Axe Hangs Over Asem’s Song

Next Tuesday will tell whether young, good-looking and well-spoken hiphop musician Asem, will have his very popular song Give Me Blow in the reckoning for an award .In this year's prestigious Ghana Music Awards. Since its release late last year, Give Me Blow which the artiste translates as "Fa wotwedie bewo ewiem" in twi, has earned for itself considerable radio airplay and patronage especially among the youth. The song is most admired for its "crunk" rhythm. "Hey, the song idey be too much", a JHS student responded to a Showbiz question at a children's programme at the National Theatre last December. He and a large number of his colleagues were screaming and dancing in the aisles. For an equally large number of music enthusiasts, however, the chorus of the song carries a sexually suggestive slant that does not sit well with them. "That part of the song makes me very uncomfortable whenever it is played and especially when children are around, I, get totally distressed," one parent told Showbiz. A long-running debate that was begun over whether Asem intentionally wrote his song that way to attract attention, seemed to have been brought to an end when his CD album finally came out. In that collection, Asem included a re-mix version of the same song and to the expected delight of his critics, he took off the supposed offending twi chorus. But he gave the critics an even stronger cause to complain over a line in this version that explains "blow" to mean oral sex. "We haven't reached that part in our discussions yet." Ghana Music Awards 09 (GMA) Planning Committee Chairman, Nii Ayite Hammond told Showbiz last week Friday when the orgartisers, Charter House, were contacted. "According to our programme, the final nominees list will be out on Tuesday March 3, and that is when the public will know whether, a particular artiste is in or out, Ayite Hammond said. If they follow their own tradition, the GMA may not put out Asem's Give Me Blow for nomination. Three years ago in their bid to help nip the emergence of indecent lyrics in Ghanaian popular music, Charter House undertook to exclude such songs from the awards. In the 2007 edition, Batman’s (Samini) Linda became the first victim of that decision when the song was largely tipped to win a number of awards. In the 2008 edition, an even more dramatic situation was created. Risqué musician, Mzbel, gave an early notice the GMA organisers that she did not want her song Edey Be to be entered into the nominations. Although the song did not make it, it was largely believed that Mzbel did not want to go through GMA’s traditional scrutiny. This year the GMA marks its tenth anniversary and the organisers appear poised to make the forthcoming edition very memorable. According to a Charter House programme of activities released on Tuesday, the MTN Ghana Music Awards Festival this year will be unveiled at a grand launch on Tuesday at the Labadi Beach Hotelin Accra to be followed by a nominees Independence Day Jam in Kumais on March 7.