Musicians Planning Street Protest

Ghanaian musicians and owners of creative works within the music industry are planning a street protest in Accra, News-One has gathered.

They are also planning to boycott all musical concerts during the month of March to put pressure on Carlos Sakyi, interim chairman of the newly certified Ghana Music Rights Organization (GHAMRO), to step down and hold elections.

News-One can also confirm that the aggrieved musicians are currently putting together an all-stars song, printing car stickers and branded T-Shirts to support their campaign to compel GHAMRO to hold elections and get an elected leadership that would work under an accepted constitution.

Deep-throat sources said Obour, President of Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA), was worried about the development and was doing everything to lobby the media to give the issue a ‘black-out’ and keep it under wraps.

At the end of March, residents of Accra will expectedly see several musicians, both young and old and from all genres, marching through some principal streets and distributing T-Shirts with the inscription ‘GHAMRO Must Hold Elections Now’.

Though GHAMRO is currently being headed by an interim 14-member board, there are reports that board meetings end up in disagreements as the board is divided on what the way forward should be.
The interim administration, under the leadership of Mr. Sakyi, has been rocked with several accusations of malfeasance and nepotism, with the latest group of creative work owners, the Ghana Association of Phonographic Industry (GAP), adding their voice.

GAPI, in a strongly-worded statement issued this week and signed by its national chairman, Ken Opoku Asiedu, called on Mr. Sakyi to render an account on the affairs of the interim board, discontinue his position as interim chairman of GHAMRO and hold elections within 90 days.

It is not yet clear the position taken by each member of the interim board but News-One sources said while Kojo Antwi and Rex Omar belonged to the group calling for elections to be held, Nat Brew and Mark Okraku Mantey belonged to the group in support of Carlos Sakyi.
Recently, Carlos and Rex threw caution to the wind and engaged in a fierce clash during a discussion on Peace FM’s ‘Entertainment Review’.
The clash was so fierce that the host, Kwesi Aboagye, had to end the program abruptly as the exchanges were not palatable for public consumption.

Producer of ‘Entertainment Review’ and Entertainment Editor of Peacefmonline.com, Eugene Safo, in a report on the issue, noted that Carlos Sakyi has insisted that “GHAMRO is a result of a conflict resolution…it was borne out of a conflict. There is nowhere in the world that a collective society like GHAMRO has a board.”

According to him (Carlos), in most similar societies in other parts of the world, there were elected representatives from all stakeholders in that industry, but because GHAMRO came as result of a peace move, it was made up of identified organizations who had been made part of the peace movement.“It is an interim board but it is a board with all the powers to run the body because if you go through the constitution which was used to set up GHAMRO, the transitional provision states clearly and there is a process that we will have to go through before an election can be held, however they have all the powers to run the body”.

Rex Omar conceded that it was because of the many conflicts plaguing the industry that compelled the various groupings to come together to form GHAMRO. He however stressed that “in any part of this world, one belongs to a collective society by assigning rights. Collective societies are not formed with organizations”. He explained that if any renowned musician like him or other musicians with numerous hit songs did not assign their rights to GHAMRO, they had no business with GHAMRO even though they were musicians. “We are speaking to all Ghanaians, therefore we need to do things for all to better appreciate and understand. GHAMRO takes its powers from the members and the members have not gone for elections to elect anybody, they are an Interim body. So anytime Carlos speaks, he should address it as interim so that it is clear to everybody that it is an interim board”. The two kept arguing back and forth, an unsurprisingly tempers went an octave higher, resulting in the exchange of vituperative language. When calls for calm heads failed to prevail, the host had no choice but to stop the discussion and open the phone lines for listeners to call in. Music producer and a member of the interim GHAMRO board, Mark Okraku Mantey, later came in to condemn both of them for washing their dirty linens in public, describing their behavior as unfortunate and uncalled for. To him, that was not the right platform to discuss such matters since the board would be meeting for the first time after the issuance of the certificate to the group, where all pertinent issues could be resolved. Eventually, Carlos apologized to listeners and asked them to forgive him if he said anything offensive, adding that he believed all what happened was for the good of the music industry so that musicians and all stakeholders would be okay. “This has been my only interest in fighting this battle for the past twelve years,” he said. Rex Omar, on his part, said he was not invited to launch an attack on anyone but to express his opinion and urged the media to open their eyes and follow issues about GHAMRO very closely and always report the truth.

Source: News one