East Africa: The Search for Region's Idol Continues

A Kenyan singing hopeful walks up to the Idols East Africa judges and says she is going to sing Noah by "Shakeez".

Halfway into her acappella, they realise she meant No One by Alicia Keys. The three judges are quick to stop her and with three "nos", her dream of becoming East Africa's answer to the classically trained Keys comes to nought.

The Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam auditions that have aired on DStv so far have only yielded 13 and four hopefuls respectively for Top 100 slots. Add to that Uganda's nine hopefuls and East Africa has only 26 golden ticket holders that will compete for a place among a choice Top 24 alongside contestants from Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

These will later be whittled down to an elite singing Top 10 from which the winner of an $80,000 cash prize and recording deal with Sony BMG will emerge.

The apparent lack of able singing talent, the kind that can carry a tune outside the confines of a shower could be put down to having the hopefuls ape international songsters. Not much can be done about that though, since that is the Idols format.

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