“There is no industry,” he says.
“It is crazy when you are an artist and you talk like this and people take it from the music politics point of view. I don’t have any interest in going near any music politics because I have about 15 years of active music in me I still want to pursue.
“But there are certain people who should make sure whatever we create yields benefits to us, and these are the people in the helm of affairs. The people managing the structures don’t even understand what they are doing. I don’t mean to criticize anyone but these guys are not doing great as long as far as governing the music industry is concerned.”
Still on promotional rounds for his Daakye album, the talented singer says:
“Ask any musician what they get from doing a hit record apart from being famous and being called a musician, so if you have a leader and he is not thinking about putting money in the pocket of the hit maker then what are we doing as a group? It’s simple; you ask yourself what the other developed countries are doing to put monies in their artist’s pocket. Why won’t you consult their expertise, I heard two million Ghana Cedis was giving to a company to check our contribution to the nation’s GDP. How does that benefit the musician?”
Kwabena Kwabena, who has been nominated seven times at this year’s Ghana Music Awards is however hopeful the body would get around the any challenges the sector faces.
“First you fix the money collection system from the media houses and try and control how people steal the music, then after that you go and research and you will even get a handsome figure to show government. If we had checked the systems and shown good figures, we would have earned the respect of the government more,” he adds.
“Put money in the musicians pocket through his work. If I had two million, I will go to the UK and consult them on how they collect the revenues for the work the musicians do, buy the software that will monitor the systems for us, then seek the government to help us make it mandatory for every media outlet to be on that monitoring scheme.
“We are in a technology era and we are still complaining about things like this, nobody cares about nobody. How long can an artist survive on his show money? If you are an artist, you think about how you can create your own team to help you build and move your career from one point to other and just hope it changes. I feel we can do due diligence to our selves, in life the moment you think selfless and think about achievements, that’s when you begin to head somewhere.
“Our main problem is we don’t understand our time and what to do with our time. That’s why I was happy to see a young man become the president and unfortunately things are yet to change. Every leader should have a vision everyone is following. That is why we submit to you and call you president. In the ancient world it’s the brave ones that got the chance to the throne. Leadership is more about action. I pray someone has a change of heart or we get someone who will change things.”
On how he managed to make four award-winning albums even with all the challenges he talked about, he revealed:
“I have never been on a label and I have always been on my own, Kontihene helped me as an artist but we didn’t sign any papers for a label kind of thing. I paddled my own boat from then, I didn’t intentionally plan to be on my own. As a matter of fact I had a lot of trouble impressing anybody from the beginning of my career, after the success of “Aso” I decided to steer my music my own way because anyone who approached me afterwards were people who had turned me down in the past.
“And I just believed if they didn’t believe in me before I did “Aso”, then; there was no need to be with them after finding my way out from back-up singing to a hit album. I knew also everyone who approached me after “Aso” became a hit and I didn’t believe they had something new to offer. The people who believed in you from day one are the people you should hold on to.”
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