Rules

A. Principles and Categories 

General Principles

1. Any African artist may enter the Kora Awards
2. If he/she meets the criteria as set forth in the chapter "Candidatures"
3. By possible nomination (although not obligatory) by a legal entity (record company, publishing- or media house), in absolute agreement has with the artist. 
4. The necessary documents may be handed in at the Kora Awards offices until May 30 of the year in question, in order to be examined by the Kora Pre-selection Committee in June, at the end of which the list of "nominees" will be proclaimed. The Kora Jury will examine the documents of these nominees the day before the ceremony itself in November. In addition, certain categories are subject to the vote of the radio and television public.

Categories

Categories examined by the pre-selection committee, then by the Jury:

• Best Artist or Group - North Africa.
• Best Artist or Group - East Africa.
• Best Artist or Group - Southern Africa. 
• Best Artist or Group - West Africa,
• Best Artist or Group - Central Africa.
• Best Artist or Group - European Diaspora and the Islands.
• Best Artist or Group - Afro-American Diaspora.
• Best Artist or Group - traditional African Music.
• Best arrangement
• Best video (director)
• Most promising African male.
• Most promising African female.

Categories subject to public verdict:

All the prize winners of the regional categories

• Best African artist.
• Best African group.

Categories determined by the Standing Committee of the Jury:

• Jury special price.
• Honorary price.

B. Candidatures

For each nomination, the artist (or a legal entity that represents the artist) should provide the following (with reception date at the latest before May 30 of the year of the awards):

• 1 video beta SP of the title considered by him/herself as the most representative of his/her work, produced from 1 January of the year preceding the awards. The title must not have been entered previously for the Kora Awards;
• 5 CDs (for radio promotion);
• 2 Photos;
• 1 Biography in French & English -
• A filled-out form (accompanying the letter), or any printed document indicating completely and absolutely, under penalty of rejection: -
  • The Name of the artist or the group;
  • If Group: the number of members originating from Africa;
  • If not, country of origin;
  • The title of the work (as well as its appearance number in the video in the event of a compilation);
  • Mention " Traditional Music " if the case be;
  • The Names, Addresses, Tel. & Fax (addresses e-mail) of the sender.

Important Comments

Taking into account the ever increasing number of candidatures:

• The video will remain the only document put before the jury, whence forth the importance of its audio and visual quality. The CDs will only be used for the promotion of the finals.
• The Kora board reserves the right to limit the jury to the first 7 minutes of traditional works, and the first 5 for the others; the responsibility is on the candidate to reduce (by mounting extracts) his work appropriately if the case needs be.
• Only those groups of which at least half the members belong to at least one of the African nationalities will be allowed in the category " African groups "
• Any ensemble of which the name is not that of the principal soloist (singer or other combination where would appear the name of the principal soloist (except in the case of duos, trios, quartets, etc... of soloists).
• The focus placed on the soloist only partially overshadows that of the other members, the latter profiting from a quasi-equal focus between them.

C. Pre-selection and Jury

General Regulations

1. The pre-selection committee and the Kora Jury are not deliberating authorities whose decisions will be the fruit of a consensus arbitrated by their President: Their verdict will be the result of the average obtained by each competitor divided by the number of examiners present at the time of the meeting, on the basis of a system of free, individual and secret notation.
2. The President of the Committee, as well as that of the Jury, has the following prerogatives:
   1. to ensure the impartiality of free debates and the fluidity of the meetings;
   2. to advance or to slow down projections of the documents after consultation by the members of each college in the limits indicated below;
   3. to inform the colleges about possible litigation. It is for this reason that the President of the pre-selection committee becomes a de facto member of the consecutive Jury;
   4. to federate and transmit to the permanent Executive Committee the possible requests and suggestions emanating from the members of the respective colleges;
3. Free speech will remain during the meetings, primarily for information purposes; but the executive Committee, the president of the jury and the usher will assure that all pre-notations and notations remain at the discretion of each examiner, and that at no moment the real results are transmitted to them, nor communicable between them.
4. The colleges are constituted by 1 member per region. At present that translates into 5 members, to which are added 1 French and 1 English member, all freely appointed by the Kora executive Committee in a spirit of equality between professions, age and sex.
5. In order to counter any inclination of pressure on the examiners before/after/during the meetings, any inspector is compelled to abstain him/herself during the examination of the region of which he/she originates; the examiner may however supply information to his colleagues, if they so require.
6. Consequently, any examiner connected in any manner to a work in the competition, is prohibited to vote for the category in question.
7. The work of the examiners proceeds in a single meeting (spread out over several days with regard to the pre-selection) where the previews are immediately followed by the official notation by the usher.
8. Only notes from 0 to 20, without decimals, are valid. Any negative note is translatable to 0. Any note above than 20 is reduced to 20. Decimals are reduced to the lower round number (ex: 12,5 is regarded as 12)

Pre-see

1. At the beginning of each notation meeting, each member of the pre-selection committee receives a rough notation sheet, comprising the list of candidates (name, origin, work), as well as 4 columns to allow him/her to evaluate the artist and the work in its entirety, the video, the arrangements/realization, and the quality of hope, in his/her personal judgment and on the criterion of his/her choice, during the first screening where the video is shown in its entirety.
2. a second partial screening, immediately consecutive to the first, allows the pre-selection members to confirm their notation:
   1. each work is re-examined by a maximum of 2 of its principal sections, with a maximum of 1 minute per section.
   2. at the end of this viewing, each pre-selection member receives a final notation sheet, comprising the same columns, to mark his/her final notes.
   3. for the pan-African categories. " Best Traditional Music " and " Best Group ", names of the competitors originating from the same region as a pre-selection member, are omitted from the list given to the juror in question, in accordance with article 1.5 of this regulation.
   4. the usher recovers the final notation sheets before passing onto another region.
3. At the time of proclamation, the 3 to 6 competitors with the highest average in each of the categories subjected to pre-selection, i.e. all except the categories of "Best African Artist", "Best group", as well as "Special Jury Price" and "Honorary Price ", are nominated in strict alphabetical order. The executive Committee freely fixes the number of nominees per region according to the number of competitors and ex-aequo. It can thus vary from region to region.

D. Final Selection

1. The method is quasi-similar to that of the pre-selection: at the beginning of each notation meeting, each juror receives a rough notation sheet comprising the list of candidates (name, origin, work), and a single column enabling him/her to evaluate the artist and the work as a whole for the category under examination, according to his personal judgment and the criterion of his/her choice, during the first screening where the video sequences are shown in their integrality.
2. Following is a partial screening of a minimum of 1 minute per section of each work (2 per work, or i.e. a minimum of 2 minutes on the whole). Following this screening, each juror puts his/her final notes on the final notation sheet.
3. Always in accordance with article 1,5 cited above, for all the pan-African categories (video, arrangers, etc), the names of the competitors which are originating from the same area as a juror are omitted from the list subjected to the juror in question.
4. The categories of "Best African Group" and " Best African Artist " are subjected to the verdict of the public, which, at the time of the Kora ceremony, decides:
   1. from all the prizewinners of each region for the category of "Best African Artist" resulting from the notation of the Jury.
   2. from all the nominees of the category "Best African Group" directly resulting from the pre-selection, and consequently not subjected to the examination by the Jury

E. Management of Accumulates and Ex-aequo

1. In order to level the playing field and to assure the broadest distribution possible between the various parties of the African artistic community, it was decided:
   1. to limit the number of trophies ascribable to the same artist to 2.
   2. to practice a policy known as "ex-aequo management", articulating itself on criteria declared herewith and with a view of transparency.
2. In the event of ex-aequo in too great number, a process of progressive elimination of excess prizewinners in view of a balance based on the following criteria: by hierarchical order: the number of selections already received by the same competitor; his/her region; his/her country; his/her sex; musical genre; and finally the largest amplitude between the notes that he/she would have received. The large majority of the cases are solved on application of the first criteria.
3. Example: if, a regional category produced 6 ex-aequo:
   1. the less awarded competitor will be supported, or failing this:
   2. the competitor form the country the less represented in the category will be supported, or failing this:
   3. the competitor from the gender the less represented in the category will be supported, and so on.
      1. Example: if, in an extreme case, a pan-African category (such as best video) produced 6 ex-aequo: one of the regions has inevitably 2 prizewinners:
      2. the less awarded competitor will be supported, or failing this:
      3. the competitor from the country the less represented in the category will be supported, or failing this:
      4. the competitor from the gender the less represented in the category will be supported, and so on.
   4. With the end of the pre-selection process, all nominees in the category "Best Artist [of a region]", are de-facto nominated in the category "Best African Artist", subject to public vote, and consequently cannot be nominated in another category (video & arranger) in order to:
      1. allow others to participate contribute in these other categories.
      2. to prevent him/her from accumulating more than 2 trophies, in accordance with article 4.1.1 here cited