• Shatta Wale‘s industry address delivered on June 2 has received several criticisms
• The musician indicated that Ghana has no music identity
• He also suggested to government to invest 10% of the sports budget in music
Entertainment analyst Arnold Asamoah-Baidoo has expressed dissatisfaction with Shatta Wale’s ‘state of the industry address’ on the grounds that the dancehall musician’s speech was not comprehensive.
Although he commended Shatta Wale and his team for the initiative, Arnold maintained on GhanaWeb TV’s entertainment review show Bloggers’ Forum that his expectations were not met.
Shatta Wale who had been off the scene for close to a month returned with an encounter dubbed ‘State of the Industry Address’ on June 2.
Aside from updating his followers on his journey to the United States, the musician claimed that during one of his meetings, he was asked “what kind of music do Ghanaians do?” but was unable to provide an answer to the question as a result of the many genres being championed by artistes in the Ghanaian music sphere.
“I want to propose that, we as music makers and stakeholders come together to identify one genre that can be attributed to all music works coming from our part of the world. Let’s do this for our industry to give it the global attention we have all desired,” he said while advocating for a national agenda to prioritize Ghanaian music on the airwaves.
“I want to propose the institution and enforcement of a national agenda to prioritize Ghanaian music on our airwaves. Let’s give Ghana music 90% of the airwaves and spread 10% for the other countries. For this proposition to work, we need all hands-on deck; media house owners, DJs, event organizers, MUSIGA, and every single stakeholder including the government of Ghana. This must be a national agenda. Let’s all get involved now to make it happen.”
But Arnold mentioned in his submission that Shatta Wale could have done better with his speech.
“I was not too impressed with the address because if you’re telling me you’re going to address industry-related matters, it should be detailed, it should be thorough. All he did was to give us problems and not proffer solutions,” he told host Abrantepa.
“You want us to decentralized major event; which events are you talking about? You want us to set an agenda to play 90% Ghanaian music; how do we do it? You want 10% of what is invested in sports to be invested in music; how do we go about it? Has he done any research to figure out if there’s some benefit coming from sports to government?
“He said we need an identity with respect to the music genre that we do; what genre? If you’re coming to give state of the industry address, it should be well-researched. You should give us a detailed analysis, empirical evidence and move ahead to proffer solutions,” Arnold added.
Watch the show below.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
