Ghanaian music producer, Wei Ye Oteng, has criticized the board members of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards for not doing their due diligence when they nominated only Afriyie Wutah for the song Country Hot in the Audio Engineer of the Year category.
In an interview with Andy Dosty, on Monday, March 28, Wei Ye Oteng said Afriyie Wutah did not tell the organizers of the event the entire story when asked about who mixed and mastered the song. According to Oteng, Appietus mixed and mastered the song.
The issue ended up on radio after Oteng made a post on social media about the disregard of sound engineers in the country.
According to him “the truth of the matter is” they “make everything happen” and “without us there wouldn’t be any good song on radio.”
Although he was confident about the fortunes of the producer changing in the future he bemoaned the “energy that is being given to producers, or the producer category.” He said “it’s nowhere close to all the other categories.”
He added that its “unfortunate” the trailblazers were very interested in the getting the job done than making sure whatever belongs to them was given.
Oteng pointed out that he knows most artists in the country who have the skill to mix and master their own songs, he was sure Afriyie did not master the song himself, although he told the VGMA that he did.
“Because Afriyie is somebody that I know. And I know most musicians in this country, those that can produce, those that can try mixing and those that produce and gives it to engineers to get it to the level that it belongs. And I realized that, they had done everything at home, with some few people at Odikro and all that. And then the production was taken to Appietus, who mixed it, added some few chords and then mastered it.
He said anybody can “claim” that they are “responsible” for the full job so the VGMA did not do their due diligence by finding out exactly who really was behind that audio aspect of that production that they nominated.”
He, therefore, entreated musicians to give credit to every single person who contributes to the making of their songs. churned out.
On that same show, Appietus and Afriyie Wutah clashed as the latter claimed the song he sent to the former was a “complete song.” Appietus then asked Wutah why he brought the song if thought it was a complete.
Per the definition by the VGMA, the audio engineer is adjudged by the board to be the engineer(s) directly responsible for the recording, mixing and technical production of the song adjudged as the Record of The Year.
Source: pulse.com.gh