The management of reigning Artiste of the Year, Stonebwoy have expressed their pleasure about comment made by veteran musician Gyedu Blay Ambolley concerning the nomination of their signed entertainer for the Best International Act in the upcoming BET Awards.
Questioning how Stonebwoy got nominated, Highlife music legend Gyedu Blay Ambolley, in an interview on Hitz Entertainment News stated ” “that’s what they see coming out of Ghana so they go by it, nobody has really tried to sit down to put in an experiment to know what it is …because if you talk about Stonebwoy the raps are all the “patois” style. [It] is just like copying the dancehall thing from Jamaica, the beat is still the same format so if he’s going to be nominated out of adapting and copying well then I don’t know what is wrong because if you take highlife, highlife is the tree [of] dancehall, hiplife and all the rest are just branches of that tree but don’t forget at a point in time all the branches fall but the tree still stands”.
“If it’s “patois” they go the same way and the kids cheer them on because most of these DJs are young guys who didn’t come to meet that highlife element. What they met is the “Dancehall” and others so they think that’s what it is”, Gyedu Blay Ambolley hinted
Well known in showbiz business at Karltinga, the manager of Stonebwoy in a post made on his social media pages, Karl (as he is affectionately called) said “I read this story and I was very amazed. I do not know if these were the exact words of our father the veteran musician Mr. Ambulley”
What I expected from the story was the encouragement of a hardworking and talented young man who is doing his part to put Ghana and Africa on the international entertainment map. Stonebwoy does a genre called Afro – Dancehall (African Dancehall) which is the infusion of African Lyrics, Culture and Jamaican Dancehall. This can be verified by his lyrics, rhythms and style. Since Afro Dancehall is the current most popular genre in our side of the world, I also expected from the story the call on Dancehall Artiste to do more featuring with the Artiste who are doing all possible to revive our own limping Highlife genre which has been taken over by our Nigerian brothers. With this we can grow together, but not to question the credibility of the BET nomination of the young talent. The question of why highlife was not recognized was not supposed to be linked with the nomination of Stonebwoy in anyway. On this note let us get some questions answered.
- What are the criteria for nominating an Artiste from a country for the BET?
- What are the criteria for nominating and winning the Artiste of the year at the VGMA’S?
- What are the criteria for nominating and winning dancehall Artiste of the year at the VGMA?
- Finally the overall criteria for the nomination of all other awards?
