It is kind of awkward to say but after living two decades of my life being a Ghanaian, its easier to attest to the fact that preference and consumption of everything foreign is the doom for the republic. Today focuses on the music industry and will base my comparison on the extreme benefits Nigerian artiste enjoy to the detriment of the Ghanaian art.
A country that boast of great musical talents and overwhelming love for music with emerging ‘crazy’ dances, yet we seemed not to get the deserving recognition worldwide. How would we dare dream of achieving such fate when the media supposed to give artiste exposure, reject our own and give great publicity to artiste from other countries.
Who is to blame for this canker;
The Ghanaian artiste is to effect payment before getting an airtime, both on radio and tv, whereas the Nigerian artiste enjoys free massive radio airplay and their music video rotates over 70% on various tv stations in Ghana. Should that be the case? No!. Ideally the media houses should be making payment in terms of royalties to the artiste but they milking them for using their intellectual property.
The Ghanaian Disc Jockey making an Afrobeat mixtape of 100 tracks has over 54 Nigerian tunes. I have had the privilege of listening to several Nigerian mixtape and to my surprise each doesn’t contain up to 5 Ghanaian songs. Are we thinking at all?
Bloggers are always in a hurry to post for free a song from a Nigerian artiste in the name of generating traffic due their dense population but requires the Ghanaian artiste to pay before getting same publicity platform.
Event houses organises shows, pay the Nigerian artiste huge sums to fly down and house them to perform. The Ghanaian art is giving meagre incomes at the end of the day and we expect them to have a good life at the end of their music career? He’ll no!
Is it not funny when you hear artiste saying ‘they putting Ghana on the map’ (going international) after the above notes, when even our songs and music videos are not getting airtime play in our dear country, not to talk of immediate neighbourhood countries.
Why do we sell what we don’t have and expect to be rewarded in same category. Is high time we learn to support, appreciate what we have and we will grow from zero to hero.
….. I write to please my conscience!
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