'Artiste of the Decade' at the recent Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMAs), Sarkodie, has condemned event organizers Charterhouse over the ban placed on colleague musicians Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy. In a series of tweets, the ‘You go kill me’ hitmaker stated that Charterhouse made a mistake in selling out tickets to the public to attend the event with their favourite musicians because it is not a concert. According to him, supporters of football are only permitted to be at the stadium to support their favourite football clubs but not at an awards night which is meant to celebrate the teams and individual players….. “it’s not done", he fumed. He explained that big shows like the Grammys, BET, MTV among others are not opened to the public to just buy tickets and come to the event and that is for a reason. He said, “As much as awards night are meant to celebrate artistes, it stirs up a lot of emotions and therefore you wanna create the right environment to contain that.” “Charterhouse sells ticket for award show which is wrong but I only understand due to lack of funds to put up a top-notch event like the VGMA but it still doesn’t make it right,” his tweet reads further.
VGMA organizers ban Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy indefinitely, strips them of awards
Sarkodie argued that it won’t always go right to have music fans in the same building with the musicians receiving awards. “CAF awards don’t open to the public so if you are a football fan, you can cheer from home and when you are disappointed, you can deal with that at home too. We have our free will on how we react but you don’t create an environment to test people’s emotions….not everyone can take that,” he stressed. Organizers for the 20th VGMAs at a press conference yesterday banned indefinitely Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy from participating in all aspects of the country’s foremost awards scheme for musicians, thus the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards. The decision follows a brawl between the two feuding Dancehall Artistes which led to one brandishing a gun on stage. The two musicians according to the board of the awards scheme have lost their legibility for VGMAs nominations, selections, and performances. Reacting to the board decision ‘King Sark’ therefore wrote on his Twitter timeline that “the fans were not wrong for cheering (they are there anyway) but that right there can get a lot in their feelings and even winners overreacting.” “But for Charterhouse to push blame on our brothers and leave their faults out, that’s wrong….security was bad and a whole lot I don’t wanna go into….Charterhouse y’all don’t have to act that quick with your decision cos we could do same to you…” he warned. He advised that both the organizers and the artistes need to work on the mistakes that happened at the event and not “one side taking a harsh decision”.
