ACTIVITIES leading up to the 2011 Ghana Music Awards Festival (GMA) are well under way with the successful completion of the brainstorming and Categorisation Committee meeting.
The meeting, which was held at the British Council Hall, witnessed highly-spirited discussions between some notable members of the growing entertainment industry in Ghana who had valuable opinions to share on the GMA.
The highly energetic meeting was attended by big names in the industry like Panji Anoff, Nana Kwaku Osei (Nacy), Appietus, Ahmed Banda (Bandex), Akuba Quarmine of GTV, K.K Kabobo, David Kyei (Kaywa), Fifi Folson, Ernest Kwesi Ennin, Dj Mensa and Nana Kwame O. Sarpong, among many others.
The Planning Committee of the GMA was also in full attendance while Rev. Micheal Ohene-Okantah of the University of Education, Winneba, represented the school of music where so many musical talents are nursed yearly.
The agenda for the discussion was simple; to discuss the developments in the music industry over the last year with reference to the awards, examine the awards categories and finally categorize the entries into the various categories.
This agenda engaged the professionals from about 11am, when the meeting began, till about 3pm when the committee finally moved to have lunch and to continue further discussions in close quarters. As part of the discussion, some new categories were suggested.
Notable among the suggestions were The Best Performer of the Year, Best Ghanaian Artiste in the Diaspora and the Engineer of the Year.
One conclusion that was drawn was that although all the members of the various committees of the GMA were drawn from the industry itself, it was the only way to ensure the scheme worked well.
The data collected from the categorizations processes will be compiled and presented to the Planning Committee when it meets to discuss the processes so far and begins to work on cutting down the nominees to size.
It is important to note that one of the Planning Committee’s main responsibilities is to complete categorization of the public categories, which are mainly based on popularity such as the song categories, the artiste categories and the album categories.
This committee also generates and vets the entries into the industry categories which are not based so much on popularity, such as the Instrumentalist, Record of the Year, Male and Female Vocal performance and Producer of the Year, etc.
The current list of categories in the GMA 2011 scheme are: Public Category- Artiste of the Year, Hiplife/Hip-Hop Artiste of the Year , Highlife Artiste of the Year , Gospel Artiste of the Year, Discovery of the Year, Best Collaboration of the year, African Artiste of the Year, Hiplife Song of the Year, Highlife Song of the Year , Most Popular Song of the Year, Afro-Pop Song of the Year, Hip-Hop Song of the Year, Gospel Song of the year, Reggae Song of the Year, Best Rapper of the year.
The Industry categories are: Album of the Year, Best Male vocal performance (Solo/Group), Female vocal performance (Solo/Group), Best Music Video of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Record Label of the Year, Producer of the Year, Traditional Artiste of the Year, Record of the Year, Instrumentalist of the Year and MUSIGA Merit of the Year.
Meanwhile, a special call is being sent out for entries into the Music For Development category, which is being sponsored by the World Bank.
All entries for this category must reach Charterhouse before February 7 to allow the committee ample time to work on the entries.