Tuesday 8th April , 2014 8:12 am
Kwabena Kwabena is unhappy about the state of Ghanaian music. The smooth-singing Highlife musician has stated that “there is no industry” in Ghana and MUSIGA must be blamed.
In an interview with enewsgh.com, he said MUSIGA has failed the Ghanaian musician.
“There are certain people who should make sure whatever we create yields benefits to us, and these are the people in the helm of affairs. The people managing the structures don’t even understand what they are doing. I don’t mean to criticize anyone but these guys are not doing great as long as far as governing the music industry is concerned. Ask any musician what they get from doing a hit record apart from being famous and being called a musician, so if you have a leader and he is not thinking about putting money in the pocket of the hit maker then what are we doing as a group? It’s simple; you ask yourself what the other developed countries are doing to put monies in their artist’s pocket. Why won’t you consult their expertise, I heard two million Ghana Cedis was giving to a company to check our contribution to the nation’s GDP. How does that benefit the musician?”
According to Kwabena Kwabena, a proper revenue collection system has to be put in place to ensure musicians get value for money. His suggestion was in reaction to the fact that MUSIGA invested heavily in a market research conducted by KPMG.
“First you fix the money collection system from the media houses and try and control how people steal the music, then after that you go and research and you will even get a handsome figure to show government. If we had checked the systems and shown good figures, we would have earned the respect of the government more. Put money in the musicians pocket through his work. If I had two million, I will go to the UK and consult them on how they collect the revenues for the work the musicians do, buy the software that will monitor the systems for us, then seek the government to help us make it mandatory for every media outlet to be on that monitoring scheme.”
He added that technological solutions be sought to fix the problems of the music industry in Ghana. According to him, the right technology and visionary leadership would go a long way to ensure the growth of the industry.
“We are in a technology era and we are still complaining about things like this, nobody cares about nobody. How long can an artist survive on his show money? If you are an artist, you think about how you can create your own team to help you build and move your career from one point to other and just hope it changes. I feel we can do due diligence to our selves, in life the moment you think selfless and think about achievements, that’s when you begin to head somewhere. Our main problem is we don’t understand our time and what to do with our time. That’s why I was happy to see a young man become the president and unfortunately things are yet to change. Every leader should have a vision everyone is following. That is why we submit to you and call you president. In the ancient world it’s the brave ones that got the chance to the throne. Leadership is more about action. I pray someone has a change of heart or we get someone who will change things.”
Kojo Akoto Boateng/citifmonline/Ghana