Ghana Music Awards Festival 2010

THE GHANAIAN entertainment industry will be buzzing with excitement once again as Charterhouse, event organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards Festival, begins working with stakeholders in the industry towards instituting the 2010 edition.

Stakeholders are thus encouraged to send in entries of songs and albums that were released during the year under review; that is 30 November 2008 to 30 November 2009, to be considered for awards.

Officials will also be collecting entries from vantage points, including recording studios, music hot spots and selected radio stations across the country.

The Ghana Music Awards Festival, which is by far the biggest measure of the success of music industry professionals, has over the eleven years of its inception grown into the most anticipated event on the entertainment calendar.

The schedule leading to the Awards scheme began with a series of meetings which started with the sitting of the GMA Academy, also known as the GMA Planning Committee, made up of a cross-section of industry players.

On this Academy are ace musicians, producers, topnotch Arts and Entertainments journalists as well as representatives of the players of the music industry which is the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) and Ghana Phonographic Industry (GAPI).

This committee deliberated on the calendar of activities for the year and took another look at the categories and their definitions.

They decidedly made minor adjustments to some of the categories presented at last year's event.

These included the removal of the Artistes of the Decade Category from the list as it had served the purpose for which it was instituted last year.

The category; Contemporary Highlife Artiste(s) of the Year was amended to Highlife Artiste(s) of the Year.

Members made the decision on the heels of the fact that highlife will always be highlife and the word contemporary created ambiguities that can be avoided.

This also meant the removal of the Contemporary Highlife Song of the Year from the list.

This leaves the categories for this year's award at 14 Public Categories and 10 Industry Categories.

The Public Categories are Artiste(s) of the Year, Hiplife/Hip Hop Artiste(s) of the Year, Highlife Artiste(s) of the Year, Gospel Artiste(s) of the Year, Discovery of the Year, Best Collaboration of the year, African Artiste(s) of the Year and Hiplife Song of the Year.

The rest are Highlife song of the Year, Most Popular Song of the Year, Afro-Pop Song of the Year, Hip Hop Song of the Year, Gospel Song of the year and Reggae Song of the Year. The Industry Categories are Album of the Year, Best Male vocal performance (Solo/Group), Best Female vocal performance (Solo/Group), Best Music Video of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Record Label of the Year, Producer of the Year, Traditional Artiste(s) of the Year, Record of the Year and Instrumentalist of the Year.