Renowned broadcaster in the Upper East Region, Ibrahim Aziz, popularly referred to as Lexis, has expressed worry about the difficulty in finding information about creatives in northern Ghana and their work on the internet.
This means that people outside northern Ghana do not get to see, enjoy, and interact with the work of these entertainers or notice the influence within the space in which they work.
Lexis explained that this has become the case because these creatives have done and continue to do little to have their work properly documented. He associated this with sheer ignorance and a sense of entitlement.
He made these comments when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show yesterday, Friday, May 3, 2024.
“If you want to thrive, regardless of your location, first of all, you have to have a good manager. You must know who a good manager is. We find ourselves in an industry where if someone is able to give you clothes, someone is able to finance you, then that person is your manager, but there is a difference between a financier and a manager.”
“As an artist, you should have a manager, a road manager, and a publicist. This person should have something to write about you almost every 24 hours. These are things they lack,” he said.
Lexis explained that the creatives, particularly musicians, lack the key fundamentals in getting their information properly documented online because, “the issues of entitlement [among creatives in northern Ghana] is a big issue. They feel that radio presenters and bloggers owe them publicity. So when they release a project, you have to talk about it.”
Beyond issues around entitlement, Lexis recounted a time when he and the Host of the Sunset Drive on A1 Radio, Seidu Akrugu, popularly known as PhatBone, decided to purposely promote songs from the Upper East Region. After 3 months of constant promotion of the program on radio, no artist presented their songs.
The broadcaster advised entertainers to be more conscious around their engagements with publishers in order to get their work out.
Source: A1Radioonline.Com|101.1MHz|Portia Dogbe|Bolgatanga|
