Make 'Azonto' A Genre – Gasmilla To Industry Players

Hiplife artiste Gasmilla has called on the award organisers and the music industry players to accept Azonto as a genre.

Making Azonto a genre and awarding artistes for it, will make them create songs with the Azonto in mind every year, Gasmilla said on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM.

He explained that the inception of the 4Syte Music Video Awards has improved the quality of music videos that artiste put out.

“Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) organisers, if you decide to award an artiste for the ‘Azonto Song of the Year’ or ‘Azonto Artiste of the Year’, it will push people to do more,” he added.

The artiste who has championed the Azonto course for long believes it is one of the ways Ghanaian music can make it big in the international market.

“I saw there was a sound that was neglected from the coast and I decided to do it and sell it to the world,” he stated.

Gasmilla said the nature of Ghanaians to not settle for one thing has contributed to the dying of Azonto.

According to the artiste, Jamaicans have held on to Reggae and Dancehall for long and it is working for them.

“We are too creative as a people that we don’t settle on one thing. We feel that we have done something for too long so we should do something else,” he added.

The “3points” hitmaker who first commercialised Azonto explained it is important to push the Azonto as a genre before people from other states decide to own it.

“If BBC could come down to interview a guy whose video budget was not up to ¢2000 and his clothes ¢10, that alone says a lot about Azonto,” he stated.

Gasmilla also said many songs including the popular “Omo Ada” have Azonto in them but they have been classified under Afro Pop and Afrobeat and that cannot help sustain Azonto.