The organizers of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA), Charter House has responded to Dope Nation’s allegation of genre misclassification for their song ‘Gboza.’
According to the musical duo, ‘Gboza’ is a blend of House music, Afrobeats, and Amapiano and thus should not have been nominated under the Best Afro-pop Song category.
In a reaction, Public Relations Officer of the scheme, Robert Klah said the group had gotten it wrong.
MrKlah pointed out that sounds such as house music, Afrobeats, Amapiano and Alternative tunes all fell under the Afro-Pop category under the scheme.
“Afro-pop is actually a fusion of different sounds situated within Afromusic so when they say it’s House and a fusion of Afrobeats and Amapiano, this is exactly what it is under the scheme,” he explained on TV3.
According to the PRO, the issue was simply a matter of Dope Nation understanding their operational definition of how they describe the categories. If they have a better understanding of these definitions, disputes can be settled easily.
“It is just a matter of them just having to understand how we describe certain things or our operational definition of how we describe the categories and that would have settled matters. There’s a guideline and that’s what we work with,” he explained.
He also further explained the role of the board and the in-depth research that is sanctioned prior to nominating a sound
“One of the functions of the board and team is classification so what we do is that once a song comes through it is classified under the category that is most appropriate for,” he disclosed.
