Rally round all artistes —Wei Ye Oteng
SOUND engineer Wei Ye Oteng is not happy about what he describes as a new habit developed by Ghanaians to endorse one particular artiste at a time, leaving the rest to their fate.
This development sees Ghanaians pushing one specific artiste as if others don’t matter, a situation which is causing setbacks in the music industry.
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“We should be able to promote all our artistes the same way we do for those trending. Just like we are currently upholding Black Sherif, there are other artistes in Ghana who are doing incredibly well too. But we have ignored all of them and pushing just one.
“What of the others? We are not giving the other artistes the opportunity to also shine and it is about time we put a stop to this behaviour” he told Graphic Showbiz in an interview.
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According to Wei Ye Oteng, due to this ‘focus promotion’, some industry players have succeeded in crippling the careers of many talents who had a very bright future.
“It started from some of our industry players who sit on big platforms pitting artistes against each other. The other time, I heard artiste manager, Bulldog, say Black Sherif’s latest album would do better than those of Shatta Wale and Sarkodie.
“That was a no no for me. You don’t say that on radio. How would the other two artistes feel? We should be able to push our musicians at the same time”, he added.
Stressing his point, Wei Ye Oteng who has worked with musicians such as Sarkodie, Trigmatic, Joyce Blessing, Obrafour, A Plus, Barima Sidney, Noble Nketsia, among others, said Nigerians were ahead of us because they promoted multiple artistes at the same time.
“The reason Naija seems to be doing better than us is because they actively support multiple artistes at the same time. There musicians are everywhere and picking awards, and we are not. It is not rare to find in one category of an award scheme only one Ghanaian musician against six or seven Nigerians. This is a deliberate attempt to get their artistes everywhere, and we need to learn from them”, he said.
Meanwhile, Wei Ye Oteng has indicated he is coming out with a new radio and TV programme, What Is Your Capacity, which is about punditry.
“There are people who should not speak on certain topics but you will find them addressing them as if they know it all. You see, a person who parades around as a pundit can run down a musician’s work when indeed he or she knows next to nothing about music for instance. These are some of the things my show will tackle”, he stated.