Former Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Charterhouse, George Quaye has rebuffed Ghanaian gospel musician, Jack Alolome’s claims that artists sponsored the Ghana Music Awards activities since its inception.
According to George Quaye, the claims are untrue, stating that no gospel musician has been disregarded during the nomination application.
“I want to clarify something, and I am saying this on authority. No artist has ever sponsored the Ghana Music Awards. So, Herty Borngreat and her husband’s claims are not true. I am challenging them to come out and confirm if they did that.”
George Quaye
George Quaye, who responded to the question of those who were behind the lobbies for artists revealed that the controversy of Ghana Music Awards board members to lobby on behalf of artists is a challenging issue they [board members] are tackling at the moment.
Gospel musician Jack Alolome claimed that for a musician to get a nomination at the Ghana Music Awards, he or she must know someone among the board members to lobby on their behalf.
According to him, there are many times when gospel musicians have been snubbed when it comes to nominations and winning awards, regardless of how popular their songs were within the year under review.
Jack Alolome recounted how he missed out on a nomination with his fellow gospel musician.
“With the gospel musicians, when you release a song, no matter how it thrives, if you don’t have an insider, it will be difficult to get a nomination. It could be that gospel artists who got nominated had insiders. When I released ‘Tomorrow By This Time’, it was very popular, even to date. It was between myself and Herty Borngreat.
“The information I got was that the lady and her husband were sponsoring the event tour at the time. My producer lobbied but later, I was told we didn’t get it because they [Herty Borngreat and her people] were sponsoring them [GMA].”
Jack Alolome
TGMA Nomination Controversy
Entertainment journalist, George Quaye, responded to controversies surrounding the Telecel Ghana Music Awards (TGMA) nominations that were released recently.
He stated that the TGMA board deserves to be commended for the process they put in place for the nominations, especially the one-week window given to artists to register their grievances if any.
He argued that no award scheme in the world can be perfect and cited the Grammys and Oscars as award schemes that also suffer a backlash from musical artists when things do not go as expected of them.
George Quaye noted that the controversies surrounding the TGMA 2024 nominations do not surprise him.
“I would plead with the musicians to support the TGMA with prayers and everything. It will not be perfect; you can never get it in that way. Even the Grammys are not perfect. Every year, there are controversies surrounding the award schemes. At one point, people were criticizing the Oscars because of black minority participation so there is no perfection anywhere.
“I commend the TGMA board that, after opening nominations, they gave people a one-week window to make their grievances known for redress. This shows that we are humans and mistakes can be made.”
George Quaye
He noted that the nominations of artists for the music awards are not a cast-and-go application.
Meanwhile, there have been criticisms from some musicians who could not secure nomination in the 2024 TGMA, questioning the credibility of the scheme.
Popular Ghanaian artists like Amerado, Sista Afia, and Chief One, among others, petitioned the TGMA board after their popular songs were not nominated.
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