Feature: When an industry decides not to grow, not even God can intervene

There is too much chaos in our entertainment industry today and I am sometimes forced to ask myself whether or not we are serious to grow as an industry.

From the days of ‘I told you so’ through to Osofo Dadzie’s Akan drama to our current movie days, I can’t boast of any extraordinary change in this industry of ours.

Yes, it’s true our system has moved from the usage of low standard equipment to a ‘more sophisticated and modernized ones which aid in producing good music videos, Movies and good sounds with regards to music but can we base our progress on these? Absolutely no!!! We have ourselves killed the industry with greed, selfishness and with a habit that scares and drives investors away anytime they show interest.

How many times haven’t we heard or seen actors, actresses, musicians and other entertainers soliciting funds to pay their hospital bills or perhaps to feed their families at old age and what have we as an industry done to prevent same occurrences for our future stars which could either be my son or daughter?

Interestingly, we have very knowledgeable resource persons who churn out more knowledge anytime they sit on radio or TV as pundits. The likes of Arnold Asamoah Baidoo, Halifax Ansah Addo, Fred Kyei Mensah, Ola Micheals, Ashes, Hanson Asiamah (Bull Dog) Socrates Sarfo amongst others are renowned entertainment pundits who with their traveling experiences educate us on how the entertainment industry should be managed but just as Christianity today, the more education we get from them the more dubious mistakes our entertainers commit.

We are old enough as an industry to still be going through same ordeal of an artist being ungrateful to his or her manager (record label) and managers (record labels) swindling their artistes all in the name of contractual agreement. But how can this be corrected when the artistes we are fighting for are not ready to tell the public about the contractual details with a record label?

I doff my hat to Zylofon Media for remaining focused on their vision even when they were discouraged and attacked verbally by some industry gurus. Indeed, they have proven to us how matured they are in the game by putting out benefits of an artiste who is being signed unto their label and with this, I believe our up and coming artistes will wise up the next time they are being approached by any label.

The offspring of every generation is mostly given the extra attention and care because they are the ones to keep the tradition going in the absence of the elders. The Nigerian entertainment industry is booming today, because the current reigning acts were coached and given the necessary support by their predecessors hence their dominance today and the current ones are also doing same to their up and coming ones. Ghana on the other hand is the opposite of such tradition, the up and coming ones are always being trembled upon by the A-list acts.

They do this based on how insecure they are about their stardom and the fact that, their shine can easily be taken from them should they give these under grounds the chance. This in return can only breed enmity between the under grounds and the A-list artistes.

Again, the Nigerian top-notch musicians are ready and willing to support their brothers in the movie fraternity with their personality by taking roles in movies at no fee charged just so their movies can reach larger audience. Hey, don’t be surprised they are the second biggest movie producers worldwide though we gave them the urge to do movies. Ghana’s movie industry is gradually fading out because the love for money has turned our industries against each other with djs taking huge sums of money for ‘payola’ from these up and coming ones who can hardly feed themselves and in the end playing foreign songs instead. It’s really apity.

We have prayed and fasted for a vibrant industry but with this character, I doubt if God can ever answer our prayers because ‘when an industry decides not to grow, not even God can intervene’.