Good songs, sloppy showmanship

Ghanaian musicians are very creative and talented; most of them have been able to produce hits after hits over the years, entertaining millions of Ghanaians and the world as a whole. But when it comes to performance, most artists find themselves wanting.

Apart from the fact that most of them don’t or can’t perform their own songs live, majority of them have no stage craft, attitude or swag. Some even forget the words in their own songs when performing!

Majority of our artist come to shows in outfits that make it virtually impossible for them to freely move on the stage as they should. With the ladies, some mount the stage in short outfits that make it hard for them to use the stage to their full ability.

Because of this reason, one would often realize that these female artists have more of their concentration on their dress, monitoring the dress to prevent them from exposing their private parts.

Even though, the male artist dress in a way that will make it easy moving up and down on the stage, they act as if they were not informed in time for the show, or they did not have enough time to rehearse and perfect their stage craft.

They don’t have a well thought out stage craft in their performance, no coordination; they don’t interact with the audience, no dance moves, no nothing! All they do is shout over their songs and give the audience all sorts of useless commands- Such as, Put your hands up, say ooooo, say aahaaah and so on.

Also, because most of these artists don’t train or exercise physically for a long performance, you would easily see from their actions and breathing, half way into their performance that they are tired and can’t even control their breath.

The musical groups in the country are sometimes the worst culprits when it comes to performance. Most of them spend their time on stage hopping from one side to the other. No particular dance moves, no style or attitude, just hopping from one place to the other.

My advice to our musicians is since they expect to be paid more by event organizers and also expect exciting reactions and applause from their audience during and after their performance, they should invest more in their performance to give the fans and audience a better performance and value for money.

I have to commend Amakye Dede, Pat Thomas, Samini, Becca, Efya, Kwabena Kwabena and other performers who have given us the best performance over the years.

To the others, WATCH OUT!