More pundits want Gospel Album of the Year category scrapped from 2016 VGMA

Charter House, organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards have revealed they have been inundated with calls to scrap the Gospel Album of the Year category of the awards.
George Quaye, Public Relations Officer of Charter House speaking on Hitz FM’s ‘Showbiz Review’ with MzGee, said, many pundits are suggesting that the gospel album category be joined with other song categories of the awards.
He said, “One category that came up strongly was, for instance, the Gospel Album of the Year category which most people have agreed that if they are that good, why don’t they join the album of the year category where everybody else competes?”
Nevertheless, there is also another school of thought that says that the gospel music genre is the only music genre where artistes are able to produce albums as compared to the other genres.
Citing an example, George said, “an artiste like Shatta Wale has reportedly released about 93 singles, not an album but when you go into the gospel arena, almost all the gospel artiste have in the year under review, released albums. Very few released albums in the other genres.”
George, however, indicated that the final decision rests at the door steps of the Ghana Music Awards board.
On the argument that Reggae and Dancehall should not be treated as one category, he said, whereas it might be easy for anyone to instantly name as many dancehall songs that were released in the year under review, it may be difficult to do same for reggae so they will keep the two music genre’s together as one until they are able to individually stand on their own.
Asked whether a cover of a song could be nominated, George said, “a cover is a totally new song and once it was released in the year in review, it qualifies like any other song.”
His response is coming on the back of concerns by the public that ‘Gasmilla’s hit song ‘Telemo’ does not qualify for this year’s awards because it was not released in 2014 whereas the song’s cover, ‘Y3wo Krom’ by Atom was released in 2015.
George said, “the VGMAs have also nominated remixes as new songs before.”
Charter House, organizers of the VGMA opened nominations for this year’s awards on January 1, 2016.
Some Radio presenter across the country have also been given the opportunity this year to also file forms according to the kind of music they have played in the year under review.
This new initiative according to George is part of a research by the board to identify songs that trended during the year under review.
George says, “because media houses interact mostly with music and musicians, all year through, they also know the songs that are trending, so they will also file some of these forms.”
He said, “we’ve tried to broaden the research bracket so that we’ll try to make it as nationalistic as possible. Eventually, when we have all that, during the cut-down, you’ll see the song that has appeared at many of these places, that will give you an idea of the strength of that song as far as the national preference is concerned.”
“So it means that when an artiste’s song has been entered by the research team or by some radio station, but the artiste has not filed a nomination, the research team based on recommendation from the board can approach the artiste and tell them,” George added.
This year’s calendar year starts form January 1, 2015 to December 31 2015. Any musical work that was released within these dates qualifies to be nominated.
Credit: Hitz News