Hip life artiste Gasmilla
has called on the award organizers and the music industry players to accept
Azonto as a genre.
Making Azonto a genre and awarding artistes for
it, will make them create songs with the Azonto in mind every year, Gasmilla
said on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM with Andy Dosty. He explained that the
inception of the 4Syte Music Video Awards has improved the quality of music
videos that artiste put out.
“Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) organizers, if
you decide to award an artiste for the ‘Azonto Song of the Year’ or ‘Azonto
Artiste of the Year’, it will push people to do more,” he added. The artiste
who has championed the Azonto course for long believes it is one of the ways
Ghanaian music can make it big in the international market.
“I saw there was a sound that was neglected from
the coast and I decided to do it and sell it to the world,” he stated. Gasmilla said the nature of
Ghanaians to not settle for one thing has contributed to the dying of Azonto. According
to the artiste, Jamaicans have held on to Reggae and Dancehall for long and it
is working for them.
“We are too creative as a
people that we don’t settle on one thing. We feel that we have done something
for too long so we should do something else,” he added. The “3points” hit maker who first commercialized Azonto explained it is important to push the Azonto as a genre before people from other states decide to own it. “If BBC could come down to interview a guy whose video budget was not up to ¢2000 and his clothes ¢10, that alone says a lot about Azonto,” he stated. Gasmilla also said many songs including the popular “Omo Ada” have Azonto in them but they have been classified under Afro Pop and Afrobeat and that cannot help sustain Azonto. |