No diva in Ghana, not yet!

In a country where titles are thrown about in a rather haphazard way, it sometimes comes with little dignity when deserving people re referred to with those titles.

CEO has become so common that corporate organizations are beginning to change this same title to Chief Operating Officer and others, in a bid maintain the dignity and responsibility that comes with it.

In our musical circles, most often, the artists pick the titles and confer it on themselves. They even choose local names to depict some of these titles. It has become so common that the extraO filling that is to be associated with some titles are lost.

In the recent past, female music entertainers in Ghana were mostly doing ‘church gospel’ music. Our understanding of gospel was and is still so vague that we only deem it to be associated with music that mentions Jesus or God. Apart from the gospel artists, all other female performers were seen as secular performers. Oh how wrong we were!

Then as if to fill an empty space and a hunger for female entertainers especially in our contemporary music genre, female entertainers started sprouting up. Abrewa Nana is one of the pioneers of such females. With the invisible glass ceiling now cracked, other female acts came up, some even formed groups. Currently, the females are a force to reckon with. Some are doing very well while others, the least said the better.

For sometime now, the media seems to be associating “diva” to some of our female artists. I have realized that with the west, this same word is not associated with just about any female singer. Talk of ‘diva’ and Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion comes to mind.

These females define the dictionary meaning of the word. Dictionaries generally define ‘diva’ as a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera and by extension, in theatre, cinema and popular music. We do not do these things here, even if we do, it is sub-standard.

What we do a lot is playing show CDs with the artists miming along with it. In this regard, I will mention that Becca and Efya are seemingly on their way to diva status though they are still far from the weight of ‘diva’.

It is evidently clear that Becca spends time on her act. She has not been a disappointment to watch since she came to the limelight. Efya can sing. She can sing and yes she can sing! She has the attitude, facial expressions and a voice.

For the rest of the females who smile at being called divas in the making, well, maybe it’s not their faults. Maybe, it is the fault of entertainment writers who do not take time to open a dictionary for clarity sake. Gosh!