MAMAs shine light on African talent

The second MTV Africa Music Awards with Zain (MAMAs) – which honours and celebrates the most popular contemporary music in Africa – was staged in October 2009, in the Kasarani Gymnasium at the Moi International Sports Complex in Nairobi. The three-hour show was presented by Wyclef Jean with a host of guest stars, and featured live performances from Akon, Nigerian rapper MI, Zebra & Giraffe, and Kenyan hip-hop star, and 2008 MAMA winner, Wahu.

In keeping with the show’s purpose of bringing Africa together, the MAMA awards featured multiple collaborations between artists from different countries and music genres – mixing up hip-hop with R&B, alternative, soul and dancehall. Among the collaborations keeping the 4,000-strong crowd entertained was a three way tie-up featuring HHP, Brickz and 2Face, a stunning collaboration between Kenyan divas Amani and Wahu and Tanzania’s AY, and a dramatic hip-hop/rock mash-up between Zebra & Giraffe and Da LES.

The big winners on the night were Nameless and MI, each scooping two awards. While Amani, D’Banj, Zebra & Giraffe, Samini, 2Face, HHP and Lucky Dube also picked up a trophy each - Lucky Dube receiving a posthumous Legend Award following the reggae star’s tragic death in 2007. Amateur singer Patricke-Stevie Moungondo from Congo Brazzaville won the award for My Video, beating thousands of amateur singers to win the coveted MAMA trophy, in the form of a ‘retro/futuristic’ microphone balanced on top of a globe of the world with Africa poised symbolically at the top.

The evening closed with a moving performance of Michael Jackson’s crowd pleaser ‘Wanna Be Starting Something’, with Akon and all the other performers.

Providing the rigging, lighting, audio, LED screens and power distribution for the 2009 awards was Gearhouse South Africa. The Gearhouse crew was led by Bill Lawford, who collaborated closely with Simon Roche, logistics manager from production company VWV, together with an international production team primarily from the UK, including lighting designer/director Gurdip Mahal, moving light programmer/operator Ross Williams, FOH sound engineer Derrick Zieba and screens director Chris Saunders from XL Video UK. Gearhouse also asked UK lighting rental company HSL to supply additional lighting equipment and technician Tim Oliver for the event. The live broadcast and recording equipment came from Audio Broadcast Services.

Claudio Santucci’s stage design proved an eye-catching visual backdrop comprising myriad different sized cubes flown at varying heights, all clad in diffusion material and lit, acting like giant light-boxes, interlaced with Lighthouse and Schnick Schnack LED strips which were supplied by ProCon in Germany. The floor was black high gloss Marley criss-crossed with white lines to add depth and dimension. The entire set was constructed in Italy and shipped over especially for the event along with the high-gloss flooring.

The Gearhouse Rigging crew of six for the get-in and out was led by Anthony Banks, and worked alongside MTV’s head rigger, Kevin Monks from UK-based Blackout. Their first task was to install a 34m-wide x 4.5m-deep mother grid to suspend the flown set elements. The tricky thing here was only having a limited number of panels through which the motor chains could be dropped, at 3.8m apart. The grid was picked up by 18 Lodestar motors. Six lighting trusses were flown on 21 motors, and audio was flown on two 2-tonne hoists. The audio points had to be bridled in the roof void to distribute the weight across each of the flying nodes that had an estimated standard weight-bearing load of 1000Kg each. A 40m black drape was hung at the back of the stage, which was curved around to also form a backstage gathering area. Blackout supplied eight custom made black drapes to mask the venue’s windows. A total of 19 tonnes of equipment was suspended from the roof on 70 motors – a combination of half, one and two-tonne Lodestars.

Jason Fritz was Gearhouse’s lighting crew chief, and Mr Mahal’s design was rigged onto over 50 sections of trussing forming a 60ft-span mid and back trusses over-stage, together with an L-shaped front truss, stretching 60ft in each direction. This provided lighting positions for highlighting the winner’s platform and for washing the front of stage. Further back in the audience was a T-shaped truss, made from another 20 sections, which accommodated four under-hung 1.2K follow spots, audience lighting and additional fixtures to cover the winner and presenter areas. The fixtures on this were a mix of 5K fresnels, Source Four profiles and Robe ColorWash 700E AT moving lights. Five sections of folding truss were used to form a 40ft truss behind the winners pit, loaded with a selection of PARs, 5K fresnels and Source Fours.

Over the stage, the main lighting fixtures were 24 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 2500E ATs, plus additional Robe ColorWash 700E ATs on the mid truss, six Atomic 3K strobes with colour scrollers and another two under-hung follow spots on the upstage truss. Scattered around the floor and LED screens were 22 High End Studio Spots, four Atomics with scrollers, complete with six Studio Color moving lights at the sides for cross stage washes.

A WholeHog3 desk with backup was supplied by HSL and programmed and operated by Mr Williams, with Mr Mahal running an Avolites Pearl to control all the generics. HSL also supplied 34 i-Pix Satellites, which were ensconced in the set and used to light the cubes together with 16 i-Pix BB4 wash lights.

Mr Fritz had to train up four follow spot operators from the local crew who had never done the job before, and reported that they were, ‘among the best follow spotters I have ever worked with.’ Mr Williams commented: ‘it was the first time I have worked with Gearhouse South Africa. The crew were all absolutely brilliant, and Jason and his team went out of their way to be helpful, look after us and ensure that everything went smoothly from the moment we stepped off the plane.’

Jako de Wit looked after the FOH live sound for Gearhouse, ensuring that all the visiting engineers were happy with the set-up, and mixing any artists who didn’t have one, while Mr Zieba mixed and co-ordinated all sound for the presenters, DJs, TV links, and VT play-ins. The system consisted of 24 L-Acoustics Kudo elements, configured in low-frequency contour mode to suit the heavy bass of the show. Twelve Kudos boxes were flown left and right of the stage, out towards the edges to ensure that site lines were preserved, a positioning which brought its own sonic challenges for the sound department. These were run in conjunction with SB118 subs on the deck and under the stage, arranged in the standard ‘L’ configuration, with cabinets at 90° to one another.

Secondary left and right hangs each side comprised six dV-Doscs, with another three dVs along the stage lip for front fill. All of the system processing was done by XTA DP424, DP 226 and a Dolby Lake processor. The bands were all mixed on a Yamaha PM5D using all the onboard effects, and a Yamaha M7CL supplied for Mr Zieba’s mix, which took care of the presenters, playback artists and DJ feeds.

Monitors were 20 L-Acoustics HiQs and Flashlight side fills, with 12 channels of Sennheiser G2 IEMs, and the mic package included 20 Shure UHF MA hand-held mics. Monitor world was run for Gearhouse by Cyril Kholofela Sewela using another PM5D. Radio mics and the IEM system for Zebra & Giraffe were tech’d by Tanya Brown, who was working on her first international gig for Gearhouse Audio, having joined the company a year ago. This busy and precise task of ensuring that all performing artists had their mics distributed to them in a timely fashion before going onstage - proved to be a valuable introduction for the new recruit.

The main acoustic challenge was the forward and outwards position of the PA, and in getting a good even, voluminous coverage all around. The changeovers were also tight and busy, with the Gearhouse Audio crew of five working closely with the stage management team led by Mike Grove from Stage Miracles from the UK.

For the first time, the show was filmed and broadcast in high definition. German rental company Audio Broadcast Services (ABS), delivered two Lawo mc²56 mixing consoles that were used for the broadcast mix and a separate music mix. The Dutch OB specialist Cinevideogroup, who ordered the consoles from ABS, also provided a flyaway production unit for the 12-camera HD broadcast from the Moi sports centre, with camera direction by Paul Shyvers. Huub Lelieveld of Cinevideogroup was in charge of the technical set-up and mixed the broadcast output for the show. ‘I chose Lawos because I use them daily and they have proven to be both extremely reliable and infinitely flexible. Because of the very limited space in the mix rooms, I chose the smaller mc²56 instead of the mc²66, my usual choice.’

In the Moi, fibre cables – also provided by ABS – connected the mix rooms to the Lawo Dallis frames on stage, with a total of 112 mic inputs for music, ambience and presentation mics. Line outputs provided several feeds to the FOH and the comms lines. In the music mix room, the legendary Tim Summerhayes mixed the live music on stage to stereo, plus feeds to a main and backup ABS multitrack system, connected to the Lawo core via a Madi optical link.

The recording proceeded flawlessly, and was broadcast worldwide on MTV Base and several other MTV stations. A Recording of the show was also broadcast on various MTV sister stations across Africa in the following days. All technical elements of the show combined seamlessly with the lively and energetic performances, show programme and raft of Awards celebrating the rich diversity of African music, creating a memorable event for this, the second MTV African Music Awards.

www.mama.mtvbase.com
www.gearhouse.co.za
www.audio-broadcast-services.de