And the nominees are….
Once again, Ghana’s prestigious award ceremony is upon us. On Saturday, March 15th, the Telecel Ghana Music Awards (TGMA) nominees for the 26th edition were announced. As expected, the nomination was met with mixed reactions. The excitement was high, and the disappointment – well, you can tell.
Over the last two decades, the TGMA has built a brand that is respected and regarded as the premium music award in the country. Amidst the praise, some people have raised concerns over the awards for different reasons, some of which have been addressed over the years.
For purposes of clarity, it is imperative for readers to understand that award schemes have their modus operandi. As such, one must understand how an award scheme is run, one must understand their guidelines. TGMA awards songs and artists based on popularity and technicality. To learn the definitions of the categories of TGMA awards, kindly tap here.
This year’s awards introduced new categories, like Best Urban Gospel Music, and recategorized some existing ones, like Best Afrobeats and Afropop Song of the Year. They also returned the famous Group of the Year. Kudos to the scheme for listening and producing results; it shows their commitment to bettering the scheme.
Additionally, regulating the number of nominees to six is a nice touch, which connotes that the six nominees are the best possible. However, while there is much to celebrate, there is also much confusion to be cleared. We may not have the answers, but we can open the conversation to attract the needed answers.
To begin with, it would be surprising to have a nomination list without some surprises or omissions. However, it is important that these omissions are reserved to a minimum, but once again, it did not feel like minimum omission was achieved. For those watching from the outside, we are bound to make our judgments at face value and until private information is made public, we will only deal with what is available.
One notable omission was DopeNation from every single nomination, which many believe is surprising sighting how they deserved to be nominated in several categories including “Artiste of the Year.” At this point, no official explanation has been provided yet for their omission. In a situation where they may not have filed for, should the board members not file on their behalf? Unless DopeNation explicitly decided to opt out of the scheme this year, which leaves the question, why?
Other omissions were minimal but also need addressing. Looking at the performance of AratheJay’s song “Jesus Christ 2” over the year, it was shocking to see what is in our opinion a displaced nomination with the song’s nomination in Afropop song of the year. While Ara’s nomination in the New Artiste of the Year category is perfect, the absence of a nomination for him in Hiplife/Hiphop Artiste of the Year and the song in Hiplife Song of the Year and collaboration of the year is something that needs addressing.
While the returning group of the year is a good sign, it is important to point our that the traditional group system we grew up on is gradually losing its touch. With the music ecosystem going through changes, we have seen the rise of more collectives, bands and make-shift duos. As such, international award schemes make room for all these people especially, the make-shift duos like Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga who were awarded the Best Duo/Group at the Grammys. A look at some releases in 2024 shows some duo releases like KiDi & Black Sherif’s “Lomo Lomo” as well as AratheJay & Black Sherif’s “Jesus Christ 2”. With how well those two songs performed, it would have been appropriate to have seen them nominated as Best Duo or Group. But maybe the current category definition may not make room for such additions. Hopefully, we see such changes in subsequent years.
In his book, “21 Nights In Accra: Culture Discussions and Excursions in Africa’s Favourite City,” the renowned Gabriel Myers Hansen shared some resonating commentaries on the award scheme. Notable is the Joe Mettel winning “Artiste of the Year”. For many, and particularly myself, there are no qualms in awarding the Gospel man the award, but the onus rested on the board to have provided enough reason to settle the debate in the year under review. I think Myers captured the essence of the debate brilliantly when he wrote, “Joe may have deserved the award on merit, but the entire nation must be sufficiently convinced that this is so.” He continued, “Else in the future, there will be a similar agenda by the jazz community, or the traditional music community, or the acapella community – once they see some mainstream recognition – to solicit a kind of affirmative action at the detriment of those who are truly deserving.”
In the same vein as the 26th Nominees Announcement, the board, which has been under intense scrutiny over the years, should make available the information and reasoning for the nominations and ommissions of some songs and artistes who are deserving under some categories, as highlighted in this piece. Otherwise, the continuous backlash and public perception of the award will “…not necessarily be a good look for a scheme already considered suspect by many,” as put by Myers.
At the end of the day, TGMA remains our most prestigious award scheme and it is for that reason that we will continue to demand that they put their best foot forward. 26 editions is a long way to come and it should be reflective in output of the scheme. The omissions and inconsistencies we have witnessed with this year’s scheme is something that needs addressing and we hope that they will be addressed soon.
In the meantime, people can start pulling in votes for their respective artists as we count down to the main night.
