Entertainment of Monday, 25 March 2013

Source: Ebenezer Narh Affum

‘Juju’ in the Ghanaian music industry

It sounds so funny to me when some celebrities upon receiving some awards at various awards ceremonies, give thanks to God when deep in their hearts, they know they rather ignored God and consulted some fetish priests for juju.

I believe it would be very childish and mischievous on the part of any person to conclude that indeed the successes chalked by most of our celebrities can all be attributed to God.

It's without doubt that some celebrities depend on powers of darkness. Sometime back Hiplife artiste, Castro was reported to have gone for juju to help enhance his musical career.

That news was quite surprising because Castro has been very successful on the music scene and there wasn't the need for him to use juju.

The news alleged that he had gone for the juju from a powerful female spiritualist at Madina Zongo. Having been able to go through all the rituals, Castro was reported to have personally made an undertaking to reward the spiritualist with a cash amount of GH¢500 in addition to other assorted items if the juju worked in his favor.

When Castro was quizzed about the issue, he said though the issue was true, he intimated that it was a friend of his who did it on his behalf. Castro also revealed that it was his friend who introduced him to the spiritualist but admitted that the rituals were done with his consent. Quite importantly, Castro denied that the rituals done were juju. He said the place was more of a Christian church than a fetish shrine.

In the course of writing this piece, I spoke to so many musicians. All the musicians I spoke to made it categorically clear that most musicians of today really use juju.

I was told some of the main reason for using juju is to help the artiste become very popular, get more hit tracks, become wealthy, get more awards, gain favor in the eyes of the general public and most importantly, as a source of protection from other artistes on the music scene who may try to abruptly end their careers.

I was stunned to the bone. If some musicians are able to reveal that their fellow musicians use juju, who am I to doubt it.

Hip life duo (name withheld), also believe that the biggest challenge in the music industry in Ghana is the use of supernatural powers or black magic, locally called 'juju', by some musicians to promote their album.

According to the duo, because some upcoming musicians and some old musicians are not talented enough, they go for juju to protect themselves and destroy any musician who they see as a threat.