My Thoughts on 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards | And We’ve Been Doing this for 15 Years?

I hate to review Ghanaian events and this is simply because my out of the box experience and expectations far out-run what is mostly delivered. And the unsustainable argument ‘this is a Ghanaian standard’ has been overused so do not invoke it this time again—it doesn’t work.

My revulsion becomes even higher if there are ‘no obvious financial constraints’ and when after many years, organizers cannot bring themselves to catch up with the existing global excellence. Who repeats the same mistakes over and over—-except Charter House and Ghanaians…

The 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards was not completely catastrophic but considering the many years that the event has been hosted, Charter House could have given us something deserving of applauds. This, they could have simply achieved by drawing the lines where they were supposed to be—and not allow artistes and certain people to run the show like their personal outdooring event.

The Stage Design

Watching this from home, the stage reminded me of the early discotheque days, with lights which were often—though not true, considered as having a possibility of inviting epilepsy. It was not therefore shocking when several people on social media kept talking about how those lights could possibly blind someone.

It was an award show and not a rock concert. We understand these lights add some sort of ‘beauty’ to stage performances but I felt they were too much, too bright and served as take-away instead of add-on.

I do acknowledge there is not much of flexibility out there when it comes to stage designs and as such, mounting platforms in Ghana, in our tight and somewhat fixed auditoriums comes with the greatest conundrum of our time but we have control over what we put up there—and these lights must be cut down.

Remember it was Ghana Music Awards and not Ghana Rock Concert with the 80’s appeal!

Artistes Performances

This was where many of us kept asking; what is going on and who was in charge of time. Must every Ghanaian artiste perform at the Ghana Music Awards and by this I mean, the number of performers and the time they spent on stage trying their luck with the live band or lip-synching their way through became a pain instead of the projected thrill.

Look, at such awards night, the performance list should be cut to a maximum of 5 and these selected few should be those who could set the place on fire, musically. We couldn’t provide great entertainment and I would be worried if we were asked to be in-charge of fire extinguishers so I mean, those who could have thrown out some decent but electrifying performances.

And it seems Charter House knew those who could have rocked the stage but simply ignored them—and decided to try their luck by overfeeding us with poorly cooked food. Let me be forward with this, Shatta Wale should have performed and if he wanted to fly a Private Jet to the Conference Centre, he should have been given that because patrons would have gotten their money worth.

And those of us who watched it FREE would have traded our good night sleep for something well-meaning. Forget Shatta Wale’s absurd ethics and demands; he should have been brought in—-even if it meant that Davido and Iyanya were to be cut off. After all, the latter was a complete disappointment.

READ ALSO: 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards-Check Out Our Live Updates & Commentaries

Start Time & the Time Artistes Spent on Stage

As Ghanaians, it seems we do not still have any sense of awareness when it comes to TIME and after 15 years of running this event, Charter House cannot bring itself to respect time.

As usual, the main event (forget the red carpet glam and unnecessary questions that were asked by the two hosts) started late, at around 22:30.

In the world of time keeping, a late start does not mean a late finish. It simply calls for drastic measures to make expediency a priority and this was not the case for the organizers.

For almost all the artistes, the award show was the night when they wanted to perform all their songs—even the ones no body including their managers can’t be bothered with.

With such a tall list of performing artistes left on their own to decide how many minutes of our previous time they wanted to waste, the performances kept going-on unnecessarily.

And at a point, it became a Church Service, except that I did not see the ‘collection bowl’.

The relevant question is; why must an award show come to an end at 3am? I am sure Charter House has a PR talk rehearsed for this but the fact remains; time must be respected.

The Award/Plaque Recipients

It comes up as if any person can still jump on stage to receive an award on behalf of who-ever. And after receiving the plaque, that any person is allowed to lecture out of his/her butt. There was not element of coordination in relation to this…

Even some of those called on stage to present the awards were on a frolic of their own—-and though Elikem’s proposal to Pokello comes out as sweet, the talks preceding the actual gesture and the whole proposal on stage was absolutely unnecessary.

Try this somewhere and you will find yourself ‘black listed’ from appearing on such platforms until the day the divine ‘dictatorialship’ of God comes to an end.

You are on stage to do something, just do that and walk off…You do not become the MC for the few minutes allocated to you.

READ ALSO: Winners of 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards: Shatta Wale Wins Artiste of the Year Award + Elikem Proposes to Pokello

Now the Dancers

Where do these artistes find these so called dancers who appallingly throw their legs and arms all around—mostly with a handkerchief in their hands?

It was mainly three way annoyance last night. If the lights were not killing your eyes, the dragging performances from some of the artistes would have been upsetting. And if these two were not resilient enough to push you off the cliff, the dancers would have easily done that.

Some of these artistes do not need dancers and those who do must invest a little more in these dancers who seemed like they had just landed from the extrasolar planet- Kepler.

The MCs-KOD and Eazzy

There wasn’t any buzz surrounding these two on social media and their presence was not felt in any way on stage. In fact, it was as if we did not have any MCs and the only prominent discussion that erupted on social media was about Eazzy.

And if you what to know what people were saying; they said she looked “like a Curry Powder”. Whatever that means, let’s leave it to her…

The Winners

This is a high score zone for Charter House and it is obvious that their credibility in relation to awarding those deserving a recognition cannot be undermined. Though, they still have to sit down and re-evaluate the way they organize this awards’ night.

From Shatta Wale winning the much talked about Artiste of the Year Award to Fuse ODG’s Million Pound Girl winning the Afro Pop Song of the Year, I will say; the plaques were placed in deserving hands.

Cut off GTV Transmission

With huge number of people relying on GTV for transmission, it is only reasonable and necessary that they are able to bring the award show from the beginning to the end to these people.

And cutting the transmission midway was totally unacceptable but you cannot blame them, Charter House should have started the show on time or manage their time expediently—so that the show does not go on pass a certain time which GTV would be forced to end transmission. This is as simple as ABC and we don’t need Einstein to write a whole equation for us on this.

It happens every year and Charter House does not seem to care. If they don’t care that much, then they should stop transmitting it—because the half a loaf is better than none adage is never true—in this regard.

Vodafone Ghana’s False Promise of Live Youtube Stream

I don’t like Vodafone but then again, I don’t really like any large corporation—especially telecommunication companies. However, I love Uche Ofodeli who stated days to the event that Vodafone Ghana (the headline sponsor of the event) was going to broadcast/stream the 2014 VGMA live on Youtube.

Shockingly, even on the red carpet, she reiterated this and went ahead to give the url of where it was streaming live. But it was a hoax. There was no Vodafone Ghana YouTube live streaming (unless we could not find it because the url she mentioned wasn’t streaming anything).

If Vodafone Ghana had kept to their promise, it would have served as the first point of call or an alternative service to those who were cut off by almighty GTV…

Even certain Church Services are Youtube streamed from Somalia each Sunday (no disrespect to Somalia intended) and Vodafone Ghana couldn’t just do this for us?

Conclusion

Whatever it is, we have no choice than to hope that certain basic mistakes would not be repeated next year. But from previous cause of dealings, give that hope a highly infinitesimal value…

Congrats to all the winners!

If you watched the show or attended, share your thoughts with us…

I’ve not slept at all so spare me any typos!