Trail blazer: Music producer Le Hung Phuc (right) and South Korea's Park Jin-young at the MAMA ceremony. — Photo saostar.vn

HCM CITY (VNS) — Pop singer Dong Nhi and music producer Le Hung Phuc were awarded at the 2015 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) ceremony, held at Hong Kong's AsiaWorld Expo last night.

The Best Asian Artist title was presented to Nhi and five other singers from Japan's AKB48 Band, Thailand's Potato, Singapore's Stephanie Sun Yanzi and Indonesia's Ran. Phuc was named Best Producer Viet Nam.

"I'm glad and honoured to receive the Best Asian Artist Viet Nam award at the MAMA ceremony. I will try my best and make greater efforts to be deserving of the award," Nhi said in Vietnamese in a clip screened at the ceremony.

"It was a surprise to me when I was informed by the MAMA organisers. Three other singers – My Tam, Thu Minh and Ho Quynh Huong – whose careers I admire a lot, were also awarded. The award is very significant because I will launch my latest music MV this month. I want to share my award with my family, friends, my team and my audience in particular," Nhi said.

An emerging online star, the 27-year-old singer has been successfully launched by the entertainment industry. Nhi won the Special Prize at live music reality show The Remix's first season 2015. Her first album, entitled The First Step, was named among the Top 10 Albums of The Year in 2010 at music website Zing Music Awards.

Her career took a major leap in 2014, with a music video entitled Bad Boy. A day after its launch, the video was viewed about 500,000 times on the zing.vn website and 200,000 times on YouTube. The video was ranked fifth on the Chinese Youku website, with more than 300,000 views.

Producer Le Hung Phuc shared the Best Producer title with South Korea's Park Jin-young and China's Gao Xiaosong. He is the first Vietnamese producer to be awarded at the MAMA.

Phuc became famous after he worked as producer for the FB Boiz band at the X-Factor 2014 and the PB Nation band at The Remix 2015 show. He has worked with many emerging pop singers such as Ung Hoang Phuc and Bao Thy.

"I never thought I would be honoured at an Asian award ceremony such as MAMA," Phuc wrote on his Facebook page.

"Every day I work and feel music with my ears. And then one day I'm here with my idols to receive the Best Producer award," his status said.

MAMA began to evolve steadily with the development of the Korean music industry in 1999. The award ceremony is a leading Asian music festival that has been held in Macau in 2010, Singapore in 2011 and Hong Kong from 2012 to 2014. — VNS