There have been calls from several industry persons, including rapper Sarkodie, Shatta Wale and Paedae of R2Bees, for D-Black to become the president of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA).
They believe that he, will be a better president than the union’s current president Bice Osei Kuffour (Obour) whom they have accused of not seeking the welfare musicians.
Obour, reacting to the calls, told Franky5 on ‘This is Gospel’ on Hitz FM that D-Black, born Desmond Blackmore, does not even qualify to lead the musicians’ union.
“D-Black is impossible because the Musicians Union of Ghana constitution will not permit it. The constitution of the Musicians Union of Ghana says he must be an executive before [he] can become a president,” he explained.
D-Black, speaking in an interview on the Cosmopolitan Mix with Doreen Andoh, clarified that he doesn’t necessarily want to be the president of MUSIGA.
According to him, his only wish for the musicians’ body is for the right people to be appointed to run MUSIGA.
“The body that is responsible for welfare of musicians [is] not doing [its] job properly. I feel like they’ve made some effort but I don’t think it’s enough at all. Very little attention has been paid to the welfare of musicians.”
He noted that all over the world, there are bodies that collect royalties for musicians. These bodies, the rapper noted, work effectively to the benefit of musicians, that is not the case of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO).
“I don’t understand how GHAMRO works,” he said.
After seven years of doing music, he received a mobile money alert from GHAMRO that his royalty, two years ago, was GHc600 “and I got told that all the A-listers is GHc600 each and it didn’t make any sense to me…Because it’s not possible all artistes will get the same amount of airplay at a given time.
The ‘Vera’ hit rapper called for investment into a software that properly records the number of times each artiste’s song is played by radio stations in the country.
On the issue of running for the MUSIGA presidency, D-Black noted that “when you are going to do something like this, you have to be selfless and you have to have the time to manage and run it properly. I can help but I think that it’s just not about me, it’s about the whole music fraternity coming together and jut putting things in place.”
To him, the musician’s body needs “to get the right people in the right places to make [MUSIGA] work. Because of the state of our music industry, to be honest with you, everybody is thinking about themselves…”
“I don’t care if it’s still Obour who is president of MUSIGA as long as the right thing is being done and the machine is working, it’s fine. It’s not about the post and the position for me; it’s about making sure that it’s working [and] everybody is getting what they are due,” D-Black noted.
The rapper, who is the CEO of Black Avenue Music, dismissed any attempts to justify that there is no money at MUSIGA. “You can’t tell me there is no money because I know some monies have come in from the government. There is nothing you can tell that you spent that money on that is more important than this. You can’t tell me a concert at the stadium for fans to come jump to for free is more important than making sure [of] the welfare of musicians.”
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