The Ghana Music Awards

A regular commerce-driven company organises the Ghana Music Awards. It was a master stroke of business genius for them to create the event which attracts more suspense, intrigue and excitement than almost any other in Ghana. I don’t think many events have been more crazily followed in Ghana in the past 10 years than the Ghana Music Awards, apart from the General Elections, the Africa Cup of Nations 2008 and Barack Obama’s pit stop in Accra.

In its time, I’ve seen the Ghana Music Awards criticised by musicians almost every year. Now, criticism itself is not a bad thing, is it? But if so many are so variously angered, dismayed or repulsed by nominations and awards at the event, why is it still so inexorably popular? Cannot the musicians and their associations set up their own glitzy-ritzy awards event? And since they will be the organisers and the eligible at the same time, the popularity of their programme will mean a necessary waning of the star quality of the Ghana Music Awards.

You can support the Ghana Music Awards and make it better, or you can cull its clout by setting up a ‘self-awarding’ musicians’ event. Whatever you do, do not accept nominations every year and turn around to criticise if the “Most Popular Song of the Year”, by your estimation, is no more popular than cricket in Ghana.

Provocation – One Minute to Murder

Silently suffering the only one United bite two H2 bullets from the band of badass Bavarians, a hoggish, hirsute hobgoblin hobbles between my main man and I, provoking me with his puerile revelry because he’s figured with his kernel brain that I’m a United fan. I eye the coke bottle on the table, imagine his blood on the shiny Equator-Bar floor, but elect to bark at him instead. He scampers off with his tail between his hinds.

Integrity

No darn dictionary can tell me what it means. But I know its main meaning when I’m fringing a cruel cliff, stumbling toward the great gorge below, and one mere metre at my blind back hovers the sole beneficiary of my ‘loaded’ life insurance.

Obama's Legacy & Other Random Questions

Can what feels good ever be wrong?
Has Obama already secured his legacy?
What on Earth is a Goliath Tiger Fish?
Is Cote d’Ivoire serious about Eriksson?

Of Royalty and Fleas

Opinions should be free
To the hundredth degree
If royalty lies with fleas
We'll criticise and sting like bees

Joshua Clottey Should Shut Up

He fought with the US government for exercising its discretion in refusing his trainer’s visa application. Those were rounds 1 and 2. He fought with Manny Pacquaio, before the real fight, for ‘disrespecting’ him. Those were rounds 3 and 4. He fought a Ghanaian boxer for sparring with Pacquaio (i.e. for being unpatriotic). Those were rounds 5 and 6. Then he ate food which slowed him down. Those were rounds 7 and 8. Then he danced his way to the ring promising a swagger which never showed up. Those were rounds 9 and 10. When the real fight came around, he’d already been boxing for 10 rounds with the whole world, and was so tired that he showed up without the boxer in him. Now he’s complaining about how Ghanaians are treating him post-bout. Was he boxing for personal glory and money or for Ghana? He's fighting everyone, again, before his next real bout.

Joshua Clottey, just shut up!

Ridge, Accra’s Most Beautiful

Accra’s Most Beautiful is royal, romantic Ridge. It’s not the eerie equilibrium eddying between the quaint colonial-esque concrete cloisters and the modern, steel-and-glass split-levels and skywards, no! It is the towering, titan trees! Neems, Mahoganies, What’s-their-names. They stand sentry, elegantly, on the street-sides and dominate even brick-and-stone. That’s how Accra was meant to strike a pose.