Judging from the latest information from the Tema based Adom fm concerning their first ever Ghana Gospel Industry Awards (G.G.I.A) which has been slated on 9th July next month, it seems all is set for the awards ceremony to take off.
Flex newspaper visited the offices of Adom fm in Tema last week and a confirmation was given by Mr. Lawrence Tamakloe: Events and Promotion manager of the awards.
The planning committee is finally out with all the necessary information concerning the nominations and even the voting pattern. The organizers told Flex newspaper that the awards academy is to provide 60% of the votes an artiste needs to clinch an award whiles 40% will be determined through public voting on short code 1739 on all networks.
The main categories to be contested for include Male vocalist of the year, female vocalist of the year, choral group of the year, best video of the year, record label/executive producer of the year, Gospel sound engineer of the year, best gospel producer and best gospel song writer. The rest are new artiste of the year, album of the year, song of the year, artiste of the year, popular video of the year, alternative gospel video of the year, alternative gospel song of the year and collaboration of the year.
The final nominations, published by the Academy, shows a potentially fierce contest among Cecilia Marfo, No Tribe, Christiana Love, Florence Obinim and Ernest Opoku. Cecilia Marfo, who shot to fame with the popular Afunumu Ba track, received seven nominations which spread across the public voting and the academy voting categories. No Tribe is in strong contention for Album of the Year; Artiste of the Year and Popular Video of the Year. The leader of the group, Nacy is also the frontrunner for the Gospel Sound Engineer of the Year and Gospel Producer of the Year awards respectively.
Some pundits have raised concerns over some of the nominations and even the timing of the event which they described as being too short for both voting and publicity. There are also issues with dates and years of release as Cecilia Marfo and Ernest are noted to have released in 2009 instead. The controversial category is the “Alternative gospel video and song of the year categories” which have the likes of D-Black, Kwabena Kwabena, Trigmatic and Obrafour in contention.
Players of the gospel industry are of the view that hip-life artistes should not have things in common with the gospel industry. Their main beef is not whether they are clean or unclean, but the fact that the name of the award scheme is Ghana Gospel Industry. “The names in those categories do not belong to the gospel industry” they added.
The academy sitting on the gospel awards committee include Bessa Simons as the president, Kwesi Ernest from Media Excell, Akosuah Adjepong, Carlos Sakyi: copyright advocate and Galaxy entertainment and Kwame Apau of Regent University.
The grand finale comes off at the National Theatre on 9th July at the National Theatre. Gospel artistes who have been nominated in the various categories are therefore calling on their fans to vote for them on the short code 1739 on all networks except Tigo. The aim of this award is to help the gospel industry.
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