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The Ghana music The Ghana Music Awards was launched in the year 2000 by Charter House production to celebrate Ghanaian musicians. It was first fully sponsored by MTN. In 2011 Charter houses contract expired and MTN did not further their sponsorship hence Vodafone took it up. Then the name was changed to Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) from 2012.
Awards until 2005 had no category for anything gospel. Thus Gospel songs and Gospel artistes .Taking a critical look at the winners of the ultimate award (artiste of the year)you will realize that no gospel artiste has ever won this category .The winners of the ultimate awards since 2000 to 2016 are as follows:
2000-Daddy Lumba
2001-Kojo Antwi
2002-Lord Kenya
2003-Kontihene
2004-VIP
2005-Bice Osei Kuffour (Obour)
2006-Ofori Amponsah
2007-Samini
2008-Kwaw Kese
2009-Okyeame Kwame
2010-Sarkodie
2011-VIP
2012-Sarkodie
2013-R2Bees
2014-Shatta Wale
2015-Stonebwoy
2016-EL
Why has no Gospel artiste won the ultimate award from the time gospel musicians were nominated till now? For the past years we have seen great gospel artistes like Kweku Gyasi, OJ Cecilia Marfo, Joe Mettle, Nicolas Omani Acheampong and many others emerging till now.
Is it that gospel artistes are not working very hard to put their tracks in a way that will get the attention of everyone in the nation or it could be due to the fact that gospel artistes are not too popular or the reason could be that the awards are given based on favoritism? After consulting the ideas of the great industry players, these are the reasons that came up:
Branding: Gospel artistes have a very unique and funny way of branding themselves. They have branded themselves in a way that only restricts them to the church and “holy places”. No gospel artiste would love to perform at a night club because the place is not meant for gospel performances as they would gladly put it. As we all know after every awards night the artiste of the year give a performance at the after party thrown for them. The question is, will any gospel artiste be willing to make such a move (No). Hence no awards for them in order for them to keep their holiness. So the way they brand themselves is what has led them in defeat this long
CONTENT: Gospel musicians are so monotonous in the selection of words for their tracks they limit themselves in a way that makes you think the Bible is made up of particular words. The Bible is full of many stories yet you just find a particular stories dominating in almost all gospel tracks. On a larger scale ranking of 100% you find 80% of the gospel artistes repeating the same words and just 20% of them doing something different. What then will trigger people to listen to your tracks when it feels like we have already listened to them?
POOR PUBLICITY AND MARKETTING: Gospel musicians fail to publicize their tracks very well. If a secular musician is going to launch his/her album you find flyers everywhere, tags on all social media, comparing their album launch to gospel musician is relatively very poor. You hardly hear of a gospel artiste having an album launch. Album launch is meant for people to know about what tracks you have and even help you in spreading it. Marketing strategies of the gospel musicians are very poor, you go onto any website for downloading tracks and you find none of their gospel tracks on them. How then can we get access to their tracks and listen to them apart from hearing them on radio.
PERFORMANCES: How many people would love to witness gospel performance? Compare a performance with the title “Shatta Wale Storms Kasoa” and “Christiana love storms kasoa” which one will people attend the most? The obvious answer will be that of Shatta wale’s at the expense of the latter’s due to their stage performance capabilities to thrill fans. Energy exerted into gospel musicians’ stage performance can never be compared to that of the secular, therefore people find it difficult attending gospel musicians’ stage performances. Gospel performances are no different from church performances so what else will trigger people to come and watch gospel performances. Personally gospel performances are boring to watch
AUDIENCE APPEAL: One of our industry players, Daniel Lartey, defined audience appeal as how your audience feels around you, does the audience see you as a celebrity. How many celebrities see them? Gospel artistes do not appeal to the audience. They cannot really cause an auditorium to the max.
AWARDS ARE FOR BUSINESS: Before the ultimate award is given the sponsors and charter house sit down to look at the best people who can bring money to them not those who won’t work to retrieve their monies back. Charter is house looking up for people who will sell out their tickets and trust me businesses. secular artistes are the best when it comes to this. Hence gospel artistes are not the best options when it comes to making money.
Story:Susana Helga Owusu
