Ugandan 'George The Poet' makes history at 2020 Peabody Awards

ART AND CULTURE | UGANDA  |GEORGE MPANGAGeorge Mpanga is a rapper and spoken-word practitioner currently hosting a podcast and better known by his stage name, 'George the Poet.'

The London-born poet has strongly come out on social-economic issues facing people of color in the UK and all over the world. He has opined several pieces in the Time Magazine, LA Times, and other publications. 

The 28-year-old's 'Have You Heard George's Podcast' was earlier this month nominated in the 2020 Peabody Awards alongside 11 other podcasts and radio shows in that category.

Other nominated podcasts included  "Finding Fred" Co-produced by iHeartMedia and Fatherly in partnership with Transmitter Media, "In The Dark: The Path Home" American Public Media and others. 

The Awards describe their purpose as to honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and digital media, and each year, they (awards) are bestowed upon a curated collection of 30 stories that capture society's most important issues.

The Awards were founded in 1940 at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia and are still based in Athens today.

Days later, Mpanga's twenty-two episode podcast co-produced with the BBC would be announced the winner of the 2020 Peabody Awards in the category of Podcast/ Radio. In an unprecedented move, Have You Heard George's podcast is the first British or European podcast to ever win a Peabody. 

"I'm proud that my very naked story of black British experience has been able to travel across the world and draw attention to our reality," George told NME, a British Awards platform. In his acceptance, George the Poet says 'I needed a way to speak to the masses...I always felt like I was born to help the ends, so I used storytelling as a form of self-defense'. 

Other notable winners of the Awards was Lifetime's groundbreaking docuseries 'Surviving RKelly'  and CNN's 'The Hidden Workforce: Undocumented in America', a documentary uncovering the America's deep and contingent need for undocumented workers.