Monday, July 28, 2008

My Favourite Radio Ad Voices

I love these Radio Ad Voices:

1. Hakeem the Dream, Capital FM
Hakeem has a melodious and lively voice that is pleasant to the ears.

2. Dr. Mitch Egwang (Uncle Mitch)
Uncle Mitch has a fast talking and humorous voice. (By the way, even when he is speaking French, Luo and Luganda. Not that he has done adverts in these languages.)

3. DJ Ronnie, Capital FM
DJ Ronnie’s mellow, smooth, deep and powerful baritone voice makes you feel safe.

4. Ernest Wasake, Vision Voice
Ernest (Dennis and Esquire’s brother) has a clear, cultured and silver-tongued voice that grabs your attention and makes you picture a man whose looks would turn heads. If you asked me, he sounds more like Dennis than Esquire because the latter’s voice has some tranquillity in it similar to that of a modest man.

5. Hussein Lumumba
Hussein’s voice is slightly nasal. Like someone with a cold and yet at the same time, it’s with clear pronunciation. He still sounds smooth when he speaks French, Swahili and Lingala in normal conversation.

6. Roger Mugisha, KFM
Roger has a bright and breezy voice that lifts up your spirits on a gloomy day.

7. "Are you ready?" voice behind the Wyclef Jean concert advert if it is not no.4's

8. The voice behind the MTN kwata cash advert is like no.1’s

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The 'Obama Times'

Imagine me as a radio news reader, a news tale before me on paper, complex words in teensy-weensy print for the Obama Times.

Create mentally a picture of my face book friend whom I have never met and who owns the Obama Times, turning over pages where I should read since I seem to use so much effort in reading the long sentences. Then I stumble on the word Tsvangirai and pronounce it like I have heard it on the news chang-girr-IGH (-ch as in church; -ng-g as in finger; -irr as in mirror; -igh as in high). The pronunciation of this word has stirred up public and media interest, inside and outside the BBC because of different opinions of how the Shona -tsv cluster should be pronounced in English.

Then I awake.

I send a text message to my friends about the dream and one of them responds, 'Maybe there is something to the dream. Email your face book friend about it and see.'

However, after flipping my mind through the dream, I realised that dreams can be a sham.

There should have been a teleprompter so that I would not need to look down at the print. At least a teleprompter would have helped me appear to have memorized the speech and so speak spontaneously, smoothly, without any hesitation or mistakes.

It should have been a simple, brief and easy to read news report with short sentences that could easily be read with a single breath.

The font should have been average sized and the words written in the present tense since it was broadcast news. This would give the report more of an "action" feel and add more drama.

Names should have been in phonetic spelling so that they are pronounced correctly. For example pronunciation would be pruh-nun-si-AY-shuhn.

There was nothing to this dream. Besides, I am sure there is no newspaper called the Obama times.
 

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