Ghana Music Awards flips the script!

Normally I would say hurray, because I am a fan of change, and I agree with some of the new changes to the Ghana Music Awards. First of all, I am happy for the introduction of categories like Hip Hop Song of the Year and the Afro Pop Song of the year.

But these changes have led to the scrapping of previous categories like Record of the Year and Pop Song of the year, which was introduced last year. This makes me wonder if we are going to flip and change the categories each year just to reflect the direction of music in that particular year; or will we see a more defined categorization and selection process that can adequately cover all of these?

Another change that I like is the recognition of other new mediums of record sales such as digital downloads, which at our level at the moment means selling songs to telecommunication companies as ring tunes or caller tunes.

This was the reason why artists like R2bees have been nominated in several categories in spite of not releasing their album yet. I however wish a lot more could be done as a means of promoting independent artists who may be able to break through with a hit song but cannot release a commercial album within the year under contention. What do I mean? Perhaps the award for Discovery of the year could be split into two, one for Best New Artiste and the other for Breakthrough Act of the Year.

The former would be for those who made impact and also released their albums commercially while the latter would be for those who didn't release commercially. I'm sure creating more categories wouldn't be a problem, after all it is now MTN Ghana Music Awards and this highly commercial merger should be able to benefit the artists. Who knows, maybe the 1,000 cedis cash prize could help the 'breakthrough act of the year' to release an album the following year.

By the way, what happened to traditional categories like hiplife album, gospel album, highlife album and album of the year? Will there be awards for producer of the year, record label of the year, songwriter of the year, video of the year, and other categories that were previously tagged 'industry awards'? Noticeably, no mention has been made yet about the industry awards night. The PR of Charter House certainly could have done a better job by letting people know what to really expect. That should be the least difficult part of this whole process! Hello Theresa and Iyiola, if you need a publicist, I am always available.

I still have a problem with the definitions for the various categories, as do many others. I truly hope that the organizers of the awards would at the upcoming Ghana Music Awards Dialogue/Seminar scheduled for 1st April, address some of these issues. I hope the seminar doesn't turn out to be one big 'April fool's day' joke!

During the launch of the Ghana Music Awards, I overheard Juno Abena Turkson, PR for GMA/Charter House saying something like “…the ACADEMY sat down and …”The first thing that came into my mind was: “WTF, we have an academy?” Juno, I see you got jokes. Anyway, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a 'real academy' of industry players sit and work on the whole Ghana Music Awards scheme, it's about time!!! I don't enjoy writing about the lapses in the GMA each year, although it has become one of my favourite pastimes. I need a break so Charter House, please give me one!