2017 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards is scheduled for April 8 this year at the Accra International Conference Center, PRO for the scheme, Nii Ayittey-Hammond has told Hitz FM’s MzGee in an interview.
Giving series of activities expected to happen before the main night, he disclosed that the nominees jam will happen in Sunyani on March 13. He added that there will be highlife night, seminars and other exciting festival activities “just to dial up the Ghana @ 60 festival”.
Nii Ayittey-Hammond who doubles as Board Chairman for the awards continued that there will be no industry awards for this year’s event.
Asked if Charterhouse will put together a special event for veteran musicians since Ghana is celebrating 60 years after independence, he responded that “yes we are planning that out so we are looking at how interesting we can incorporate them from 1957 to date in terms of content for this year’s awards.”
Commenting on the number of categories for this year’s awards, he noted that the board has not decided on it yet but he is sure much will not change from the about 27 categories used for last year’s awards. The spokesperson was, however, optimistic that the categories for this year’s awards will not be up to 30.
He revealed that the scheme had about 700 entries to be considered for this year’s awards. When MzGee questioned him about the cry of female rappers to get a category on their own since they cannot compete with the male rappers, Nii Ayittey-Hammond answered that they have also heard the issue and have taken into consideration but will implement it when needed so “for now it is not necessary”.
Narrating how the voting system works for the annual awards, he said, “no one person can influence the VGMAs board”.
“We have a board who have a 30% share of the votes. The board is made up of 12 to 17 members depending on which year and each person votes individually. We could debate as a body, we issues but when it comes to voting, we vote as independent people in the presence of KPMG.
At the end of the process, they collect all forms from us and take them to their office. There is another 30% for the academy. The academy is made up of 50 to 70 people across Ghana.
An application has been created so they sit in their various homes and after the application is uploaded for them to vote, they have just 24 hours to do that. When they cast their vote, it goes straight to KPMG.
Now the public vote is 40%. When the public votes, the data goes straight to KPMG and they collate all these information and present it on the night of the event.” Nii Ayittey-Hammond chronicled to Hitz FM’s MzGee.
Watch Sarkodie’s performance at 2016 Ghana Music Awards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqZQopEIB3s
