Ohemaa Mercy’s label good for business but not sustainable - Fred Kyei Mensah

Ohemaa Mercy is one of the hard working female gospel musicians we have in Ghana. Her passion to preach the word of God through her songs has never quenched as she always seems to be blazing with more powerful songs which brings salvation to the children of God.

Recently, Ohemaa Mercy together with her team launched their ultramodern studio located on the Spintex Road. The launch which saw the signing of three great talented musicians namely Francis Amo, Bro. Philemon and Ramsey was rumored to be the first female-owned record label ever to be established here in Ghana.

Weeks after the launch of the Royalty Music Studio, many were of the view that it would have been better for Ohemaa to have signed only one artist as a beginner. To them, even the secular musicians who have been in the business for sometimes now hardly sign three musicians at a go, they either sign one or two at a time.

Even though a good step, our worry was how sustainable this signing will be to Ohemaa Mercy and the industry in general. Speaking to Flex newspaper, the CEO of Fredyma studios, Mr. Fred Kyei Mensah commended Ohemaa for having a good heart to support her fellow musicians.

“It is a good idea for her to be helping her colleague musicians by signing them to her label but the truth is, we don’t have a record label here in Ghana because we don’t have the structures. For your studio to gain that recognition and survival you need to be a sound engineer yourself, majority of people fail in this business because they haven’t got the slightest knowledge about sound engineering and trusting it into the care of others is another problem on its own,” he said.

“Most of these engineers we entrust our studios in their care end up back-biting us because, some might have a small set-up for programming in their rooms and will take huge sums of monies from customers before bringing them to the studio to do the mixing or vocals and even with that, their out-put is always bad because they will use just a day to do a three days job,” he noted. Fredyma also said It is not also true that Ohemaa Mercy is the first female musician to have established a studio here in Ghana and that in 1999-2000, a certain Martha in Osu established a studio which discovered Obour. The engineer at that time was John Dey but we can say she is the first female musician to have established a studio which comprises live recording.

It all depends on the agreement they had with these three artistes that they have signed, looking at the artist, they all have their own style of doing music. I don’t know if their union is to release an album or singles together but I trust Ohemaa and her husband to do a good job, if it’s for business it is not bad but if it is for commercial purposes, they should be very particular about their sound engineer to avoid suspicion,” Fred stated.