Since the inception of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards eighteen (18) years ago, no Gospel musician has won the ultimate award before; and this has been the bane of Gospel musicians and their fans.

The closest they have ever come to winning the prize, is to get nominated and, as usual, there is one Gospel artiste nominated in this year’s Artiste of the Year category for the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards – Joe Mettle.

This year, I have seen fans and supporters of Joe Mettle do some serious campaigning for him to win the category in which he has been nominated alongside EL, Sarkodie, Medikal, Stonebwoy and MzVee. It appears that the supporters are bent on breaking the jinx this year, but there is a problem; There is much more to winning any award, than ‘last minute’ vote begging.

Before I touch on the crux of this subject, I invite you to read an excerpt of an article which I wrote in 2016, about why Ghanaian Gospel musicians can’t rub shoulders with their secular counterparts. It is titled ‘The Ghanaian Gospel Artiste is Confused.’

“…I was analysing on my entertainment show Arts and People on Vision FM the [apparent] gulf between Gospel musicians and their secular counterparts when it comes to image branding, promotional strategies and ambassadorial deals.

So I called celebrated musician and recording engineer Nacee, the leader of the No Tribe Gospel music group. One thing he told me that still remains fresh in my mind is that Gospel music is a ministry and that Gospel musicians cannot and should not do everything that the secular artistes do. He told me that they were not in competition with the secular artistes. To an extent, he had a point – yes but to what extent is going to be the fulcrum of my subject.