What was supposed to be a celebratory milestone for Gospel singer Pulane Maphari turned out to be a bitter pill to swallow when her Sama was withdrawn by The Recording Industry of SA (Risa).
Risa released a statement on Wednesday withdrawing the Best Contemporary Faith Album award Pulane received earlier this year at the Samas 28.
The statement said the award organisers had recently become aware that the gospel star's winning album Sacrificial Worship (Live) had been “repackaged, renamed and paraded as an album she released in 2020 as a new body of work and submitted it for 2021”.
Pulane told TshisaLIVE she learnt of the unfortunate turn of events via shocked people who called her to confirm the headlines.
“I saw it in the article first so somebody alerted me of the article and then when I saw the article, then I thought to myself this cannot be right. Let me check my emails because I haven't been told of anything like that and when I checked my emails I realised that the article that was published, and the email were written [within] a few minutes of each other. So it was just unfortunate that I saw the article first but the email was just letting me know basically that I've been disqualified for the award and that automatic disqualification is based on the reasons that they've put forth.”
Telling her side of the story, Pulane said she had no idea she had violated the rules.
“When we did this project, as much as it could be the same song but it is two different separate projects, and not every song that is on the previous project is there on this project. The previous project was a studio recording.
“We then recorded that live recording (later) and it was everything to do with my journey as an artist and what I felt then I needed to do at that time. Unfortunately, I unknowingly entered the Samas not knowing that it was one of the rules. I had no idea. I find myself in this position. I just wish that we could have just disqualified me from the beginning when I entered because for me, I did not know. It's unfortunate that I find myself in this position,” she said.
Pulane said she didn't want to make any hasty decisions on what the way forward should be, but told TshisaLIVE she would've appreciated some clarity.
“I feel like they were supposed to even ask because I have a lot of questions and one of the questions being how would they reach this conclusion because I was never asked anything, no clarity was ever asked from me, or a meeting or anything and that’s the part I have a bit of a problem with
“I wish that they could have at least said OK, this is a situation or what we think is happening. Can you clarify and then they can make whatever decision that they want to make post the discussion, some type of communication.”
The Sama organisers have since reallocated the award to Kingdmusic for Denga.
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