Bull Dog Accuses VGMA Board

Bull Dog, artiste manager and chief executive of Bull Haus Entertainment says it is strange, curious and unpardonable for the nomination board of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) to continue repeating petty basic mistakes for 15 years in a row. He has lashed out at both the board and organizers of the award, Charter House, for putting out what he described as “the worst nomination list ever in the history of the Ghana Music Awards.” Bull Dog spoke to News One: “For an industry person and from where I sit, I think they did a lousy job. There are some petty mistakes that for about 15 years of doing this very thing year after year, you shouldn't be making.” “It is a human institution but then when the mistakes are too petty some of us will talk about it. If they had done worse jobs in the past, they could have done a better job because as we move forward we need to learn. In the past, research was one of the most difficult things to do but these days there is the internet. You can go on there and check some of these things or speak to experts who know these things. Today, the research instruments or organs are plenty,” he added. According to Bull Dog, the some of the artistes under the New Artiste of the Year category clearly did not deserve to be there. One was Joey B who made his first appearance in D-Black’s ‘Vera’ in 2012 and released his ‘Strawberry Ginger’ single in the same year. Charter House defined the New Artiste of the Year as “the Artiste(s) adjudged by the Academy, Board and the General Public as the most promising and talented new artiste(s). The award goes to the artiste(s) who made the most impact with his/her first release (Single/Album) during the year under review.” But Bull Dog argued: “What happened to Mzvee, Episode and AK Songstress? These are the people who dropped songs in the year under review. Not Kumi Guitar, an old artiste who has songs released years past but only changed his name to make it seem he is new. What the committee now is saying to cover up their lies is that midway into the competition they redefined the criteria for New Artiste of the Year. If you have redefined that category, why won’t you put the redefinition out there for the people to work with?” He continued: “A category like Reggae and Dancehall that they have boxed together it is not fair. For the past 14 months, it has been Reggae and Dancehall that has been ruling this country so if they say they couldn’t find any Reggae song then I think they didn't do their job well. BASS Awards, a whole awards scheme dedicated to reggae and dancehall saw a lot of entries in their scheme. So are they saying they couldn’t have researched more to even give that genre of music an opportunity to be able to be part of a Ghana? VGMAs is sometimes considered the biggest award scheme of all so if they can’t even do due diligence and find out what is trending when it comes to Reggae and Dancehall, it’s funny.” Bull Dog happens to be one of the many industry players who have registered their disapproval about some of the songs and artistes who found their way onto the nomination list. Wutah PeeVee, Stonebwoy and Gasmilla have also made public their concerns regarding the awards, while many others are grumbling but do not want to go public.

Source: News One