Kathmandu, Jan 15:A spell of eerie silence fell over the audience in anticipation as two smartly dressed young anchors took the centre stage in a rather dramatic fashion to kick off the Hits FM Music Awards-2056 here Saturday evening at Birendra International Convention Hall.

An audience of well over a thousand—with their fingers crossed—held their breath each time winners were declared in 12 different categories of the Hits FM Music Awards, which is often labelled as Nepali equivalent to the Grammy Awards.

In its third year now, the annual musical contest in Nepal Hits FM Music Awards is organised every year by Hits Nepal Pvt. Ltd., a firm running an FM channel on the Radio Nepal FM Kathmandu station. This year there were 11 different categories having five contestants each on the fray. That apart, the musical mega show also had a non-competition-based category, namely, Life Achievement Award that was bestowed this year to veteran female singer and composer Koilee Devi Mathema.

Among the competition based categories, the first ever announced award of the evening was of the category ‘Best New Artiste of the Year’ that went to Rajan ‘Ishan’ for his smashing hit Bashama Chhaina.

It was Ram Krishna Dhakal who literally stole the show. With his record smashing album Asha and a super-hit number Orali Lageko, he made it a hatrick by making a clean sweep of the prestigious awards in the three different categories: Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Male Vocal Performance of the Year. Being crowned as the best male vocal performer he also stopped talented Navin K. Bhattarai from making it a hatrick to the straight third consecutive year of the competition.

Apart from that, it was again Dhakal who was the singer of Manparaune Hazar that won the Song of the Year Award for its lyrics. In this category introduced only this year in the contest, veteran lyricist Kali P. Rijal was awarded.

One of the strongest award aspirants of the competition Navin K. Bhattarai (Dobatoma) had to share the award with Deepak Bajracharya (Samaya) in one of the most closely contested categories of the evening: it was in the category of the Best Pop Vocal Performance: Male.

It is for the first time in the history of Hits FM Music Awards that two artistes were awarded jointly in any one category. It was also the newly introduced category.

Other new categories added to the competition this year were that of the Best Vocal Collaboration and the Best Pop Vocal Performance: Female, the awards for which went to Uday & Manila Sotang (Maya Namara) and Reema Gurung (Launa Ni) respectively.

Ace female singer Kunti Moktan, who was nominated in three different categories including two songs in one single category, finally emerged triumphant in the broad Best Female Vocal Performance category.

Music composer Nhyoo Bajracharya smiled her way to bag the award of the Best Song Originally Recorded for a Motion Picture Soundtrack for Lagideu of the film Desh Paradesh, while another highly rated band of the evening 1974AD (Samjhi Baschhu) also scored a success to capture the award for the Best Performance by a Group or Duo with Vocal.

As the long-echoing applause of the audience simmered down, the winners were announced and given away the awards by Nepal’s famous artistes including the Golden Voice of Nepal Premdhoj Pradhan, Meera Rana, Kumar Basnet, Shila Bahadur Moktan, Prakash Shrestha, Umesh Pandey, Lochan Bhattarai, and Harish Mathema as well as other celebrities Kshetra Pratap Adhikari, Yadav Kharel, Gopal Raj Mainali and Michael Chand.

Going by the history of the Hits FM Music Awards, no old face among the winners of the different categories appeared this year except for one Navin K. Bhattarai, who had won two awards and one award in the first and second Annual Hits FM100 Music Awards respectively of the Bikram Year 2054 and 2055.

Those who performed in the spectacular musical programme included 1974AD band, Rajan ‘Ishan’, Uday Sotang-Manila Sotang, Saroj Dutta, Navin K. Bhattarai, Haribansha Acharya, Reema Gurung, Anand Karki, Ramkrishna Dhakal and Deepak Bajracharya who were nominated in one or more categories of the competition.

The nominations in each category, the sources at Hits Nepal Pvt. Ltd said, were made on the basis of the nomination forms filled in by general listeners and collected from different parts of the Kingdom.