Blame radio presenters for scraping VGMA Gospel Album of the Year award – Artiste

Gospel Artiste cum broadcast journalist, Daakyehene Ofosu Agyeman, has attributed the scrapping of Gospel Music Album of the Year category from the 2016 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) to hypocrisy of some Gospel presenters.

In an interview with Kojo Preko Dankwa on Kasapa Entertainment on Kasapa 102.3 FM, Saturday, the Journalist disclosed that because of ‘Payola’ most radio gospel presenters have always declined to promote good music with less budget.

Instead, they prefer taking money (Payola) from artistes before giving them the platform for their listening public to hear them.

“Most Gospel DJ’s like playing and promoting ‘payola’ songs, so much that after a short time those songs fade out. Herty Bongreat is a typical example, why are DJ’s not playing ‘Bebrebe’ and ‘Kano saa’ featuring Sarkodie and Trigmatic?” he quizzed.

He added “Those same gospel presenters, who played those two Herty Borngreat’s tracks till she was nominated in the VGMA and won two Awards have stopped playing the songs but are now playing Cindy Thompson’s old tracks currently.”

Daakyehene demanded to know from Gospel DJ/presenters’ why they have also stopped playing Francis Amo’s songs on his latest album.

“Everything showed that Francis Amo’s album had some very good tracks on it, but because of his less budget, those stomach presenters deserted the lad and he wasn’t even nominated last year.”

Ghanaian Gospel musicians would have no option than to contend with other artists for this year’s album of the year category at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards since organizers have announced there would be no such category as “Gospel Album of the Year”.

This, according to Charter House is premised on the fact that a few gospel albums were submitted and those that were submitted did not have the minimum requirements of three hit songs.

The Board, therefore, noted that the few gospel albums submitted will now compete with other genres.

The main Awards Night is scheduled for May 7 at the Accra International Conference Centre.

Daakyehene Ofosu Agyeman, is a newscaster, court reporter and head of Business at Kasapa FM.

He was out with a Gospel Album four years ago and is preparing to release his latest album.