King Paluta
The Board of the Telecel Ghana Music Awards (TGMA) has responded to why King Paluta’s ‘Makoma’ was not nominated in this year’s scheme.
Contrary to rumours of supposed profanity in the song, a press release signed by Robert Klah, the Head of Communications and Public Events at Charterhouse, indicates otherwise.
According to the press statement, “each artiste can have only one song per category, except for Best Collaboration, Best International Collaboration and Best Music Video.”
The statement explained that, “This rule prevents vote-splitting and ensures that artistes have the most substantial chance of winning.”
Using King Paluta’s ‘Aseda’ and ‘Makoma’ as an example, the organisers applied this rule to select the most popular song.
“Based on our research, including streaming numbers and airplay from 175 radio stations, ‘Aseda’ was adjudged the more popular choice in both Highlife and Most Popular Song of the Year categories,” the statement disclosed.
They also acknowledged that although the Board relaxed this rule in some notable years of the scheme, its current stance is to allow only one nomination per artiste per category.
This is not the first time the award scheme is introducing the ‘one-artiste-one-song-in-a-category’ rule. In 2016, the same principle was applied to Bisa Kdei when he had two hit songs: ‘Mansa’ and ‘Bother Brother’, but only ‘Mansa’ got nominated.
Contrary to speculations that ‘Brother Brother’ was not nominated because it had a cuss word, report has it that Bisa Kdei was rather advised to choose his biggest song for nomination when he was informed that the Board would not nominate two songs by an artiste in a category. He therefore opted for ‘Mansa’.
However, in subsequent editions, the Board yielded to requests to allow multiple songs of artistes in a category. The current information, therefore, means that the Telecel Ghana Music Awards has reverted to its previous rule.