Ghana’s Contemporary Gospel sensation, Cwesi Oteng, over the weekend beat top mainstream gospel music artistes to win the ‘Best Gospel Video of the Year’ category at the 2011 Vodafone 4Syte TV Music Video Awards.

The top guns in the Best Gospel Video category included No Tribe, Cecilia Marfo, Gifty Osei, Lady Prempeh and Phillipa Baafi. Cwesi Oteng won the gospel category hands down, much to awe of the audience, with his beautiful and creative ‘Mercy (But For Your Mercy)’ video which is different from the usual gospel videos usually seen on TV.

When asked what the award meant to him, Cwesi said, “To me it’s not really about personal accolades, rather, what it represents. This is firstly a strong statement for Ghana gospel music image to help erase the perception some people have about what gospel music should be or the tag that all Ghanaian gospel videos are of mediocre standards and have monotony of concepts.

“Secondly, it will quicken my colleague gospel musicians to churn out more creative and quality videos to complement the life-changing themes in our songs instead of us either keeping to ourselves the songs we produce daily and not putting out there to transform lives or putting the gospel in a box and packaging it for the saved only.

What goes into our music production is of top quality, at least majority of contemporary Ghanaian gospel artistes and groups as well as some notable mainstream artistes and groups show this but our videos have been a letdown. Therefore it’s about time we complemented and projected our music with the quality videos they deserve to impact people and speak well of our God.”

The award is another high-profile recognition for the young artiste and makes this year a memorable one for him after having won Ghana Gospel Industry Awards’ New Artiste of the Year in July. He also received multiple nominations at the 2011 Africa Gospel Music Awards including ‘Best African Gospel Video’ and ‘Discovery of the Year.’

“I am pleased to have won the Best Gospel Video at this year’s Vodafone 4Syte Music Video Awards. I love and respect efforts people put into creativity and therefore respect 4Syte TV’s initiative to recognise and promote Ghanaian creative works. I want to thank firstly God, my family, Flo Riva incorporated, Nana Asihene and his NKACC outfit for shooting the video and all friends and fans for supporting me. Everyone should watch out for the album release early 2012, hopefully March,” he added.

However, the video of the second prelude single, ‘Okurayen’, off the upcoming album, will be shot and released in a few weeks. Cwesi Oteng is a young passionate gospel music sensation who has an album, ‘Blessed Are They’, to his credit. His style of music knows no bounds as it transcends different cultures and rhythms.

The re-structuring of his music ministry and the release of his ‘But for Your Mercy’ song and video, which are preludes to his yet-to-be released Mercy Project album, with his unique music ministry and added focus on charity and youth, have earned him recognition all over the world.