All posts by Roy van der Merwe

AFRI MUSIC SONG CONTEST

Time is running out. Singers from all over Africa has only 6 more days to pre-register for the first AFRI MUSIC SON CONTEST. Registration closes on 3 October – midnight South African time.

Right now artists from 41 countries have registered and some countries surprised us with tons of registration. Disappointments are Egypt and Kenya with just one artist each – surely there are more talent there. Although many artists have registered from South Africa, the disappointment lies with the Afrikaans artists, more English and black language artists have registered. Lets hope for a big last minute rush.

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AFRI MUSIC SONG CONTEST – CAP SOUNDS AWARD FOR BEST COMPOSER

We can now announce another sponsor for an award in the Afri music song contest. This time it is for best composer. The award will be known as the CAP SOUNDS AWARD FOR BEST COMPOSER. The sponsor is Cap Sounds from Germany.

We asked Manfred Holz to write about the company and their achievements to date.

CAP – Sounds is a music production & publishing company based in Hofheim (near Frankfurt), in the heart of Germany, – launched in 1989 by Manfred Holz who is still Managing director of the company.

CAP-Sounds is mainly active in the pop & dance music sector with crossover potential.

From the start CAP-Sounds has been a very effective and successful production company with several chart successes in various countries.

In the dance music sector CAP has achieved European wide success with the chart hit “EL RITMO” by the MOSQUITO HEADZ and several tracks by ROBOTNICO.

CAP has been successfully worked with several Top Stars on the production and/or remix side like for example GEORGE McCRAE, ROSIE GAINES, EAST 17, B.V.S.M.P. & STEVIE B. , aiming a nominee at the prestigious JUNO Award for Best Dance Single of the Year in Canada and nine times platinum award.

CAP always has been a partner for the industry and co-operated in several marketing campaigns combined with music, – like for example with FERRERO, producing for them and for BMG the chart album HAPPY HIPPO HITS (8 weeks charts) and with SESAME STREET and BMG producing for them the SESAME STREET Album with 2 chart singles, – the RUBBER DUCKIE song (top 20 charts) and the COOKIE – Song (top 40 charts).

CAP has worked for TUI producing the ROBINSON CLUB Anthem “TIME FOR EMOTIONS” and for PROCTER & GAMBLE the LENOR Song from the worldwide TV Advertisement.

It has been as well a pleasure for CAP Sounds producing the Maltese entry to the Eurovision Song Contest for 7 consecutive years with fantastic results, being 6 times in the Top 10 and reached a 3rd place in 1998 and a 2nd place in 2002. In the years 2003/2004 CAP has published the Cyprus entry twice as well as having published parts of the Lithuanian entry. Followed by the Eurovision entries for Malta in the years 2010, 2011, 2012 & 2017 and the release of the Latvian entry in the G/S/A territories in 2011. Achieving another highlight with the 2nd place of Azerbaijan’s entry in 2013! – To be continued ….

FABRIZIO FANIELLO (www.fabriziofaniello.com) is an exclusive artist of CAP-Sounds with fantastic success all over the world, – beside Malta, where he won twice the trophy BEST MALE SINGER OF THE YEAR in the MALTA MUSIC AWARDS, his music is released by now in more then 30 countries, including
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Russia, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, China & Japan.

CAP-Sounds is known by now as well for building up a fine WELLNESS and RELAXATION Music catalog and is active in the German music scene with popular singer LAURIS REINIKS with his first German single “Ich Renne” (www.laurisreiniks.lv) and BELLA VISTA (www.bella-vista.de)

The Ethno / World / Pop Project SANAVÉ is one of the mayor acts , released 3 albums so far by now and synched their music with lots of commercials for TV, – Welcome to the world of heavenly voices ; www.sanave.de

CAP-Sounds is very active in producing & publishing songs for Eurovision and has been responsible as the label for many artists.
Here the list of the final participation at ESC:
1. 1996 – Malta „In a woman´s heart“ Miriam Christine Borg (Producer & Publisher)
2. 1997 – Malta “Let me fly” Debbie Sheri (Producer & Publisher)
3. 1998 – Malta “The one that I love” Chiara (Producer & Publisher)
4. 1999 – Malta “Believe´n Peace” Times Three (Producer & Publisher)
5. 2000 – Malta “Desire” Claudette Pace (Producer & Publisher)
6. 2001 – Malta “Another Summer Night” Fabrizio Faniello (Producer & Publisher)
7. 2002 – Malta “7th wonder” Ira Losco (Producer & Publisher)
8. 2003 – Cyprus “Feeling Alive” Stelios Constantas (Publisher)
9. 2006 – Malta “I Do” Fabrizio Faniello” (Producer & Publisher)
10. 2010 – Malta “My Dream” Thea Garrett (Producer & Publisher)
11. 2011 – Malta “One Life” Glen Vella (Label)
12. 2011 – Latvia “Angel in Disguise” Musiqq (Label & Publisher)
13. 2012 – Malta “This is the Night” Kurt Calleja (Producer & Publisher)
14. 2012 – Azerbaijan “When the music dies” Sabina Babayeva (Label)
15. 2013 – Belarus “Solayoh” Alyona Lanskaya (Label)
16. 2013 – Azerbaijan “Hold me” Farid Mammadov (Label)
17. 2014 – Azerbaijan “Start a fire” Dilara Kazimova (Label)
18. 2014 – Ukraine “Tick Tock” Mariya Yaremchuk (Label)
19. 2015 – Azerbaijan “Hour of the Wolf” Elnur Huseynov (Label)
20. 2016 – San Marino “I didn’t know” – Serhat (Label & Publisher)
21. 2016 – Azerbaijan “Miracle” – Samra (Label)
22. 2017 – Azerbaijan “Skeletons” – Dihaj (Label)
23. 2017 – Malta “Breathlessly” – Claudia Faniello (Label, Producer & Publisher)

All CAP-Sounds Label releases are from now on in the digital distribution of BELIEVE DIGITAL (http://www.believedigital.de/), a leading digital distributor of independent artists and labels.

CAP-Sounds publishing arm is administered worldwide at BUDDE MUSIC (http://www.buddemusic.com ) in Berlin, one of the largest & best independent publishers in Germany with representatives in all major music countries.

Our criteria for this award is that we we are looking for originality in music with artists with heart and passion, character and charisma.

If you want to get in contact with CAP-sounds, please find below all the necessary information.
CAP-Sounds music publishing and production
Herhaeuser str. 1
65719
Hofheim
Germany

Tel ++ 49 – 6122 – 5333666
Fax ++ 49 – 6122 5333667

Mail – cap-sounds@t-online.de
Web – http://www.capsounds.de
Facebook – www.facebook.com/capsounds/
Releases – http://cap-sounds.believeband.com

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EUROVISION 2018 – SWITZERLAND

We saw a newspaper wrote that 670 songs have been received by the jury for the Eurovision song contest in 2018. 670 songs is a very big number – the highest in the last 20 years. The jury will choose six songs for the TV-show where the actual Swiss entry for Lisbon will be selected. Lets hope that among these 670 songs are some real gems which could give Switzerland again a high position in Eurovision.

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AFRI FRIEND – BRAZZAVILLE – REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Brazzaville Africafriend
Country that represents: Republic of the Congo
Gender: Female
Birthday: August 15
Eurovision Land Counterpart Friend: Cardiff Eurofriend
Brazzaville loves helping people with special needs while finding a special place for them, and this autistic girl has a bright and happy view of everything and everyfriend nice in the Song Contest and she treats them with love.
She has a lot of talent and loves helping others and doing fun things for others like doing unboxing videos of everything she discovers and sharing to the other Africafriends, and they love her and they think she’s a hero thanks to her possitive attitude in each situation.
She’s good friends with Cardiff Eurofriend because he inspired her to see every friend’s unique abilities within and she believes that each friend has a piece to fulfill their destinies with love and diversity(just like her jigsaw hairclip!).

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VOTING IN SINGING CONTEST

Next weekend a big event is taking place at Carnival City. One of the items on the program is a talent contest where about 15 singers will sing and be judged. One of them will be crowded as winner. Judges from both Eurovision South Africa and ESC Covers will be among the judges and hopefully we will find some talent to do some Eurovision covers and enter those songs into the Afri music song contest. Hopelik sien ons verskeie van die SA vriende van die faceboek daar.

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AFRI FRIEND – JUBA – SOUTH SUDAN

Time again to introduce you to more AFRI FRIENDS, and this time one of the cutest to have come to light.

Juba Africababyfriend
Country that represents: South Sudan
Gender: Male
Birthday: July 9
Eurovision Land counterpart friend: San Marino Lil Eurofriend
Juba is the latest friend to be born in the whole Song Contest and we already know that he’s the cutest babyfriend you’ll ever met! Even he’s more younger than San Marino himself!
Everyfriend in AfrimusicVille plays with him and since’s the other Africafriends are meeting the Eurofriends for the first time and learning more about working together. And like any other baby, he recieves a lot of attention from all friends!
He’s always holding his stuffed monkey because is his favourite toy and given by the other Africafriends when he was born.

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MALTA 1995 – MIKE SPITERI

In 1995 Mike Spiteri participated for Malta with the song KEEP ME IN MIND. Well, he has escaped the mind of Roy van der Merwe, the owner of ESCCovers until today when Ian Fowell, the chief editor of the website, who is currently in Malta sent a picture of Mike making a guest appearance at the festival. Mike was the very first Maltese singer Roy met in person having gotten accreditation for the first time in 1995. The 1995 entry was recorded in Florence, Italy.

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MELODIFESTIVALEN 2018

Written by Andy Mikheev

Submission period for SVT Melodifestivalen 2018 was closed on Monday with 2771 songs submitted. Of them 2324 were sent in to the Regular competition for the established songwriters and 447 more to the Newcomers contest. This is the highest number of songs submitted since 2012.

“We are very keen to start working with the selection process and are delighted that the interest of both the public and the music industry is still high,” says Melodifestivalen producer Christer Björkman .

Within a short time the selection jury will sit down and choose the best entries. The chairman of the jury and assistant producer Karin Gunnarsson will lead this work.

One of the artists is already known. Stiko Per Larsson won the bonus prize to compete in the Melodifestivalen through the radio contest “P4 Nästa”

AFRI MUSIC SONG CONTEST – 41 countries have registered

A week ago we reported that 39 of the 54 African countries have registered to take part in the first Afri music song contest. A week later and now we can report that two more countries have registered – SWAZILAND and MADAGASCAR bringing the total to a staggering 41 countries just one less than the 42 Eurovision had in Kyiv this year. There are still about 2 weeks to go until 3 October deadline and can we reach the magic 42 countries?

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