The Ghana Music Awards scheme announces for the information of music industry professionals and all interested parties that nominations for this year’s edition of the Festival is officially closed.
By this announcement, the GMA’s will not be acknowledging any new entries for consideration for awards from Monday February 7, 2011. It must be said however that the process of submission and data collection has been very successful this year.
“Many of the entries received from the nationwide data collection exercise have been signed by their respective management as authentic entries that satisfy GMA requirements of commercial release and date of release (December 1, 2010 – November 30, 2011).
A commercial Release as used by the scheme refers to any musical work that can be obtained commercially through Ring Tones, CD, VCD, DVD, Cassette purchases and Electronic release (Media cards and internet downloads).
What remains now as organizers work towards the grand launch is for the Planning Committee to complete work on the nomination and categorization process. At the end of this process, the scheme will reveal the top five or six nominations per category that will be published for the general public to vote their best.
The Committee is also working on the nominations for the Industry Categories that require a great deal of knowledge in the music industry. This immense responsibility placed on the shoulders of the Committee Members cost them countless hours of debate and discussions.
To ensure due diligence, the Committee members listen to a majority of the songs that have been categorized as much to refresh their memory as to effectively gauge their relevance for nomination and subsequent inclusion into the final list.
The Committee last met on Sunday February 6, 2011 to work on the categories. It is hoped that a substantial portion of the work would have been completed by the end of the week so organizers can work at releasing the nominations for this year.
Meanwhile, on the subject of some producers nominating to be exempted from the GMA’s, the Planning Committee has decided to go ahead and nominate the works should they qualify for nomination as the works are already in the public domain.
The Committee has decided that should the work of the said artistes make it into the final nominations list and win, they can decide to pick up their awards or not.
The current list of categories in the GMA 2011 scheme are:
Public Category Artiste(s) of the Year, Hiplife/Hip Hop Artiste(s) of the Year , Highlife Artiste(s) of the Year , Gospel Artiste(s) of the Year, Discovery of the Year, Best Collaboration of the year, African Artiste(s) 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(s) of the Year, Record of the Year, Instrumentalist of the Year, MUSIGA Merit of the Year
Any further changes made to these categories will be communicated subsequently.