Can Ghana Music Award Be Bought? Part 2

Charter House must construct a suitable system to determine the inclusion of artists from other Ghanaian regions. This must be done in order to dispel the perception that the Ghana Music Awards is strictly for Accra-based music artists.

Not only would a new system avoid discrimination across the regions when it comes to nominating artists, it should also be implemented in order to ensure that the committee members have facts before selecting the nominees of a particular category in order to avoid embarrassing occurrences.

These include when Ohemaa Mercy’s producer had to be contacted in order to find out when ‘Obeye Kesse’ was released, or when Okyeame Kwame was contacted to ask about which of his brothers in the rap duo Bradez should be nominated in the ‘Best Rapper of the Year’ category.

One would assume that as committee members, they would be aware of this information already. It seems quite unbelievable that the awards have been happening for 11 years now, yet there seems to be very little progress made in terms of the system and acquiring of information.

New categories are bound to spring up due to musicians exploring other genres of music, different from the genre they are known for. If a category like ‘Best Collaboration’ has now been created, then surely there’s room for new categories such as ‘Best Group of the Year’ and ‘Most Featured Artiste of the Year’.

The Ghana music industry has seen remarkable artists being featured on numerous tracks across the years, and it seems a travesty that such talented artists are overlooked for awards.

The ‘Artiste of the Year’ category should be considered being combined with ‘Most Popular Song of the Year’ category as the two seem to go hand in hand; surely the artiste of the year would be the one who had the most popular song of the year? Ohemaa Mercy and Becca have both been nominated in the ‘Artiste of the Year’ category, yet both have been overlooked for nomination in the ‘Most Popular Song of the Year’ category.

Is it not in the best interest of the industry to hand over the ‘Most Popular Song of the Year’ award to the artiste who wins the ‘Artiste of the Year’ award or vice versa to make it look more credible?

• Ayigbe Edem had seven nominations but he didn’t make it to Artiste of the Year. Sarkodie had seven nominations, his eight been the Artiste of the Year. The whole thing is, how come with seven each, one made it to Artiste of the Year and the other didn’t?
• How come Becca had less than four nominations yet she is up for Artiste of the Year?
• How come Bradez, a group, are in contention for rapper of the year? Will the award go to Kunta or to Stone? Why should a group be paired with individuals?

It seems that more thought and awareness should be placed into the nominating of artiste for particular categories, in order to add more credence to the GMAs.