Far From Reality

Like it or hate it VGMA is one of the most prestigious awards ceremonies in Ghana and it is revered by most of the industry players and as such organizers are expected to live up to the expectation of the stakeholders even though it is a daunting task yet 16years have gone by and we are still faced with a lot of malfunctioning which leave much to be desired.

Shatta Disqualification
This years Awards can't be mentioned without the name of Shatta wale and I believe it's because of the hard work he did put in under the year under review and not his character. VGMA 2016 started with a press confab from the board which ended with the final words coming from the board chairman Mr Yola's wife Madam Theresa and she stated clearly the disqualification of Shatta Wale with an explanation. I was shocked upon hearing his disqualification and confused after hearing the explanation.

In fact ,the move reminded Me of Mario Puzo's book "The God Father" and the way Vito Andolini Corleone went about his business as the Don. To me it was a clear sign of paying the young man back for mistakes he has already apologized for and to me that was an act of the Old Testament that read "An Eye for An Eye, A tooth For A Tooth".

One Man Commando
You see there is only one man who can be a commando and that is Arnold Schwarzenegger and in fact it's in only his movies, the last man who tried it was 2Pac who felt it was him against the world and we all saw what happened to him, he was “makavelid”before reaching 26years so my advise for our Schwarzenegger is to calm down and re-strategize and he will be shocked with the support he will amass. What confuses me about him is his inconsistency and that to me is a bit worrying but in this instance I will blame his management for their inconsistency because if you go for a meeting and state that yes we will apologize and you refuse to apologize then I don't know how much more inconsistent you can be. All the same I won't worry too much about Shatta because I know he is a strong man who has stood the test of time and will continue to survive as a monster the industry have created and more over this could be non of my business.

Glaring Mistakes
There were some fundamental mistakes which were completely avoidable and I would attribute that to the time wasted in planning how to carry out the disqualification plan else I see no reason for those mistakes even if it was an oversight and oh to those who say “Google is not only the determining factor” let me remind them that the same Google is that one that exposed those basic mistakes.

Transparency
This years VGMA organizers did a great job by publicly announcing the members of the board and even thought I still have my reservations I still think it was a transparent move but my problem has to do with the fact that the research team is unknown. Secondly we all know the work of the board is to review and categorize songs submitted but my question is who authenticates the genres for instance do they have a team put up to make sure that the songs submitted are put in the right genre because we keep seeing Afro pop songs being put in the category of Reggae Dancehall which raises a lot of eyebrows since VGMA goes beyond our borders and might paint a gloomy picture of our experts. Moving forward we should find experts in the various genres to assist in the categorization in other to avoid future occurrences and if I may ask are cover versions eligible to compete? Just a harmless question I guess.

The Complaints
Over the years Ghana Music Awards has received serious bashing from stakeholders and I will just mention a few, in 2010 Kwaw Kesse described it as "fishy, biased, fake and shitty". Black Rasta also publicly called it, “the biggest insult to Ghanaian music" which I believe he later solved it with the organizers. In 2012, R2bees described the Awards as “A joke, fraudulent and not credible” in 2014 Shatta described it in unprintable words and in 2015 Sarkodie added his voice to it. Just this year Kwabena Kwabena has described what is supposed to be for everybody as a "Private Party" and as for Guru am sure he is tired of complaining so he has resorted to threats. In all these examples and many more can we say that they are all not true and even if they are all lies does it not affect its Credibility in someways.

Competitiveness
Recently I heard a song by Vybrant Faya saying that Stoneboy won the Artist of the year because Sarkodie opted out, a statement which I think was unfair to “Bhim” but the question is “na who cause am” and is that not going to be repeated again since who ever wins this year would have to leave with the fact that it was because Shatta was disqualified?

Loud Silence
There is a saying that the voice of the people is the voice of God so when you don't hear their voice then you might be listening to the devil .Also ,silence really means concern and in this years VGMA's the silence is very loud as compared to the previous years and you can clearly see that the people are getting fed up and are beginning to ignore even the controversies.

Conclusion
l believe all egos must be dropped since Rouky Dawuni has proven to us that you don't need to win the Artist of the year locally but with hard work and perseverance you can get to the Grammys, in all this, the signs a clearly written on the walls and just like the he goat who thinks he is destroying the owners wall he forgets that it's his own buttocks he ends up destroying .

The only proverb I can find for them is that “S3 Ni Mo Entumiwua Etiti Wuntuma” but knowing and studying the board over the past years they have proven to be a listening board to the extent that sometimes I think they listen too much so I believe they will take this piece in good faith and not in vindictiveness as Nii Aryee mentioned on Akwesi Aboagye's show on Peace FM in order to win back the lost trust in some of the players so we don't loose more stakeholders whom they are working for.