Over 10,000 music lovers from all the corners of Kumasi trooped into the Kumasi City Mall to come and witness live, great musical performances from their various artists. All the important people who have a stake in Ghana’s Music Industry were also present.
Charterhouse, organizers of the annual Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, officially launched the 20th edition of the awards’ ceremony yesterday.
Nominees for the various categories of the awards were also released yesterday on some selected TV and radio stations, with social media being the focus.
Whoever thought that a day like this will come in the history of Ghana music where notorious Dancehall musician, Charles Nii Armah Mensah aka Shatta Wale will be hailing, praising and bootlicking Charterhouse, Ghana Music Awards and their CEO Theresah Ayoade?
We woke up today, and Shatta Wale has posted a picture of himself and the CEO of Charterhouse Theresah Ayoade all over social media and subtly behaving as if she is the best person he has ever met in his musical life.
The Ghanaian music group, Wutah has for the second time in their musical journey split with the group members Kobby and Afriyie concentrating on their solo careers once again.
The music duo was arguably the best musical group in Ghana in the early 2000s as their smash hit single ‘Kotosa’ won a number of awards at the 2009 Ghana Music Awards.
Reign Album Art Cover Arguably, Charles Nii Armah Mensah Junior aka Shatta Wale, the founder and leader of one of the biggest movement on the continent of Africa ‘Shatta Movement’ is Ghana’s biggest Dancehall Musician. Charles started his journey as Bandana in the early 2000s but circumstances beyond his measure and lack of proper structures in the Music Industry sent him into the wilderness or relegated him to the very bottom of the Music Game. He went into Musical hiatus for over a decade.
Arguably, Charles Nii Armah Mensah Junior aka Shatta Wale, the founder and leader of one of the biggest movement on the continent of Africa ‘Shatta Movement’ is Ghana’s biggest Dancehall Musician.
Charles started his journey as Bandana in the early 2000s but circumstances beyond his measure and lack of proper structures in the Music Industry sent him into the wilderness or relegated him to the very bottom of the Music Game. He went into Musical hiatus for over a decade.
The South African rapper, David Junior Ngcobo, better known by his stage name Nasty C, who recently gave a poor account of himself at the 2018 Ghana Music Awards, has been declared by Starboy Wizkid as the best rapper in Africa at the expense of Ghanaian rapper Sarkodie. Despite the fact that opinions are like noses, this comes as a surprise to the SarkNatives taking into consideration that fact that Sarkodie remains the most awarded and decorated African rapper. They believe the Ghanaian rapper should have been cited regardless, especially when the South African Cassper Nyovest recently acknowledged Sarkodie’s influence on the continent.
April Fool’s Day was Ghanaian radio and television icon Berla Mundi’s 29th birthday and rapper E.L appreciating the hard work of Berla Mundi celebrated her on Twitter. Rapper E.L showered some praises on Berla Mundi by describing her as “Special, Hard working, determination, audacity wrapped in Beauty”.
The annual Vodafone Ghana Music Awards took place last night with Stonebwoy winning the top Artiste of the Year Award. The event which was hosted by actress-Joselyn Dumas and Nathaniel Attoh dragged on for over 6 hours—and it was badly produced. If you want to know what went down, CLICK HERE for our review + … Read more
It’s obvious that Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMAs) is the biggest awards scheme in Ghana at the moment. For the past 15 years, Charter House (organizers of VGMAs) have been awarding outstanding Ghanaian musicians, as well as other African artistes.
One thing that the organizers have not been able to run away from is the hullabaloos surrounding the whole awards scheme. At least one musician would have some grievances to voice out each year.
One of such musicians is the reigning VGMA artiste of the year – Shatta Wale. Last year, Shatta Wale did not make it to the conference center where the award was held because Charter House could not come to terms with him on the amount he wanted as performance fee.
This resulted in a whole lot of uproars in the Ghanaian media. This has pushed the self-acclaimed dancehall king to inform Charter House that he does not want to be part of the award scheme this year.
Ghana’s finest rapper, Sarkodie, was also in the news few days ago. According to him, Charter House had used his name to promote the award when they had not paid him the performance fee he had requested.
First of all, let me mention that I am not much of a Sarkodie fan but I acknowledge and appreciate his hard work, dedication—and his ability to have succeeded in an ‘industry’ fully soaked in weakness.
When it comes to Charter House, I really don’t like big companies or corporations, because they always screw the small guy up—and over the years, I’ve said the lack of competition and the ‘monopolistic’ status of Charter House is somewhat turning them into an industry demi-god. Going against their flowing current means you should expect to be shunned, banned or marginalised—and that is the definition of TYRANNY.
Now that I have made it clear that I do not necessarily admire Charter House or Sarkodie though I respect their success, let’s dispassionately consider the substantive issue which many have missed in their discussion over the recent Sarkodie-Charter House brouhaha…
It all started when Sarkodie took to social media to rant over the violation of his personality right—using his name or image for a commercial purpose without his consent or agreed compensation. This is both a statutory and common law violation, which means, Charter House did not just erred when they did that to Sarkodie (irrespective of their compelling reasons), they also broke the law…
Sarkodie had every right, be it moral or legal to be upset of this considering how hard he has worked without any industry support to obtain his current musical status. His fans see him as some sort of Hiplife god and to be frank, he is—more like Ghana’s version of Kanye West.
For this, insults, rants and blows went the way of Charter House from the fans and even some established Ghanaian artistes. Legally, I supported Sarkodie for the simple fact that, Ghanaians continue to take the piss out of people’s intellectual property rights and personality rights on every scale.
Yesterday, Charter House-organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards were compelled by Ghanaian musician-Sarkodie, his fans and the many Ghanaian bloggers who jumped on the issue of the company’s usage of the artiste’s name as a performing act in this year’s Ghana Music Awards without his consent or any contract.
It’s interesting how this is playing out on twitter—if it was in the United States or United Kingdom, the artiste would be in court, seeking for the appropriate damages. If a big event company such as Charter House does not really give a hoot about what the law says at any point in time, what do you expect the smaller event organisers to do—and more also, are they not the same organisation in court seeking to have the law in action in relation to the Shatta Wale’s defamation case?
That is the sort of irony grounded in the way Charter House seems to be operating.
There is law to enforce when someone violates one in relation to them but they seem to continue to violate the same law (in other form) when dealing with others.
All around the world, the law is pretty simple on this; “a person shall not use any aspect of an individual’s persona for a commercial purpose…The person’s persona could include his or her name, voice, signature, photograph, image, likeness, or distinctive appearance, if any of these aspects have commercial value”.
In their apology press release, Charter House said;
“We would like to expressly state that Sarkodie IS NOT performing at the 16TH VODAFONE GHANA MUSIC AWARDS. Prior to this, we had been communicating and had met with a member of his management team trying to arrive at a favourable figure.
In anticipation of that figure coupled with the unstable power situation in the country plus the long Easter weekend ahead of us, where it would be almost impossible to get a studio to record, we worked ahead and recorded different versions of the 16th VGMA’s final event radio commercial.
One with Sarkodie’s name and another without. With our fingers crossed, the ads were all submitted to our media manager. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to a favourable agreement and parted ways amicably.
Our media manager was immediately informed on Thursday evening to send out only the ad that DID NOT HAVE Sarkodie’s name. This, she did except for YFM, where she sent the wrong ad which had Sarkodie’s name.
Clearly, it was an error from our end which we have totally admitted. We hereby unreservedly apologise to Sarkodie, his management friends and fans as well”
You can see from the part I have ‘bolded’ that Charter House seem to suggest that they honestly erred with the audio commercial by sending out a wrong one, and not that they had a clear intention to infringe on Sarkodie’s personality right, but from the billboard above—their explanation falls flat on its face.
Looking at the billboard, it shows images of Sarkodie and Samini performing and as such, there should not be arguments such as the two having been used on the billboard as nominees for the awards publicity—the obvious inference or message the billboard sends is that; the two will be performing at the Ghana Music Awards 2015.
Fred Kyei Mensah, a respected sound engineer, arts analyst and also a member on the VGMA board, has admitted that the board erred in the cause of their works – the nomination list.
Mrs. Ayoade made the point that though the board detected that there were some issues with some of the categories due to the changing times with technology, it was too late to make any bold changes to the nomination list before releasing it.
“We detected after the board’s work that there were some issues, developing trends has set into the industry but at that time, it was too late for us to do any bold changes because we had a few days to announce the nominations.
We had to exercise our discretion (as in, release the nomination list) with the view that after the scheme, we would have a general review and then explain the challenges we had with some members of the industry as we normally do, then, we would evaluate it (the new trends) properly to see if it’s a one way situation or a growing trend in the industry.
At the end of the award, we shall do a total review and take into consideration the trends that have come. The last time we reviewed the nomination list was 2 years ago.” She said.
According to Mrs. Ayoade, some of the things that they shall change/review in the award scheme include: Album of the Year, Release of Song – its definition, and New Artiste of the Year.
Fredyma, who is known for his honest opinions, admitted that the board erred and pleaded for sympathy, “we admit certain things did not go well and that is the criteria definitions. Forgive us! We shall make all the necessary changes. We thank the media for all they have said.”
So per cognitive logic, it means the VGMA board, knew the nomination list is fraught with errors even before the release of the nomination list, yet, when it was released and critics raised issues, some members of the board defended every issue that was raised; to the extent that some even had verbal confrontation with critics on live radio and television.
Despite all the critiques at this year’s VGMA nomination list with some pundits pointing at evidence to disqualify some artistes or songs, the board has concluded that they shall not review the nomination list; yet, they shall make changes in the award scheme come 2015.
On Monday 31st March, 2014 GhanaCelebrities.Com got in touch with Nii Ayitey Hammond who is the Chairman of the VGMA Board and asked him if the board will still review the nomination list.
In his own words, he opined “as I speak with you, the board has not decided to review the nomination list; so that is what we stand by” Mr. Hammond said. According to Mr. Hammond“so far none of the evidence brought before the board are strong enough to make us disqualify any artiste or song in the nomination list.
All that they have said or presented represents opinions; their opinions for that matter. The board does not deal with opinions but facts. Real facts! Any person who presents real facts shall be considered by the board.”
On Tuesday 1st April, 2014 when GhanaCelebrities.Com’s story was reviewed on Neat 100.9 fm’s ‘Entertainment Ghana,’ hosted by Kwasi Aboagye, PRO of Charterhouse confirmed GhanaCelebrities.Com’s earlier publication on Monday. Ending, George assured “Kwasi, next year, there will be major reforms in VGMA. There will be definitely major changes next year.”
On Wednesday 2nd April, 2014, when the same story was discussed on Channel R’s ‘205 Total Entertainment,’ this time round, board chairman, Mr. Hammond confirmed the board wont review the nomination list – 2014, but, “we shall review things in the VGMA come next year.”
On Happy Fm’s Showbiz Xtra this morning, Board member of the 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards and Manager of Kumi Guitar-Mark Okraku Mantey was pushed to the wall to explain why his artiste who has had a release in the past has been nominated as ‘New Artiste of the Year’.
Since the question was well targeted and Mark had no escape route, he opened the bag by saying, the organizers of the Ghana Music Awards have changed some key rules of the award scheme—and this includes the description for who qualifies to be nominated in the category, New Artiste of the Year.
Without doubt, no one has any moral or legal right to stop Charter House and the GMA Board from making alterations and adjustments to the rules which determine who qualifies for nominations and who does not.
However, as equity demands; to ensure certainty of rules/laws, any change or alteration of laid down rules and principles must be made known to those concern—and this include the media and the several interest parties of the awards scheme.
Unfortunately, Mark Okraku Mantey wrongly opined that media men should have undertaken the necessary investigative steps to establish that the rules have changed—and that would have ended all the ongoing nomination list controversies.
I will like to point it out to Mark that, there is no principle of Good Faith, Equity, Substantial Justice, Information dissemination whatsoever which precludes any organisation from publicizing changed rules to ensure that those who matter are aware of the changes.
In fact, it’s Charter House’s duty and that of any organisation that alters it rules to make the new set of rules known—by taking reasonable steps to ensure wide dissemination of the new rules.
The name of the award is Ghana Music Awards. From commonsensical logic, any human being who will hear Ghana Music Awards is readily informed that it’s an award scheme that awards Ghanaian musicians and music of Ghanaian origin.
Currently, the only music genres that can be described as music of Ghanaian origin are Highlife and Hiplife. The question therefore is; what is Best Hip Hop Song of the Year and Best Hip Hop Artiste of the Year doing in Ghanaian Music Awards?
Do we have ‘Best Highlife Music’ or ‘Best Highlife Musician’ in BET or Grammy Awards? The answer is a resounding no! By awarding Hip hop artistes in Ghana, whose touchstones does Ghana Music Awards board use – Western or Ghanaian? (Laughs)
I will not be surprised if Westerners mock us for awarding Hip hop artistes in Ghana. To us, D-Black and Kwaku T are Hip hop artistes, but to Westerners, they (D-Black and Kwaku T) are totally aliens to Hip hop music. Western Hip hop musicians don’t see Ghanaian or African Hip hop artistes as same-genre music compeers or competitors.
So the point is; what is the essence of creating Hip hop category (ies) in Ghana Music Awards? To award those so called Hip hop artistes to go international? Or to award them to become ‘local champions’ in Ghana? Funny showbiz industry we live in Ghana.
Hip life artiste and winner of Ghana Music Awards New Discovery in 2004, Tinny has doubted the credibility of the Ghana Music Awards, especially in the year Kwaw Kese swept majority of the awards.
In the 2008 edition of the awards, Kwaw Kese picked 5 awards including the overall ‘Artiste of the Year’ honour. He achieved this feat with his ‘Abodam’ album which he released a year earlier with songs like ‘Odiem’, ‘Na Ya Tal’ and ‘Wose Mmaa Pe Wo’.
Speaking on Talk Showbiz on eTV yesterday, Tinny said it was wrong for him to have picked all the awards on that night. The ‘Anaconda’ rapper said even though, the Abodam man is his friend, he did not deserve all the awards.
With this year being his first time ever talking about the awards openly, Tinny said he was discouraged and ‘killed’ his mind on the awards, therefore putting his mind on having fun instead and not confusing himself with getting any awards.
“After Kwaw Kese got the 5 awards, I killed my mind.” Said the Ga rapper. However Tinny conceded that he was the big act during that year but said “something went wrong” to enable him win all those awards.
It is my wish that, the intent of this short write-up will not be misconstrued like the several other articles of mine which have been over the years. The annual Ghana Music Awards which is now sponsored by telecom giant, Vodafone is in it 14th year. It’s appropriate to say that, the VGMA is the … Read more
Stay Jay receiving the dummy cheque from MUSIGA President Bice Osei Kuffour Majority of the winners of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMAs) 2012 did not turn up for the prize presentations on Tuesday at MUSIGA Office in Accra. The organisers of the annual awards, Charter House were ready to present each winner with his or her prize, yet only few of the winners were present. This development forced the organisers to give an ample time to wait for the rest to show up for the presentation to look beautiful. After several hours, the short event kick started with the artistes who were available. The absence of a number artistes did not ruin the presentation but it did take some shine out of the whole event. The VGMAs in its 13th edition was held on Saturday April 13 at the Dome of the Accra International Conference. Prior to that, the Industry award was held to award the Industry Categories. Each award winner irrespective of the number of awards won received GHC 3.000 whiles the ‘Artiste of the Year’ picked GHC 10.000.
Update: Click Here For The REAL Winners All the winners of this year’s edition of the Ghana Music Awards would be announced today April 14. Like we have always done over the years, GhanaCelebrities.Com reviews, do analysis of each nominated songs plus categories before the awards are announced. Also we pick our winners for each category. Mind you, whatever we say is our opinion; it’s not necessarily the views of the organizers; Charter House and sponsors Vodafone. When the nominees for this year’s awards were unveiled, the hullabaloo that surrounded the nominations was enough to confirm that, the controversies which has been part of the awards since its inception thirteen years ago is far from ending. Many people thought the fact that Vodafone has taken over from MTN as major sponsors will mean, effecting the needed changes to minimize the ‘needless’ controversies. The various Committees of the previous awards were also changed to Board and Academy. I must say that, the controversies can’t be controlled when songs get disqualified because the awards’ Board and Academy consider the lyrics in such songs as offensive, violent and sexually explicit whiles other songs get the pass mark for whatever reasons. The year under review was the year that, the word ‘azonto’ was made popular and introduced into the music industry. The word has already been there but in the year under review, it was given a star status as it was on the lips of every soul in Ghana. Now let’s get to the predictions. History would be made today at the Dome of the Accra International Conference Centre, venue for the prestigious Ghana Music Awards which is in its 13th edition. Before Hip Life trio, VIP made history last year by winning the coveted ‘Artiste of the Year’; many had said that, no artiste can win it twice. Methinks VIP’s triumph would be short-lived as three previous winners look set to equal their win. Before I get started with my predictions, here is a recap of the Industry Awards winners. Okyeame Kwame’s ‘Faithful’ was the biggest winner on the night. He won the ‘Songwriter of the Year’ and the ‘Producer of the Year’ which went to Appietus for producing the beat. Kwame also won the ‘Music For Development’ with his Hepatits B campaign. Male and Female Vocal Artiste went to Kesse for ‘Oh Yes’ and Efya for featuring on Sarkodie’s ‘I’m In Love With You’. ‘Fefeefe’ by Gifty Osei picked the Gospel Album of the Year. Kaywa picked the ‘Sound Engineer of the Year’ whiles, Guy One, Pat Thomas and Diana Hopeson picked the ‘Traditional Artiste of the Year’, ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and ‘MUSIGA Merit Award’ respectively. Now let’s get to serious business. Artiste(s) of the Year Becca Okyeame Kwame SARKODIE*** Efya R2Bees 4×4 Kwaw Kesse I think this year’s Artiste of the Year category is not strong enough. Whereas ‘not strong enough’ means that, though the names there are big artistes in Ghana, only two artistes in there did enough in the year under review to deserve to be in there; Sarkodie, 4×4 to a large extent Efya.
VGMA One major problem of the annual Ghana Music Awards Festival since its inception is overcrowding at its venue. Whenever overcrowding occurs, security becomes porous; this offers unscrupulous chaps the oppportunity to get involved in several vices. To check overcrowding at the venue come April 14, several measures have been put in place. According to the Public Relations Manager of Charter House, Juno Abena Dadson, this year they intend to control the crowd at the Dome during the GMA, so that the few who make their way there can enjoy themselves and increase the experience. This she said to justify the price increment of this year’s event.
VGMA Event powerhouse and organizers of the Ghana Music Awards Festival, the nation’s most prestigious awards scheme revealed yesterday details on tickets for the Big Night. Tickets for this year’s finals of the awards start selling from Monday April 2nd to Tuesday April 10th 2012 only at Koala, Charterhouse and X-Men. The VGMA 2012 Awards Night is scheduled for the Dome on April 14th 2012 and witness performances from 20 top artistes from Ghana, South Africa, UK, Nigeria and Congo.
Charter House, the organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards said goodbye and farewell to MTN, their long standing headline sponsor for the Ghana Music Awards at Citizen Kofi in Accra yesterday.
MTN has been replaced with Vodafone as the new sponsor of the awards. According to the organisers, Vodafone has showed its readiness and loyalty to the growth of the Ghana Music Industry, hence the reason why, they will be headlining the awards, commencing 2012.
Mrs. Theresah Ayaode, the Executive Director of the awards, thanked MTN, who has sponsored the awards for close to a decade. She conceded that, indeed, the interest and investment made by MTN to the brand over the years added value to the franchise and acknowledged that, that has brought the awards this far.
With the sponsorship baton handed over to Vodafone; the awards will be now known as ‘Vodafone Ghana Music Awards Festival’. The network known for its great and catchy commercials comes in at a time when the whole entire awards process and content is being looked at critically.
You see, I have been doing this for the past 11 years. I’m even tired of writing the same things in different form every year so far as the Ghana Music Awards is concerned. It’s another year. Here we go!
Winners will be declared on Saturday April 9, 2011 at the Dome, Accra International Conference Centre. Below are my predicted winners for the night. And before you start spewing gibberish, don’t forget this is what we think and NOT what will happen on the night.
Yea! Good luck to the nominees. In case you forgot, we are responsible for our predictions.
Below are GhanaCelebrities.Com predictions for the night. What we think will necessarily not be the outcome of the awards. Therefore we wish all the nominated artistes good luck:
FULL LIST OF NOMINATIONS AND OUR PREDICTIONS IN CAPITALS WITH **
Naturally, when people are stressed up or angry, they are most likely to blame the people near them in order to get ease their resentment.
Many have been wondering why Okyeame Quophi in an attempt to react to certain publications fired up unnecessary missils. To some of us, it is very clear why he is still talking and every statement he makes is like a clue to unmask the real picture
Okyeame Quophi said “my decision not release records after ‘Quophilosophy’ was basically to allow my brother to have his shine since it looked like he was too hungry for it and anything from me would be destruction”. This is a blatant lie since he is already nursing an upcoming album and wants to use Okyeame Kwame to promote the album like Obrafour did with ‘Kaseibo’ which eventually won him an award at the Ghana Music Awards 2010.
If Quophi is not bitter, do you think he will make a statement like this? “… If I am not miscalculating, he even impregnated his wife in my house. During his acceptance speech at Ghana Music Awards, who did he thank for allowing him stay in his house? Was it not KOD?”
How can one determine whether a friend impregnated his wife in his house or not? Is this a case of come ‘come-watch-me-impregnate-her’?
Kwame has refused to exchange words with him even though Quophi is still throwing tantrums. Little investigation and team chit-chat from the camp of GhanaCelebrities.com came out that Quophi is more bitter because Kwame refused two music videos from Emklan. The latter paid the former to direct a music video for him and after, he realized the video is too ‘whack’ bad.
