The 27th edition of the Telecel Ghana Music Awards showed up with its full reputation on its back. The conversations were loud, the fashion debates were louder, and the online engagement, as always, proved that this show still holds the country’s attention like nothing else on the Ghanaian music calendar.
I watched the full broadcast live and followed reactions online throughout the night. What I saw was a show that is genuinely growing and genuinely struggling at the same time.
Let us start by giving credit where it is due.
The production improvements this year were real and easy to see. The stage was bigger, cleaner and looked far more premium than before. Getting lighting to work well on television, not just inside a venue, is harder than most people realise, and the TGMA team got that right. Some of the camera work gave the show a polished look that could hold its own on any international broadcast. You could see the ambition. You could see where the money went. And in several moments during the night, you could see genuine excellence that deserves to be said out loud before anything else.
But good production is not only about looking beautiful on screen. Timing, structure, pacing and how the audience actually feels throughout the night matter just as much. That is where the old frustrations came back.
The late start took over online conversation almost immediately, and for good reason. This is not a fresh complaint. It has followed major Ghanaian events for years, and the fact that we are still talking about it in 2025 says something uncomfortable: the industry has accepted something it really should not have. A show advertised for a specific time must start at that time, no waiting for celebrities, no waiting for the red carpet to wrap up, no waiting for anyone.
Once the industry knows the show will move without them, the habit of lateness will slowly die. Ghanaian music is earning serious global attention right now. The way events are run must reflect that same level of seriousness. Even watching from home, the drag was easy to feel. By the middle of the night, online reactions had moved from excitement to tiredness, and that kind of energy loss is something even strong performances cannot fully fix.
A Touch of Glitter, the theme for the red carpet gave the red carpet a better identity than previous years. The idea worked. The delivery, in some moments, did not. A red carpet at this level should feel controlled and purposeful. Every arrival should feel like its own moment. Instead, the carpet ran too long, lost its energy and at certain points became the kind of busy, uncontrolled scene that works against the very image the event is trying to build. Too many entry points. Too little control. Too many things interrupting the flow.
The standard being set globally is worth looking at directly. The Grammy Awards run their red carpet like a separate production entirely, with arrival times managed carefully, media access organised in layers and the premium feel maintained from the first arrival to the last. The BET Awards treat the carpet as cultural theatre, full of energy, deliberate and well put together for both the live crowd and the television audience. The BRIT Awards have built theirs into a clean, fashion forward statement with tight media coordination that makes every appearance look intentional on camera. On the continent, the Headies in Nigeria have made clear and visible efforts in recent years to tighten their show, cut dead moments and think more seriously about the television experience. The growth has been obvious. That is the target. Not something out of reach, but a practical standard that other African productions are already working seriously toward.
Live performance is where the TGMA finds its heart, and this year a number of artistes came ready. The preparation showed. The stage presence was there. There were moments on the night that felt genuinely big, moments that reminded you exactly why this stage still carries weight in a Ghanaian music career. But the consistency was not there. And a significant part of that inconsistency had nothing to do with the artistes themselves.
Sound was one of the major challenges of the night. At certain points it was too loud, overwhelming the vocals and turning what should have been clean, enjoyable performances into a wall of noise. At other points it swung the other way entirely, too low, too flat, leaving performers sounding distant and stripped of the energy they were clearly trying to bring to the stage. Both problems appeared across different performances through the night and the online commentary reflected exactly that frustration. People were not imagining it. The mix was inconsistent and it hurt the overall experience in a way that was hard to ignore.
This matters more than people sometimes admit. Sound engineering at this level is not a background detail. It is the foundation everything else is built on. An artiste can rehearse perfectly, bring full energy, command the stage completely, and still be let down by a mix that is not properly managed. That is unfair to the performer and deeply frustrating for the audience, both in the room and watching at home. Some handovers between acts also took too long and felt awkward, and when you combine slow transitions with unstable sound, the show loses its grip on the audience faster than anything else can recover it. The show kept building momentum and then losing it, over and over through the night. That is a serious problem. The Grammy broadcast, whatever its other issues, moves with speed and precision. Camera positions are rehearsed until they are automatic. Sound is locked and tested long before the first performer steps on stage. The handovers between acts are treated as part of the show, not a gap in it. Every minute is planned for television. The BET Awards have also lifted their game considerably in this area, finding a much better balance between the energy in the room and what comes across on screen.
Several people who attended the 27th TGMA raised issues online about seating mix ups, slow entry and general problems with how the event was organised on the ground. On their own these might seem like small things. Together they point to something bigger: the experience of being in that audience is not yet being treated as part of the product. When people pay serious money for tickets to Ghana’s biggest music night, they should get serious organisation to match. Every part of the experience, from buying the ticket to sitting down, is part of the brand. Weak spots anywhere in that chain are not minor. They are reputation issues.
The public uncertainty about the venue in the days leading up to the event did not help things either. A show of this size and cultural importance should never look unsure of itself that close to the night. It worries ticket holders, makes potential sponsors think twice and creates the kind of story before the event that nobody benefits from. Complications behind the scenes are always going to happen. The discipline is in making sure they never become the public conversation.
The TGMA does not need to be rebuilt from scratch. It needs to find the courage to match its own ambition, sharper discipline, better execution and the honesty to hold itself to the standard its own name demands. Winning on that stage still changes careers. Performing there still matters. Ghanaian music is genuinely being heard around the world right now, and the country’s biggest music night needs to consistently feel like it understands that. The talent is already here. The audience is already here. The cultural weight is already here. The quality of execution just needs to catch up and stay there.
The path forward is not hard to see, it only takes the will to follow it. Start times must be kept without exception. The red carpet needs a proper rethink, fewer entry points, better media management, shorter interview slots and a clear plan for how artists move through the space. Sound engineering must be treated with the same seriousness as everything else on that stage. Levels must be tested, monitored and managed through the entire show, not just at soundcheck and then left to chance. An inconsistent mix on a broadcast of this size is not a small technical slip. It is a professional gap that the TGMA can no longer afford. Technical rehearsals must be treated as untouchable, every performance fully prepared before show day with no room for avoidable mistakes. The running order must be tight, not every category needs a long introduction and not every segment needs extra time. The best award shows know when to move fast and when to slow down. That kind of thinking needs to be locked into the show before it goes live, not figured out on the night.
The potential here is genuinely big. What is needed now is the discipline to meet it.
And to every artiste who took home an award on the night, Ayekoo. You earned it. To the organisers who put this whole thing together year after year, Ayekoo to you too. The effort is seen. Now let the next edition show us what this platform is truly capable of. Vim on.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
Source: www.myjoyonline.com
