Foreign artistes perform at VGMA for free – Charter House

Event organizers, Charter House, has denied reports that it pays foreign artistes who perform at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) more than it does Ghanaian musicians. According to the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the company, George Quaye foreign artistes who perform at the award show do it for free.

He explained that such artistes consider their performances as “convention,” hence do not demand for payment or whatsoever. Mr Quaye said Charter House only takes care of their flights and accommodation of invited artistes. Mr George was speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday ahead of the maiden edition of the VGMA awards, which has been scheduled for Saturday April 11, 2015. “All the international acts that are coming, none of them is taking a dime. What we do is we cater for their flight, we give them accommodation and a per diem and in total it doesn’t go beyond 1,500 or worst case scenario 2,000…because they know, that in their countries and all over the world it’s convention, you do not charge to perform at award shows.” “However if it’s a music concert that we are doing like the Hope City concert with Chris Brown, yes definitely you will pay top dollar.” There has been complaints about the differences between the fees Charter House pays local and foreign artistes with top local musicians like Shata Wale and Sarkodie alleging that the company treats foreigners better than locals. “There is a lot of perception that goes round. There are issues that we cannot run away from.  This is our country and we do honour and cherish our artistes so much. But those are just perception but I’m sure if they come close enough eventually that perception would be robbed off,” he said.

Sarkodie took to Twitter on Tuesday to reprimand  Charter House the company for using his name in adverts for the VGMA without a formal agreement. But Charter House subsequently apologized saying it was an “error.” Mr Quaye  reiterated the apology but said Sarkodie’s payment if it had been agreed would have been too much for the company to pay. “I cannot put figures out there, even at the figure that we couldn’t agree with Sarkodie if he had decided to be on the show he would have been the highest paid act on the night including even if we put all the international acts together it still wouldn’t have gotten to what we were proposing to pay him that he turned down.” – Credit: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana