Rita Paulsen interview
“I saw there were Tanzanian youths with so much talent but just lacking a platform to showcase it” Hit TV talent show Bongo Star Search is well known for the moving stories of its contestants and Rita Paulsen – the show’s founder and one of its team of judges – has her own story to share of overcoming challenges to achieve success. Here she talks to Jahazi about being ostracised as a teenage mum and how she found the strength to help herself and now enjoys being able to help others reach their potential.
Q
Bongo Star Search has been a huge success with this year seeing the broadcast of its 11th season. Who, for you, has been the best act in the show’s history? Thankfully every year we get different talents, new contestants showcasing fresh unique styles, with varying background stories, which are always moving. It is rather difficult to pick a particular favourite, but if I must I would say so far my favourite was the Season 6 winner Walter Chilambo because his transformation and how he evolved on this show was quite shocking to all of us. He came on this show unnoticed, not calling for too much attention, but as the show went on, he slowly captured everyone’s attention including mine and to this day, he is one of our great ambassadors doing very well in the gospel music industry. You also have to burst the bubble of a lot of people’s dreams if they are clearly not as talented as they think they are. Is that hard? It’s a very difficult task, I always get emotional about it because I know how much they want to make it in life and
they need this opportunity, because I’ve been there wanting to do something and you don’t want to lose any chance you get. I try to convince the other judges to be slightly soft on them and we fight a lot. If it was only up to me everyone who makes the top 10 would be a winner. It really is painful and a very hard thing to do when you know this is someone’s dream, someone’s future. The judges are crucial to the show. You all have your own distinct, strong characters, but seem to get on well. Is that the case? Funny enough we do get on so well, and we have good chemistry despite all of the judges standing up for their cause as they are experienced music industry figures and they understand exactly what to look for in an artist. Generally we get along very well, though we fight here and there and do have our misunderstandings. We are all there for the same cause. It is so much fun working together. When you started the show, did you expect you would find so much singing
talent among Tanzanians as you travelled the country with your auditions? Yes, I actually knew we would find a lot of talent out there, because before I started Bongo Star Search I did notice there were a lot of youths with so much talent but were just lacking a platform to showcase it. Before that I used to do music videos for talented people who could not afford to pay for them. The reason why I chose to do Bongo Star Search was to give a platform to many! Running my production company [Benchmark Productions] I used to offer just one video to one artist every other year, then I figured there is so much talent out there and this show would give them a chance to show stakeholders their talent, because you never know who is watching!
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