Govt should help artistes with links in other countries – Musician

Versatile Ghanaian musician, Obiba Sly Collins, has said that the creative arts ministry is not being supportive of musicians especially when they have to travel abroad.

In a studio interview with Dr. Cann on Showbiz Xtra on Happy Fm, he pleaded that the government should pave way for musicians and support them with links in countries that they go to perform so that their work can be made easier.

“When an artiste is traveling outside, then MUSIGA will write a letter for visa. What am I using that for? When I get to the country I’m going to perform at, write a letter to the ministry and tell them that your artiste is coming there. If you do just that, you’ve given the artiste money but what are they doing to support us?”, he quizzed.

Sly furthered, “I’m not sure they have done anything like writing to the ministry of tourism and culture in another country telling them our musician, Kojo Antwi, for instance, is coming. If you do just that you have sold your artiste and even if he’s not that popular, you have sold him big to their government. The government will look in their books and see to it that the artiste is paid well because his government wrote to them about him”.

This is to say that the government should support them to have better and bigger shows in other countries by giving them some form of endorsement so that the country can also support and boost them with their shows, and this will even help them bring more investors back to Ghana.

Talking about how beneficial that can be for the Ghanaian government, he said, “They will get you an investor to come and extract oil, an investor to come and build estates, an investor to deal in agriculture, and a lot more”.