Winners help tip the scales

ORGANISERS of this year’s Urban Quest competition in Dandenong hope music seminars between entrants and past winners will ensure all competitors walk away feeling good.
The competition is a talent quest run annually by Mission Australia, a youth services provider, in conjunction with the Dandenong Plaza, which provides prizes and in previous years allowed the competition to be hosted in its shopping mall.
The talent quest has grown rapidly since its inaugural event in 2002 and is now too large for the Plaza to host. Instead, Mission Australia has arranged for Urban Quest 2008 to be held in the outdoor location of Palm Plaza, just outside the Dandenong Plaza, as first happened last year.
A 20-year-old Narre Warren resident, Paul Ankoma, is a past winner of the competition with close friend Dillon Deberera.
The pair won the Street category of Urban Quest in 2006 with no prior training or knowledge of hip-hop performing.
But the competition has helped launch them into a musical career, and Paul and Dillon have formed a Hip Hop band called 2-11 with Hampton Park’s Tim de la Zilwa.
Mr Ankoma said the band was preparing to launch its first studio album by mid-year, after a whirlwind experience finding its feet in the music scene.
“Urban Quest was a really good launching pad. When Dillon and I entered, we had no expectation of our results because we had only met randomly in a park, where he was the friend of a friend of mine,” he said.
Since then, 2-11 has used Hip Hop to help motivate young people in the south-east, who may be facing personal difficulty, to set goals and turn their lives around.
“All of our music has a positive message behind it,” Mr Ankoma said.
“Whether it’s about having a good time or going through a struggle, the focus is about positive music and taking Hip Hop back to what it used to be.”
Mr Ankoma said the seminars would have been valuable to both him and Mr Deberera in 2006.
“The workshops not only help you get further in competitions, but they make sure people take something away with them, even if they don’t win a prize,” he said.
“It would have been awesome to have someone give us tips before we competed; Dillon and I were extremely nervous.”
Urban Quest heats will run on Thursday 3 April, with the grand final on Saturday 5 April, at the Palm Plaza, an extension of McCrae Street, Dandenong.