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COVID-19 pushes Selmor to diversify

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AFRO-JAZZ musician Selmor Mtukudzi seems to have reaped many positives from the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic after she came out more innovative with the recent launch of a reality show dubbed What’s Up With The Manatsas: Selmor and Tendai (WUWTM).

BY WINSTONE ANTONIO

AFRO-JAZZ musician Selmor Mtukudzi seems to have reaped many positives from the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic after she came out more innovative with the recent launch of a reality show dubbed What’s Up With The Manatsas: Selmor and Tendai (WUWTM).

While the COVID-19-induced national lockdown has choked the music industry as artistes remain banned from staging live performances, Selmor did not allow the idleness to blight her vision.

The show, that will feature her husband Tendai Manatsa and their children, will be broadcast on her @Selmor Mtukudzi YouTube channel.

“Having been under lockdown for so long, we started getting ideas of what else we could do with our time and that is how it started. So yes, COVID-19 has somehow given us time to reflect and come up with ideas including starting this programme,” she said.

Selmor said the show’s first episode was coming soon.

“The reality show is about Tendai and myself, our kids, our lives. It (show) is also about our immediate and extended family, our challenges and our triumphs, among other things,” she said.

“It is just us sharing our lives with the world, with our main focus being people home here in Zimbabwe.”

Selmor is daughter of the late decorated international music superstar and national hero, Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi, while Tendai is the son of legendary yesteryear musician Zex Manatsa.

“We came to the realisation that a lot of content out there that we see on television just somehow seems unrealistic. It is always the super-rich showing off their money and possessions and we just could not find anyone who lives a normal life we can look up to and be inspired, and not feel like their life is impossible for some of us to achieve,” she said.

“That is when we thought why don’t we become that so that normal people can look up to and know that they don’t have to be multi-millionaires to enjoy life. We just want to show people that it’s OK being where you are as long as you keep working hard to achieve more.”

Selmor said people should not put themselves under pressure based on what they see on the small screen.

“The high standards of life that we see from the Americans may not be a reality for us here in Zimbabwe. Some people are going out of their way to portray a fake life on social media because of such pressures,” she said.

“So through the show we are hoping that Tendai and I can inspire someone and tell them that it’s OK living in a one-roomed house as long as you are not settling, but you continue to work hard to get to a two-roomed house and more.”

Selmor said now that she had recovered her once hacked Facebook page, she would see if they could monetise it by taking the show on that platform.

“I was hurt when my Facebook page was stolen, it had taken me many years of hard work to get all those numbers. And to just lose them overnight was really painful for me. Getting it back meant the world to me,” she said.

“My page is my other source of income as I use it to advertise companies and products, so having it back means putting food on my table.

Selmor said the inspiration to diversify had also seen her directing and shooting two music videos for her husband, adding that she was now taking a keen interest in film.

  • Follow Winstone on Twitter @widzoanto

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