THE most authentic music industry awards in the country, the Ghana Music Awards, came to a head last Saturday at the National Theatre with a spectacular event which was a culmination of weeks of preparation by the organisers, Charter House Productions.

At the end of the night, Lord Kenya emerged the big winner taking four awards including the prestigious Song of the Year Award which every musician in Ghana cherishes. He also won the Artiste of The Year, Hiplife Song of the Year as well as the Hiplife Album of the Year.

Lord Kenya was followed closely by Daasebre Gyamenah who also took home four awards; Song Writer of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance, Contemporary Highlife Song of the Year and Album of the Year.

It was really a plus for the organisers of the awards that, with the exception of Rex Omar who won the Traditional Song of the Year with his song Maba, all winning artistes were present to take the awards themselves. This certainly went a long way to make the show the big success that it was.

Obuor of Atenteben fame was probably the happiest person at the event with his two awards; New Artiste of the Year and Hiplife Rap of the Year. The music video of his song also won Felix Dacat the Best Music Video Directing award. Winning two of the three awards that earned Soul Records the Recording Label of the Year meant that Obuor had another credit to his name. The other artiste on the Soul Record label who was highly favoured to win and who did sail through was Nana Fynn who won the Highlife Song of the Year with his song Menkoa. Although the winners of the various categories were hailed by the audience and accepted by almost all present with little or no reservations, some nominees who ended up with nothing came as a surprise to some observers.

The first of them is Ofori Amponsah who was nominated for the Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Artistes of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance and Contemporary Hiplife Song of the Year but ended up with nothing.

Esther Amoako is another such artiste who had so much promise but watched all the awards fly past. She was nominated in four categories including the Album of the Year and Gospel Album of the Year.

Denmark-based Afro Moses was awarded the very special Fontomfrom Music Merit Award in recognition of his exemplary promotion of Ghanaian music internationally. This award, like the Original Song of the Year which was picked up by Nana Quame is a non competitive award which was arrived at by the organisers.

Rocky Dawuni beat Bullet Man, Jah Wutahfi and K K Kabobo to win the Reggae Song of the Year with his Song I’ll Try in the Reggae category. As was expected Zapp Mallet who was competing in the Recording Engineer of the Year category with Sammy Helwani, Hammer and Bodo Staiger, won hands down considering the number of winning albums that bore his signature. Zapp has won the same award twice before.