By Bernard Yaw ASHIADEY
Music lovers across the length and breadth of Ghana can now start voting for their favorite musicians as Charter House – organizers of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) – has officially announced the final nominees for the 13th annual event in Accra.
Come April 14th, 57 Ghanaian and six other African artistes will battle it out at the Dome of the Accra International Conference Centre to claim top spot as to who is the best in his or her category.
The hottest category since the beginning of the event in 1999 – the most popular song of the year—will as usual be keenly contested for looking at the number of Azonto rhythms that rocked and is still rocking the nation and the fact that it is the only category that is going to be decided by the populace 100%.
Ghana’s fastest rapper, Sarkodie leads the pack with 12 nominations – the highest in the history of the GMAs--closely followed by fellow rapper, Okyeame Kwame with nine nominations having had a hit with the track “Faithful,” featuring Bertha.
The ‘Waist n Power’ guys, 4x4, are third with seven nominations while Stay Jay and Trigmatic follow them closely with six nominations each.
The powerful voices of Becca, Efya, Selina Boateng and controversial Raquel could only account for five nominations respectively as the leading ladies for this year’s event.
A member of the board of the VGMA and veteran highlife musician, Amadzeba, said they were very objective in their choices since they wanted to promote morality, creativity and quality so the board decided to exclude songs with too much adult content.
“We are here to enhance creativity so we analyse each song based on its creative content, quality and above all its moral importance to society.
“We advise that artiste classify their songs so that when they contains explicit scenes-for video- then it will not be shown or played on air,” he said.
The Executive Director of Charter House, Theresa Ayawode, said: “It was very tough to come out with the final list. The board members at times did not agree on some choices but at the end of the day, I believe they have done a great job looking at the selections that have been made.”
Another member of the board, Abraham Ohene Gyan, noted that at some points during meetings, they have to put their choices to a vote before they decided on some of the choices.
Music producer and a member of the technical team on the board, Fred Kyei Mensah, observed that most musicians in Ghana do not have publicist.
“The lack of publicist for musicians in the country makes it difficult to chronicle the activities of the musician in the year. Most musicians hold shows that had deep impact on people but because there are no publicists to notify the right authorities, these works go unnoticed.”
He therefore advised musicians to get qualified publicists who will put together all their activities so that when it is time for awards, those documents can be considered as well.
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