We need sensible people in our music industry - Shatta Wale

Ghanaian Dancehall sensation Shatta Wale has called for “educated people” to lead efforts to grow the country's entertainment industry.

He suggested this at a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by TV personality Serwaa Amihere on August 23, 2023.

According to him, well-qualified individuals should be put at the helm of affairs to lead discussions surrounding the music industry in Ghana and not individuals who “speak from a place of pain”.

“Are we ready as an industry to find people to be on our spaces, radio stations, and TV stations properly with qualifications, people that we know that are not coming out of pain to come and talk pain? Are we ready to fish out those people?..... before we can change this thing, it has to come with the whole orientation of people that we know that, okay, cool.

"Now we are creating, like the way we change government. We have the power to change the people sitting there….because right now, if he said we should go and sit at a roundtable with people, who are we going to sit with? Because the people there, they are abusing the artists,” he said.

Shatta Wale further suggested that there be institutions set up by the government to properly train individuals who would be well versed in the music industry and can fight for the progress of the Ghana music industry and its stakeholders.

“We have to look for our young graduates from these schools and start teaching them industry courses... Those are the things that we need. You need to even tell government that we need a school, that we can train people to run our spaces for us,” he suggested.

Shatta’s comments come amid heated debates over the state of Ghana’s music industry and how much Ghanaian acts are able to push their craft. Many Ghanaian artistes have called for more support and fewer comparisons to their Nigerian counterparts.

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ID/BB