Social Media over the few past days has been inundated with stories about the recently held Zylofon Media Launch in Nigeria which hosted all Zylofon signees at the Oko canter in Lagos, Nigeria.
First of all, I must congratulate NAM 1 and his team for that great move. Surfing the social media space in Nigeria, the event is undoubtedly one of the biggest event witnessed this year. And for someone from outside Nigeria to pull off that big event, worth commending
However, a section of Ghanaians are shocked at the turn of event during the night. Snippets from the night showing patrons at the event looking on like “koliko” as our finest artists take turns to perform.
I felt embarrassed to see my own Shatta and Abowy, performing to a centre full of “ghosts”. Last night undoubtedly will be one of the bad nights in the lives of these Zylofon Signees.
Our own King Promise was not spared, he was seen Jumping from end to end without cheers as though he was doing aerobics in his living room.
Stonebwoy had to personally reach out to a girl right by the stage to prompt her of his performance after several minutes of performing.
Shata wale did his usual magic to the loudest silence of his career, only for the “dumb” crowd to finally find their voice when he introduced Burna Boy to share the stage.
As for my lovely sister Joyce Blessing, the least said the better.
Are there any lessons to learn from this. Until recently, our art industry has predominately been about Nigerian content. It took the likes of Agya Koo, our screen goddess, Nana Ama McBrown and the rest to stop the proliferation of Nigeria movies in our country. This birthed the Accra guys Majid, Yvonne Nelson and my personal all time crush Jackie Appiah to handle the English side of the art.
In the past, our music event was a list of great talents who treated patrons with some spectacular performances. These days, it appears it’s not enough to have an all Ghanaian list of artistes for an event.
In the past, we all can recall the amazing performances from Kwaw Kese, VIP, Lord Kenya at our events, but now there has to be a Wizkid or Tiwa to “salvage” the night.
The latest of this is the Ghana meets Naija event. One is tempted to decipher what really is the plan, whether it is to promote the Nigerian acts in Ghana or vice versa.
Instead of us giving opportunities to our own talents on our big stages, we give it off to the Nigerians at a huge cost. If you are lucky, while they ask you to perform pro bono, they will be dishing out thousands of dollars to these foreign acts to share the stage.
We don’t support our own and there seem to be no efforts towards supporting our own. I recall engaging one prominent video director in Ghana expressing worry about the industry, how Ghanaian artists spending between 10 – 20 thousand dollars to get a Nigerian director to shoot a video while same Ghanaian artist will approach him with his 10 fingers with an avalanche of complains as though he can’t even afford bottled water.
Same video concept, same equipment but the Ghanaian artist will prefer to spend 10,000usd on a Nigerian director while he begs the Ghanaian director with Ghs10,000.
While Ghanaian presenters are locking their playlist with the Mayoukuns, Wizkids, etc without a request. The Ghanaian artist has to virtually beg to make it in their playlist, which will even be replaced with the next Davido release.
Our bloggers are no different, over 70% content from outside Ghana. How on earth can our own be known? When you complain, they say you need to be a friend before as if the Davidos and the rest know of their existence.
We must wake up and act right for the industry. I still don’t know why Teephlow’s award-winning State of The Art song is not the anthem for our industry.
It’s the single with the biggest record in the history of our music industry. For a single song to address all happenings in the industry, no wonder it was the only award of the night without any controversy.
Our Artist must also put in a lot of work to touch other countries, especially our neighbours.
This is only a wake-up call…. together we can win and we all can eat.
Mr. Industry Player, help the industry and make it attractive.
A word to the wise……
Source: KobbyKyeiNews.Com
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