Irene and Jane get the biggest boo

Charterhouse, Event Organisers of Ghana Music Awards (GMA) blundered badly when they gave the Best Female Vocal Performance award to a duo they manage. Irene and Jane were massively booed on stage after receiving the award during this year’s GMA held Saturday at the National Theatre, Accra.

It is the first time in the nine-year history of the event that a dissapointed audience has booed award recipients that way.

Irene and Jane won the Charterhouse-organised reality TV show, Stars of the Future, and are currently being produced and managed by same outfit. Nominees in this year’s Best Female Vocal Performance category include, Becca, Ohenmaa Mercy, Cee and Diamond Hamilton Antwi.

Most people in the audience expected the award to go to either Becca or Ohenmaa Mercy but the organisers of the show thought the good people of Ghana could be taken for granted. Irene and Jane whose songs aren’t as well-known and widely accepted as Becca’s and Ohenmaa Mercy’s showed by their physical and verbal expressions on stage they didn’t deserve the award.

The audience registered their displeasure strongly enough to send Irene and Jane and the MTN official who was invited to present the award off stage. Analysts see that moment as ‘the single most embarrassing moment in GMA history’.

Questions are being asked whether the organisers of GMA should be involved in producing and managing artists. Charterhouse is yet to explain to Ghanaians the reason for this blatant conflict of interest.

Also, the boycott of the event by prominent Gospel musicians and Record Labels in Ghana is a pointer to the loss of confidence in the credibility of the awards by stakeholders in the industry.