As one of the most significant music industry players, Zapp Mallet shared his observations in the creative arts industry and recommended the best possible solutions to these issues.
In an exciting interview with host Rev. Erskine, the celebrated Ghanaian producer, Zapp Mallet, shared his thoughts on why the industry must be united and how that can be done. According to him, before the industry seeks help from the government or any other organization, creatives must first fix their attitude toward each other.
He told Rev. Erskine on the Y Leaderboard Series, “We need to attend to ourselves. The industry is too fragmented. We need to put the industry together. I have this situation where usually we tend to badmouth people a lot in this industry.
That is why I keep saying that if we are going to fix the country and we are not going to fix our attitude, we are going to mess up the country when it is fixed. This is because, among ourselves we are killing ourselves as musicians and creative arts people. We are too fragmented. So, I think we ourselves need to unite and defragment.”
Another observation made by the legendary recording engineer was that Ghanaians are confused and inconsistent with our music. “At a point, people were even singing about hiplife being dead and that is because we’re not consistent with the music. Hiplife came and all of a sudden, it turned into jama. From jama, it transitioned to azonto and from azonto, it transitioned to trap. From trap to dancehall,” he said.
While he acknowledged the hard work that creatives, especially musicians put in their work, he questioned if award schemes in Ghana truly reward hard work. He described awards schemes as a reward for hard work and excellence but, “I don’t think awards schemes in Ghana recognize excellence, they are just popularity awards. They are for those who made the most noise in the year under review.”
Zapp Mallet further shared that the creative arts industry has the capability of positively impacting the tourism industry. He noted, however, that Ghana has not done enough to tap into this opportunity.
Programmes Manager of YFM, Eddy Blay, commenting on the interview: “Zapp Mallet being here today was an eye opener to the Ghanaian entertainment fraternity, especially in the area of music production and sound engineering. He’s educated us a lot and I believe the new crop of producers will now do better and take Ghana music to the world.”
