When the season for Ghana Music Awards is up, hardly do we talk feverishly about anything else; but do you blame us? The awards scheme is such a big deal: industry stakeholders, musicians, and the general public, all have a stake in the awards; therefore, everybody has an opinion on the event.
In the structure of the VGMA, there�s a team that is responsible for the collection of eligible songs, there is the Board responsible for categorizing the songs and artistes and then there are the Academy, Board and general public responsible for the voting.
The mandate of the Board is to shortlist all the songs collected, put the songs and artistes in appropriate categories and then release a faultless list but interestingly, the Board seems to be doing more than it has been mandated to do � doing research to ascertain release of songs, calling artistes and managers to confirm proper titling of songs and correct dates of release.
Conspicuously missing from the structure is the Research and Verification Team (RVT) that is supposed to research and verify all related issues concerning the collected songs. This team must do filtering over filtering of the songs before it presents a pool of qualified and controversy-free songs to the Board.
The simple job for the VGMA Board is to categorize the songs knowing very well that, they will not be called upon to answer questions concerning songs wrongly nominated or artistes not qualifying to be new artistes and all that.
The Research and Verification Team (RVT) must be the front that is answerable to all questions concerning songs, artistes and release dates.
Charterhouse must revise the structure to include the RVT, which will be mandated to keep all records released within the year under the review. There�s claim of a research team in existence but of course, that is hogwash, considering the errors that emanate from the list every year. This move will reduce drastically the level of inconsistencies in the nomination list and also take some pressure off the VGMA Board.
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