Yaw Stone talks about Kinaata`s highlife

He wasn’t ready for anything pertaining nominations for this year’s Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) for he had no trending song therefore withheld any decision towards the awards.

But since being a spectator at times is more enjoyable than really involved in the game, Godwin Boakye Yiadom Buor, also Yaw Stone has noticed one or two wrongs emerging from his side as a highlife artiste in this year’s nominations and as usual Flex newspaper has pen them down.

The nominees for this year’s entry into the award scheme was announced last week and the Tom, Dick and Harry are at it again, doing whatsoever justice to it, and for Yaw Stone, he thinks there was a mistake somewhere concerning the highlife song of the year.

“I think they mistakenly placed Kinaata’s Confession on the highlife song of the year. Confession is a hip life song no doubt as compared to his Sweetie Pie. The moment you hear the two, one can easily spot the difference. But sweetie pie has rather gone for hip life with confession in for highlife. I guess the two have been used interchangeably. However I am happy for the inclusion of Wisa for the first time seeing a new artiste in that category, Wisa has done well,” Yaw Stone told Flex newspaper.

Moving on the highlife artiste of the year category, the Adonko singer isn’t surprised at the nominees for according to him; least attention was given the highlife genre under the year of review but with Kinaata`s name appearing on there is just unfortunate. “I don’t know if he picked nominations for this or it was given him by the board because I don’t know him to be a highlife artiste rather than that of hip life. Yes he raps and sings with the live band but that does not qualify him for the category of highlife artiste of the year,” he added.

On his general take of the scheme this year, Yaw Stone says, the board can never satisfy the people of Ghana for every year, industry players have problems with their nominations and it has always been the same. “The people on the board have never been changed, and if every year new people are replaced for the board, it will be okay. But since it’s always the same people all the time, we will continue to have the same problems. Again it’s not a Ghanaian state owned, but rather a Nigerian who does what he thinks,” he further stated.

If ever the music awards would be owned by the government, the musician said thus: “it can never be owned by the state because even MUSIGA doesn’t have the structures to all these things. They have been weak from day one to do it. Moreover, the private owned have been accepted by the people and they aren’t ready to release it to the government. Except if the government decides to carry its own awards. More fire should be put on MUSIGA if the awards should be state owned.”

Again Yaw Stone opined that, the real talents have been left to rot by the scheme even with every hard work they put into it. He said, mostly people don’t want to give real talents the chance to operate and as it stands now, the genre isn’t for lazy people.

“With the genre, we need to calculate all the words supposed to go in there. It’s not about free style but one which is put at the back of the mind that, the elderly are listening and they will judge from the beginning to the end of it. For this reason, most young people aren’t into it and even with us in here, there is no attention given us. I have tried a lot but the help isn’t forth coming and I will still push till my good becomes better. The genre needs much attention and money to promote for it is our own,” he said.

He is releasing an album this year as well as preparing for a nationwide tour dubbed the Yaw Stone unleashed. All fans should just watch out for the talented highlife singer as he produces more hit to the general public.