Reason’s Why Takoradi Musicians Are Not Making It

• Posted on January 22, 2014January 22, 2014
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

I was always wondering why the musicians in Tema are making it when truly music started from Takoradi (my opinion). This research and wondering made me to travel to Tema to study what makes them excel. Upon my investigation and enquires, I got to know that musicians in Tema are together (unity).

Their togetherness and oneness that made the likes of Sarkodie, R2bees, Yaw Siki etc excel in the music industry is what Nana Kwesi Coomson of 233times described in his post tittled – ”
Why Tema Artistes flourish; what they do right that others need to emulate“. The piece written by Nana Kwesi was and is still a great piece and that made me to research about why Takoradi music and Musicians are not selling lately.

Even though music is dynamic and changes, most musicians do change to the new trend as well, but one thing that is worrying musicians in Takoradi is ‘Lack Of Respect.’ Most musicians in Takoradi lack respect and tend to do anything that pleases them. Imagine an Artiste sending you a track through Whatsapp, tells you to upload for him/her and later adds “what are friends for.”

Yes friends are there to help each other but that doesn’t mean you should whatsapp a track. To me, it shows great disrespect and whatsapp as well decreases the quality of the track. Any learned Entertainment Blogger or DJ wouldn’t want to share a song with the lowest quality since it will stain the reputation of him.
An entertainment website is like a radio station and will be irrelevant withoit contents which are mostly tracks from Musicians. As far as you pay a Sound Engineer to record your track for you, same way you should be willing to promote your track. No blogger is telling anyone to pay “Payola”. As far as you do good music, every entertainment blogger will be willing to promote your tracks and music as that will drive traffic to his/her site.

Most Musicians, especially underground Artistes use profane and offensive words, swearing and other words which are not media friendly. If a DJ is taking the pain to edit a track by Sarkodie or Joey B because it contains offensive words, how then do you expect the same DJ to do a radio edited version of an ‘underground’ musician’s track. It is clear most DJs are not helping the underground Acts.

Before you can excel in this music industry, you will need to promote your tracks to get to the masses.

Most musicians in Takoradi are ‘brandless’. Proper branding is what helps sell you to the masses. Even though is so clear underground musicians will play free shows, you should always capitalize on the opportunities that come your way. Proper branding is what most event organizers look before they book you for programs and that will help you to gain something from the music that you do.
Some musicians do very bad music which can never get air play. As an underground artiste, you must be very creative and do good music. You can never excel even if you have the best branding ever and you do bad music that can’t sell. Some music producers too do one way beats that doesn’t help the musicians. As far as listeners have choices and preferences in the music they listen, musicians must also get good beats from good and producers who are dynamic.
Most Musicians in Takoradi are not on social networking media. The availability of musicians on the social media is what will help you to interact good with your fans and know what they want. Being on social networking media like Twitter and Facebook is a plus to your life as a musician. All the musicians who I know that are on social media mostly gets great downloads of the links they share and hence their music get to their core fans and followers.
Takoradi has got great up and coming talents and musicians who are far better than those in the main stream but unless they pay attention to – good music, respect and promotion, breaking through would be near impossible.

Don’t blame DJs and Bloggers for taking “Payola” and doing favoritism. Do your great music without offensive words and you will surely be in main stream. If you are not a musician don’t force yourself to be. A word to the wise is enough.

Author: Cephas Kofi Betadayz (www.hypingghana.com)