“Toothless MUSIGA”, Kwabena Kwabena jabs Obour & his team

Kwabena Kwabena has told enewsgh.com what he
feels is wrong with the current MUSIGA set up
headed by fellow musician Bice Osei Kuffour
(Obour).
“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.”