industry.

"We have no intention of using our time to show the weakness of the previous award, all our focus is on celebrating the efforts of local gospel artists as well as recognise their contribution to conveying the Word of God in the Christian community. We believe that this is what we can do to contribute to the development of this industry,” Nzahoyankuye told the press during the awards launch on Thursday.

"Our artistes deserve credit and acknowledgement for their incredible contribution in the church's worshiping part. They should be recognised no matter how small a prize would be,” he added.

The awards will, during the inaugural edition, be given out in 10 categories namely Best Male Artiste, Best Female Artiste, Best Choir, Best Upcountry Choir, Ministry/Group of the year, Upcoming Artiste, Hip Hop Gospel song of the year, Best Video of the year, Diaspora artiste of the year and Upcountry Artiste of the year.

Apart from the categories of Upcoming Artiste and Upcountry Artiste who will walk away with a cash prize of Rwf 300.000, the remaining categories will be awarded Rwf500.000 each, on top of paying for the production of a song both audio and video.

Awards involving money have for the past years sparked controversies among organisers and concerned artistes but Nzahoyankuye allayed fears that similar scenarios could happen in their awards given the fact that their partners assured support to avoid the lack of trust from awardees.

"We trust that our partners won’t let us down. They pledged to support us throughout this journey as indicated in the partnership agreement we signed. We hope they keep their word and, that way, we can assure everyone that such disputes related to cash prizes won’t happen,” he said.

While this year’s edition will focus on recognising artists who have been outstanding throughout the past two years, organisers said that artists will in the next editions be recognised considering how their music fared throughout the year.

According to the agenda, artists have until December 23, to confirm their participation in the awards while the award giving gala will take place in January next year.